Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[vegas4ever]

Ok so the room is about 12/12/8 walls:sheetrock,  floor is wood, any adviced with a room that small??

-before I get wise comments, Changing to another room is not a option!! I have to do it there!

What do I need to watch out for?

I will be recording rock-blues-jazz Any particular set up for smaller room work the best??

[Steve Hudson]

Put some 2" 703 (or similar product) on the ceiling to keep reflections from the ceiling from messing with your OHs. It's like extending the ceiling acoustically. Also try micing the kit from the front instead of using OHs. Add bass traps (4" 703) in as many corners as possible to tighten up the low end.

[d gauss]

12x12x8 is small?  i wish i had that!

my drum room in a ny city brownstone basement is 5.5 ft tall! x 6ft x 7ft.  i can't stand up in it, but i've done 5 blues albums there. (one artist is up for a handy award this year)

for me, i use small drums, and as few mics as possible. glyn johns style works with low ceilings, or a single mono OH, then i just deal with it

[vegas4ever]

Thanks guys!

[rankus]

Carpeting the floor will help ... a small room needs to be little deader than large rooms... I find leaving the door open helps as well... Sometimes we stick a mic down the hall for that "big room sound"

[floodstage]

d gauss wrote on Wed, 07 February 2007 16:48

12x12x8 is small?  i wish i had that! my drum room in a ny city brownstone basement is 5.5 ft tall! x 6ft x 7ft.  i can't stand up in it, but i've done 5 blues albums there. (one artist is up for a handy award this year) for me, i use small drums, and as few mics as possible. glyn johns style works with low ceilings, or a single mono OH, then i just deal with it

Holy sh** that is one small room!
Bet it gets hot in there.

[James Duncan]

The "squareness" of the room could prove to be problematic as well (12x12). That type of symmetry is not usually optimal.

I would echo the comments from above, but also add that you should see if you can get some of those office dividers to reduce one of the dimensions by a foot or two. I know it sounds counter-intuitive to *reduce* the size of the room, but a square room will develop standing waves like nobody's business.

[d gauss]

floodstage wrote on Thu, 08 February 2007 14:24

d gauss wrote on Wed, 07 February 2007 16:48 12x12x8 is small?  i wish i had that! my drum room in a ny city brownstone basement is 5.5 ft tall! x 6ft x 7ft.  i can't stand up in it, but i've done 5 blues albums there. (one artist is up for a handy award this year) for me, i use small drums, and as few mics as possible. glyn johns style works with low ceilings, or a single mono OH, then i just deal with it Holy sh** that is one small room! Bet it gets hot in there.

well... its  DOES have AC at least.

[hrasco]

James Duncan wrote on Fri, 09 February 2007 03:50

The "squareness" of the room could prove to be problematic as well (12x12). That type of symmetry is not usually optimal. I would echo the comments from above, but also add that you should see if you can get some of those office dividers to reduce one of the dimensions by a foot or two. I know it sounds counter-intuitive to *reduce* the size of the room, but a square room will develop standing waves like nobody's business.

Great suggestion.

Put those office dividers at a slight angle to the wall to further reduce the "squareness" of the room.

[Asagaai]

[quote title=d gauss wrote on Wed, 07 February 2007 21:48]12x12x8 is small?  i wish i had that!

my drum room in a ny city brownstone basement is 5.5 ft tall! x 6ft x 7ft.  i can't stand up in it, but i've done 5 blues albums there. (one artist is up for a handy award this year)

Did you take the lease on that in between floor used on the set of "being John Malkovich"!

Love your thread-cool to see how people innovate and make silk purses from sows ears.

GJ
Newcastle/OZ

[danickstr]

That "being John M" room must have been someone's dream.  That is dream logic made into a film.

I would think you would benefit from getting the reflections to not flutter, by adding just about anything to the walls that make them not parallel.

There are a ton of solutions that you can make, and the acoustics forum would have more suggestions I am sure.

Masonite  3-d triangles could be made very cheaply and would at least bounce the stuff in different ways.

edit: and you could stuff them with batting...not bats, batting.

[Calfee Jones]

Maybe instead of carpeting the floor just use a thin rug under the drums. And make sure you treat the ceiling to make it dead. You will get reflections from the floor, but here's the idea - Whether you are in a room with high ceilings or a room with low ceilings you are the same distance from the floor. Both rooms will reflect the same way off the floor. So if you kill the ceiling you take away that difference between a high ceiling and a low ceiling. And the floor can still give you some good room sound.

[John Ivan]

I had a small drum room a long time ago .. It was all Concrete walls and floor. I ended up using 4" of Acoustic foam over the kit, not the whole ceiling , {it's what I had at the time. 703 is much better}, and I set office dividers in 2 of the corners, from bottom to top with pink wall insulation behind them.I left the other wall's and corners bare. I loved that room. It was very live but the nasty slap/flutter was killed off. The only rug was a small one for the kit so it wouldn't slide. .. Small room's can be nice.. I would also play things back through a PA speaker in there and mic the room for a reverb sound.

Ivan.............................

EDT: It's worth pointing out that before I treated the room, I used it for some drum sounds and they were, interesting?. They didn't suck. It's just that I was forced into a "Reverb" sound that didn't work for everything. After treatment {of the room I mean } I could get a deader sound...ie. the room was more versatile..