Acoustic Treatments and Your Tracking/Recording/Mixing Room

danondrums

Well-known Member
For the drummers here who do a lot of recording and have built up a recording/mixing room.

Feel free to share your experiences and photos.
I'm building up my room now and curious about ideas.

I have a pretty nice budget available and am adding bass traps and acoustic panels to an 11'x12' room that has a 30 degree ceiling that is 8' tall on one side and 12' on the other.

Since the room is small my approach is to go as dead and dry as possible so will be covering up the plaster walls maybe until you can't see them anymore if that's what it takes.
 
There are recording forums on the net that would probably be helpful. I kind of want to do some tratment of my rehersal/recording room too. But I barely find the time to clean it and it sounds ok ish.
 
Here's my room so far:
Even adding this amount of foam created a huge improvement.

APC_0402.jpgAPC_0405.jpg
 
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I've been thinking about doing some acoustic treatments in my own room. My drums are in a spare bedroom/office, and the sound is rather harsh. Those dozen or so foam squares made a difference for you?
 
I've been thinking about doing some acoustic treatments in my own room. My drums are in a spare bedroom/office, and the sound is rather harsh. Those dozen or so foam squares made a difference for you?
Much more than anticipated. Bass traps are also critical in small rooms.
The sound used to be unlistenable IMO and thought it was just due to my bad/sensitive hearing but it's okay now.
Will definitely need more treatment for great recordings though.
 
I attached pool noodles into all in my corners of my space to soften them. I treat the hard 90 degree angles in my room. Pentagon shaped rooms for instance are desirable. I used pool noodles because they were inexpensive. You could make each corner into a 45 with 12" wide pieces of wood. You have a nice high ceiling, envious!

They say hanging sheets, rugs, blankets or some type of fabric an inch from the wall, leaving an air space, does a lot acoustically too.

A sheet stretched out 5 feet or so above the set is good too from what I understand.

Not for sound-proofing at all, just to make a nice recording space without a lot of waves bouncing around.
 
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Man the room is coming together nice! l see the floor is carpeted (that's good) is it wood or concrete underneath and is that an issue that you need to build a raised stage? Looks like you have an actual workspace in there with the two monitors-so the room serves multi-purposes? Keyboards, looks like some sort of mixer, dang getting cramped in there-you need to knock out a wall and build an extension LOL :D
 
Thanks All!
It is wood underneath. Surprisingly a very experienced recording engineer told me that carpet is bad with a hard ceiling and that I'll need to cover the ceiling or unveil the hardwood floor for best results. I think it's just plywood under there so I'm going to leave as is (for now anyway). I'll add some treatment to the ceiling though once I need better recordings.

Luckily there's no need for soundproofing. I'm deep in the mountains and people fire guns for fun around here. It's glorious! After we moved in our neighbors said, "Hey, I notice all the Rush tunes you play. It's cool having a Neil Peart clone next door." haha. They grew up in Toronto and saw Rush when they were playing high schools! Crazy.

There's a bunch of fun gear in here. I have 22 tracks available to record to the mixer (Model 24 with SD Card) or go straight to DAW (Ableton Live) if I plan to do a lot more work to the tracks.

I have live video capabilities and take Skype lessons with Joe Bergamini which has been wonderful. He's a great teacher.
 
That's quite a nice setup you have! Despite being a small room, the slanted ceiling is actually much better than a flat ceiling.

From what I recall from reading an exhaustive drum recording room guide from an expert, you want to eliminate the flutters in the corners of the ceiling, put treatments on the reflecting walls adjacent to the drums so the sound doesn't bounce back into the mics twice, and use bass traps of course.

You definitely don't want to dampen everything...otherwise your recordings will sound lifeless. Hardwood floors are preferable to carpet because of this, but you can still get a great sound with your setup the way it is.

I would put some foam to the right of your drum kit underneath the windows. That's a reflecting surface that comes straight back to the mics.

Think of sound as a thousand ping pong balls heading in a thousand different directions in a straight line, careening off the walls and heading in a new direction. You want more acoustic foam in the places that reflect directly back to the mics. So I'm thinking that the tic tac toe pattern you chose might not be the most efficient? Someone correct me if I'm wrong though. Regardless, it definitely helps!
 
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We use a variety of GIK panels & bass traps for the area in which we film Sounds Like a Drum. There are two panels hanging as a cloud directly over the drums, a pair of bass traps (one in each of the back corners), two panels on the side walls and two free-standing panels behind our back drop and then four additional free-standing panels arched around the film set. It's made a colossal difference.

In my experience, small foam sheets and similar products due VERY little to control the sound below high frequency flutter echo. These panels have been so effective that I honestly can't imagine ever going back to cheap foam. Easily one of the greatest investments I've made in sound.
 
We use a variety of GIK panels & bass traps for the area in which we film Sounds Like a Drum. There are two panels hanging as a cloud directly over the drums, a pair of bass traps (one in each of the back corners), two panels on the side walls and two free-standing panels behind our back drop and then four additional free-standing panels arched around the film set. It's made a colossal difference.

In my experience, small foam sheets and similar products due VERY little to control the sound below high frequency flutter echo. These panels have been so effective that I honestly can't imagine ever going back to cheap foam. Easily one of the greatest investments I've made in sound.
Thanks - I like the idea of the free standing panels.
 
Those square tiles on the wall are useless. They are expensive and they don't treat full range. Not thick enough. Your just removing high end and letting the lower frequencies bounce freely creating nulls and bumps in the audio at the nodal points of the room. If you have a good budget to work with, invest it in the right things
 
Those square tiles on the wall are useless. They are expensive and they don't treat full range. Not thick enough. Your just removing high end and letting the lower frequencies bounce freely creating nulls and bumps in the audio at the nodal points of the room. If you have a good budget to work with, invest it in the right things
Care to share an alternative or are you just saying 4” foam instead of 2”?

I have bass traps for managing low end. High end was a big problem in the room. It is much better that it was. Even with the sub par foam.
 
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