Little Foams that could 
by Lawrence from Yukon Territory, Canada, March 2007
Music Background:  Professional musician, home recording hobbyist

These baffles are definitely useful. I've only tried them with acoustic guitar, so far. What they do is greatly reduce the ambient room sound entering the microphone, which is ideal for a home recording environment. I'll probably use these every time I record from now on, since I don't have an acoustically treated room.

Of course, they're also intended to be used for isolating instruments and drum microphones, and I have no doubt they would work very well in those situations.

It's a simple idea, well executed.

  Who'd a thunk, they actually work... 
by Chip Burke from Columbus, OH, September 2006

These things actually work as advertised. This past weekend I was tracking a jazz trio... classical guitar, upright, and drums. The thing is, I don't have iso booths foreveryone and they wanted to have eye contact throughthe whole session. The bass I could gobo pretty well as the bass player could see overthe gobos, but the classical guitarist played sitting down. A gobo completely blocked his view of the other players. The week before I had done an initial session with them and the snare bleed was a real problem. I was using an large diaphragm condensor on the guitar in a cardiod pattern with the null towards the drums. I goboed as best I could while maintating their line of sight. I had to EQ the guitar tracks to death and then they lost a lot of high end due to getting rid of snare bleed. This week I tried the XPanders and they really did work. Not a miracle, mind you, but a significant amount of additional isolation on the mids and highs. I was quite skeptical going in, but I am keeping these.

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