You know that one frequency.

The note that makes your room go absolutely mental. The one that turns your low end into an uncontrollable mess every time the music hits it.

It just keeps ringing. And ringing. And suddenly you can't hear anything else. Your ability to judge balance? Gone. Your confidence in your mix decisions? Shot.

If you've measured your room and seen those ridges sticking out of the waterfall plot like a mountain range, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Standing waves. And in a small room that wasn't built for audio, they can be brutal.

Here's what nobody tells you about fixing them: it's not about which tool you use. It's about which order you use them in.

Bass traps, room correction, repositioning. These are your options. But stack them in the wrong sequence and you'll spend twice the money for half the result. Get the sequence right, and each step builds on the last.

The 4-Step Resonance Fix

Step 1: Find Your Room's Low-End Sweet Spot (Cost: Free)

You can't change where standing waves appear in your room. That's dictated by your room dimensions. But you can change where you sit relative to them.

Different positions in your room will have completely different balances between those standing waves. Some spots are disasters. Some are surprisingly workable. Your job is to find the least bad spot, the position where the standing waves balance out against each other as much as possible.

I've seen frequency responses improve by 5-6 dB at problem frequencies just by moving the listening position back 30 centimeters. No treatment. No gear. Just repositioning.

This step is free and it sets the foundation for everything else. Skip it, and your treatment has to work twice as hard to compensate.

Step 2: Treat With Porous Absorbers (Your Main Weapon)

Once you've found your sweet spot, porous absorbers do the heavy lifting.

Why porous and not fancy tuned absorbers? Because porous material handles everything above 100 Hz with ease. And if you build them deep enough (with proper air gaps), they'll work down to around 40 Hz too.

In one room I treated last summer, the client had two nasty resonances piled on top of each other around 120-140 Hz. After positioning and porous treatment, those peaks completely disappeared. All the big resonances above 100 Hz were gone. The one at 70 Hz was strongly damped (not gone, but a significant improvement). Even the lowest one at 35 Hz showed some benefit.

Porous absorbers are cheap, flexible, and effective across a wide bandwidth. You want to squeeze every bit of usefulness out of them before moving to anything more specialized.

Step 3: Targeted Resonance Absorbers (Only If Necessary)

Now you look at what's left.

If you've maxed out your porous absorption and there's still a problem frequency below 40 Hz causing trouble, that's when you consider tuned absorbers. Helmholtz resonators, membrane traps, diaphragmatic absorbers.

But here's the reality check: these things are expensive. You might pay as much for three or four tuned traps targeting one frequency as you did for all your porous treatment combined. And they only work on that one narrow band.

That's why this step comes third, not first. You reduce the problem to its bare minimum with the cheaper tools, then surgically address only what remains.

Step 4: Room Correction (The Final Polish)

Room correction (EQ applied to your speakers) comes last. Always.

Not because it doesn't work. It does. Software like SoundID can rebalance your frequency response and give you a tonal reference you can rely on. That consistency is genuinely useful for training your ears over time.

But room correction only fixes tonality. It does nothing for decay. That ringing resonance? EQ won't make it ring any shorter. It'll just turn down the volume of the ring.

When room correction comes after proper treatment and positioning, it doesn't have to work hard. Small corrections, minimal distortion, no headroom problems. When it comes first (or alone), you're asking it to crowbar everything into place. And that comes with costs.

The Bottom Line

Fixing room resonances isn't about picking the right tool. It's about stacking your tools in the right order so each one has less work to do.

Position first (free). Porous absorbers second (effective and affordable). Tuned absorbers third (only if needed). Room correction last (for final polish).

Get the sequence right, and you'll spend less money for better results. And that room that was driving you crazy? It becomes a room you actually trust.

See you next Wednesday.

Jesco

P.S. If you want to build porous absorbers that actually tackle low-end problems, consider Build A Better Bass Trap. It takes you from DIY uncertainty to panels that work down to 40 Hz. Check it out here.