History - ASC

Born in 1984 from the marriage of concrete basement listening rooms and amplified low frequencies, TubeTraps took the world by storm.  ASC was soon formed to help spread the joy of musical bass and highly articulate rooms throughout the land.  From our humble beginnings in garages and small shops of the Whitaker neighborhood of Eugene, we grew into worldwide suppliers of the most innovative bass trap of its time.  In the 30 years since, we have broadened our capabilities and expertise to serve every aspect of the acoustic world - from restaurants to lumber mills, from backyard pools to Grammy winning producers.  Just like in the early days, everything is still 100% handmade in the USA.

The TubeTrap was the world’s first factory-built broadband bass trap. Portable and extremely efficient, the second generation of TubeTrap prototypes received an acoustic crossover which served as a treble range diffuser. Once introduced to market, the TubeTrap basically created the room acoustic products industry, and has become an iconic acoustic fixture in high-end audio.   The cylindrical columns seen so frequently in the corners of ultra-high-performance, high-power, high-fidelity audio rooms, are of course TubeTraps.

Because the TubeTrap was such a versatile acoustic device, it became an acoustic building block for recording engineers and audio experts to explore and experiment with acoustics in their small rooms. Notably, the 2C3D listening room, the AttackWall control room work station and the QSF recording technique for live rooms have set new standards in audio recording and playback which have become the reference by which other products are judged.

Our success with developing high performance rooms led us to a performance threshold.  While the air inside the room was behaving well, the Golden Ear audiophiles still found a reason to complain.  For their uncompromising sonic demands we must thank these saints among humanity, as investigation led us to the source of their dissatisfaction: the uncontrolled aftershock or shudder of the structure of these rooms in response to being hammered by powerful audio systems. The response of our engineers was to develop WallDamp, in 1986, to be followed shortly by a full line of construction-based acoustic conditioning products.  Detailed guides were generated to enable contractors to remodel rooms into those capable of handling the high pressure levels provided by the increasingly powerful sound systems.  One more step toward audio perfection had been made. 

Although it looks like soundproofing, the structural conditioning of high performance audio rooms is really an extension of the sound conditioning project in the room, beyond the air, into the walls, floor and ceiling surfaces, by isolating and damping the vibrating surfaces of the room. The benefit of these calm “musical walls” is that they also became membrane bass traps which are very useful in absorbing the subwoofer range of sound.

Over the years we have had the opportunity to develop hundreds of other sound and noise control products. Some of them were built only once, for a special project and many are intermittently built as needed in various projects. We keep manufacturing jigs and manuals for every product we’ve made, and can always make more of them. We’ve built complicated acoustic products for other acoustic designers and architects, who entrust our shop to build according to specs.

ASC has remained in Eugene, Oregon under the same ownership since its inception:  Arthur Noxon.  Physicist, PE of Acoustical Engineering, inventor of the TubeTrap, and founder of ASC, our fearless leader still finds the time to be Chief Executive, President, Mechanical Consultant, R&D Manager, and Lead Engineer at ASC.   He also remains the face of ASC at trade shows, educational events, and industry conventions.