PVC pipe bass traps are way cheaper than I thought

I was looking up how to treat my weird L shaped room and stumbled on a fact that blew my mind. A single 2 foot by 4 foot acoustic panel from a music store runs about $80. But I found a guy's blog post from 2022 where he built bass traps out of 4 inch PVC pipe and rockwool for $12 each. He had a sound measurement before and after and it dropped the 100hz ringing by like 8 decibels. I spent last weekend trying his method and honestly it worked way better than my old foam pads. Has anyone else tried using plumbing supplies for room treatment?

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gavin_allen482mo ago

Right it's like the expensive stuff is just marketing for the same basic physics" - I'd actually push back on that a little. The foam pads you had before were probably working on higher frequencies while the PVC traps are grabbing the lows, so it's not really a fair comparison. A lot of those cheap DIY builds don't account for the fact that PVC pipe has a specific resonance frequency itself (like a big tube), and if you don't stuff them exactly right you could end up with a hollow sound or even boost certain frequencies instead of killing them. Plus those rockwool fibers are nasty to work with without a mask and gloves, I had a buddy who tried it and his room smelled like a construction site for weeks after.

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julia_burns92mo ago

Right it's like the expensive stuff is just marketing for the same basic physics.

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