Congrats Ethan! (Nice write up in Stereophile)

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:55 pm

Congratulations Ethan!

For those of you who aren't Stereophile subscribers, Ethan's traps were featured in this months issue and the review was pretty much as glowing as they get!

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:37 pm

Cucco wrote:

Congratulations Ethan!

For those of you who aren't Stereophile subscribers, Ethan's traps were featured in this months issue and the review was pretty much as glowing as they get!

Thanks very much.

Also, Stereophile asked me to write a Manufacturer's Feedback response, but then failed to print it. Sheesh! So if nobody minds, I'll repeat it here below.

--Ethan

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All of us at RealTraps were thrilled to see Jim Austin's great review of our MondoTraps. Room treatment is arguably more important than almost any other component in an audio system, yet it is too often overlooked by otherwise knowledgeable audiophiles. Jim is to be commended for his enthusiastic support of room treatment, and for making clear why it is so important when the goal is accurate high-quality sound reproduction. However, I'd like to address a few of his comments.

Jim noted that MondoTraps are physically large because they have to be. This is simple physics. All room acoustic problems are caused by reflections - peaks and nulls, ringing, flutter echo, comb filtering, excess ambience - all of these are due to reflections. Most domestic rooms have between 600 and 1,000 square feet of reflecting surfaces on the walls, floor, and ceiling. To make a meaningful improvement requires a reasonable proportion of those surfaces to be treated. That Jim obtained such a huge improvement with only three MondoTraps, each having just over 9 square feet of surface, is a testament to how truly effective MondoTraps are.

In a reasonable size room MondoTraps are not as intrusive as in Jim's New York apartment, and the current trend toward dedicated listening rooms helps further. But we also have smaller products that are highly effective. As Kal Rubinson noted in his November, 2006 Music In The Round column, only two of our 31-inch Tri-Corner traps had a huge positive effect in his relatively small listening room.

I'll also mention that MondoTraps do not require "lag bolts" to attach to the walls. All of our products include mounting hardware, which is simply two small Molly bolts and standard picture wire. Interested readers can see exactly what is required for installation in the How To section of our web site www.realtraps.com. For panels that will be mounted flat on a wall they can be hung just like a picture, with only one small hook. We also offer two types of stands to avoid permanent mounting altogether, or to easily move them out of the way when needed.

Finally, in his review, Jim wondered why the MondoTraps improved clarity at higher frequencies since, as he noted, they are primarily bass traps. In truth, MondoTraps are broadband absorbers. In this case we designed them to absorb as much as possible at bass frequencies, but with a controlled lesser amount of absorption at mid and high frequencies. The very specific curve of absorption versus frequency is a huge feature that is unique to all RealTraps products. This way you can put enough of them in a room to truly solve the bass problems, but without sucking all the life out of the room as happens with panels made from foam or plain fiberglass.

Ethan Winer
RealTraps

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