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Originally Posted by Brad McGowan  To address what Ethan and Glenn said... I think 20 panels would totally suck the life out of the room. Out of curiosity how many people reading this thread actually have 20 panels in their "live" rooms? Of all the pictures I ever see I notice very few. with any significant amount of treatment in their rooms. |
That certainly wouldn't happen with our panels. With a limp membrane across the face of the panels, you get a controlled amount of high and mid frequency reflection across the face of the traps, so you DON'T suck all the life out of the room, even with a large number of panels.
In that case, I agree with Ethan that 20 bass trap panels in that room would help a lot. And perhaps you will want to add some diffusors as well.
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I want my room to have character...just not bad sounding character.
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Well, that's the $20,000 issue, isn't it. ;-) You are not likely to get the kind of character that you can achieve in a room like the Studio B live room at Electrical. from the room you describe.
We're talking about so much more space and more surface for sound to bounce around and develop what can actually be considered "reverb". You're simply not going to get that kind of decay time in a room the size of yours, and certainly not with enough density to offer you a nice reverberant quality.
And I think I can take a pretty good guess that we're also talking about entirely different construction materials. Brick and concrete walls in and of themselves have completely different sonic qualities from wood and drywall construction.
At a certain point, you kinda have to look at what you have (room shape, size, construction materials, etc., and figure out what's the best way to get the best out of
that particular room, rather than trying to make the room into something it isn't. From there you may need to just go to a good reverb box to add the ambiance.
I'd really need to have more information about what you have in that room now, and what materials are used (pics?), but I really suspect that your best bet is going to be to go more in the direction of tight and dry, as long as you can do it without absorbing too much high and mid frequencies out (which is certainly do-able!).
Ethan's got 42 traps in his home theater room, and it's literally one of the nicest sounding rooms I've ever been in -- and I've played in literally hundreds of rooms the world over in the course of my career as a professional musician. I don't like "overly dead" or lifeless rooms either, but I would be happy to play/record my drums (or other instruments) in that room, and equally I'd be happy to mix in that room.
I've also got my drums completely sounded with MiniTraps, and I love the sound in there. Everything is clear, full and punchy, and I get to hear ALL of the wonderful subtleties from my gorgeous Istanbul cymbals -- nothing gets washed out.