Treating room for drums

[bannerj]

I have been tracking drums in my living room for awhile now with great results. It is roughly 20x27. 10ft ceilings. Hardwood floors and bare walls. I have been going for the bigger roomy sounds with very few mics. Next weekend I am working with a band that wants a cleaner more isolated sound. Of course this means more mics and closer techniques, but I have been trying to experiment with deadening the room with various blankets, pillows...and I have 12 2x4 2 inch thick pieces of industrial weight insulation too. Everything I have tried only makes the drums sound sick and dead.

I've seen some setups where they put foam and traps right up next to the kit?

Any suggestions?

I am using oktava MK012's on toms, 57 snare, D12 on Kick, 57 hh, 184s for OH, I am running through MP2NV, 2108 for kick, snare and OH, and the rest are through a Midas Venice board into an otari 5050. no compression.

[DirkB]

Well, you could try to place the absorption such that the direct mirrored reflections from bare walls are caught with the absorbent.

But if you already have a great sounding room, why change anything. Just record some close mic's on the drums and build your drums in the mix from there, i.e. have the overheads and rooms a little lower in volume. A tunnel for the kick so there is less boom from the kick in the room mic's could help. Or you could try buidling some gobo's with mic stands and heavy blankets around the kit to get a tighter kit sound and then use some more distant room mic's to get natural room which you of course can compress and blend in if you want to make the sound larger again.

Sounds like fun .

Good luck,
Dirk

[Ethan Winer]

> I have been trying to experiment with deadening the room with various blankets, pillows <

Those are to thin and lightweight to help except at high frequencies. I'd think the main problem in a large room like that is excess bass reverb and muddiness.

> I've seen some setups where they put foam and traps right up next to the kit? <

That works when you don't want to treat the entire room due to cost, or when you don't want the treatment to be permanent. But understand that all acoustic problems are caused by reflections, and reflections occur at the room boundaries. So it's usually best to put absorption on those surfaces rather than out in the room.

--Ethan

[natpub]

I'm sure this would take longer than you have, but if I had that setup, I would make 3 or 4 of these:


http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewto...ighlight=gobos


Then you can roll them around to suit the sound you want. Notice they have differnent properties using front or back also. The ridgid fiberglass is just 703.