Small Live Drum Room?

[Slap Back]

I'm looking for feedback from anyone who has experience with small, extremely live rooms (like a tiled room) for drum tracking.

I'm debating this idea after spending several years in my small dead-ish drum room getting somewhat dry, lifeless sounds.

I'd be willing to take odd room resonance in exchange for some liveliness!

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Slap Back

I'm looking for feedback from anyone who has experience with small, extremely live rooms (like a tiled room) for drum tracking.

I'm debating this idea after spending several years in my small dead-ish drum room getting somewhat dry, lifeless sounds.

I'd be willing to take odd room resonance in exchance for some liveliness!

Well if you wanted to do something like that I would start with bass trapping and maybe a few panels on the ceiling. I will say that side walls can get pretty close to the source, so comb filtering really becomes a big problem. I myself don't really like that small room sound, but maybe it is good as a effect at times. How small are we talking here?

Glenn

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Slap Back

I'd be willing to take odd room resonance in exchance for some liveliness!

I'm with Glenn. Small-room ambience is almost always bad ambience. Much better IMO to record in a dead room and add ambience later with a good reverb.

--Ethan

[Slap Back]

Originally Posted by Glenn Kuras

Well if you wanted to do something like that I would start with bass trapping and maybe a few panels on the ceiling. I will say that side walls can get pretty close to the source, so comb filtering really becomes a big problem. I myself don't really like that small room sound, but maybe it is good as a effect at times. How small are we talking here?

Glenn

WxLxH = 13'x14'x7'-6"

You can hear the room in it's current state here Neve 1084 Pre Vs. Fireface800 Pre / Neumann KM184 Vs. MXL V6

[brianwflood]

Ethan is 100% right... make your first priority getting rid of small-room early reflections.

I recorded my bands drummer on nice-sounding ludwig kit in a crappy room. On a $0 budget I losely draped fluffy blankets above and in front of the kit. This is definitely a temporary solution, but it's a good start. We didn't know about bass traps at the time, but looking back, we were okay with them.

I would say... embrace your limitations and go for that close-mike drum sound ?

[brianwflood]

Ethan is 100% right... make your first priority getting rid of small-room early reflections.

I recorded my bands drummer on nice-sounding ludwig kit in a crappy room. On a $0 budget I losely draped fluffy blankets above and in front of the kit. This is definitely a temporary solution, but it's a good start. We didn't know about bass traps at the time, but looking back, we were okay with them.

I would say... embrace your limitations and go for that close-mike drum sound ?

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by brianwflood

Ethan is 100% right... make your first priority getting rid of small-room early reflections.

I recorded my bands drummer on nice-sounding ludwig kit in a crappy room. On a $0 budget I losely draped fluffy blankets above and in front of the kit. This is definitely a temporary solution, but it's a good start. We didn't know about bass traps at the time, but looking back, we were okay with them.

I would say... embrace your limitations and go for that close-mike drum sound ?

Holy crap this thread is over a year old. How did you find it?

[brianwflood]

Yikes, sorry for the double post.

[666666]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

I'm with Glenn. Small-room ambience is almost always bad ambience. Much better IMO to record in a dead room and add ambience later with a good reverb. --Ethan

Absolutely!

One very important thing to consider... close reflections / standing waves can make drum tuning nearly impossible. You'll get all kinds of weird harmonic ringing in the heads that will be impossible to get rid of without over-muffling the heads. So regardless of the sound of the small room itself, you'll likely never get the drums sounding good on their own in a small live room anyway.

And... oh yeah, a small live room will make for tons of extra bleed into all drum mics... reduces effective isolation per track. And it won't be "good bleed" that you hear some folks talk about, it'll be "bad bleed", the type that will make a good drum mix nearly impossible.

Add good broadband bass traps to the room, plenty of them, this way you can achieve a really good, rich, tight drum sound with minimal bleed... then add your "room sound" with a top-notch outboard reverb later. Or you can even play back the recorded dry drums into an actual nice room and record that.

[biggator6]

Is 13'x14' really that small of a drum room? I know it's small enough to have issues, but when I think 'small' - I'm thinking '8x8'.

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by biggator6

Is 13'x14' really that small of a drum room? I know it's small enough to have issues, but when I think 'small' - I'm thinking '8x8'.

13x14 is still pretty small.

[Mixbuster]

I have a drum room with the dimentions of 8 - 10', I dont know the exact dimentions, check out my post here: Construction of a small drum booth.

Ps: The sample included was recorded with a shitty tuned drum kit, I can post a new sample here if needed!

Cheers!

[Slap Back]

Tried it. 10x12x7 No absorbtion. Heres a clip...pardon the playing...