Good shape for a drum booth?

[Caz]

My dearest Sl*tz,

Is there an ideal shape for a drum booth? I'm planning on building a drum booth inside my 2 car garage using a 2-leaf room-within-a-room design. I have about 10' W X 20' L X 9' H to work with, but I was planning on using the 1st Sepmeyer ratio as a guide of the booth size which would be about 10' W X 12' L X 8.75' H. Is it wise to use Sepmeyer as a guide or should I use the Golden Ratio or Louden's numbers? Of course parallel walls are a bad thing, but how would that relate to Sepmeyer or other ratios?

I will be treating the room with various RealTrap-like bass traps knowing that since the booth will be small it will be best dead...

Should the rigid ceiling of the booth be straight across or should it be peaked or hexagonal /--\? If peaked I would place an absorber to battle off a focusing effect...

Many thanks,
{csrm}

[bpape]

If you have a room that size just for a drum booth, it needn't be dead. It just needs to be under control. A bit of broadband, some taming of ceiling reflections, and some movable gobos should do the job.

You can also add some diffusion to make the space sound even bigger.

Bryan

[tINY]

Big is a good shape for a drum room.




-tINY

[Caz]

Bryan,

Yeah, I won't completely deaden the room... and I could always remove the traps for taste. However, what I really wanna know is, since I can make the booth any shape I want---I'd like to do something in the semi-ideal realm. I know control rooms are often 5 walls/pentagonal...what shape is smart for a drum booth?

thx
{csmr}

Originally Posted by bpape

If you have a room that size just for a drum booth, it needn't be dead. It just needs to be under control. A bit of broadband, some taming of ceiling reflections, and some movable gobos should do the job.

You can also add some diffusion to make the space sound even bigger.

Bryan

[Rick Sutton]

Originally Posted by Caz

I know control rooms are often 5 walls/pentagonal...what shape is smart for a drum booth?

thx
{csmr}

Mine is a 5 wall pentagon shape and it sounds quite nice. Floor is floating and ceiling slants from front to back.

[Smithcok]

This room isn't tiny at 10x20x9, but I would suggest that you might consider not building out slanted walls/ceiling. Yes, parallel walls are bad, but shrinking the room down in multiple dimensions could cause a lot worse problems in a small room. Flutter echo can be taken care of with absorptive panels (also possibly diffusion in the room) - and room modes won't go away with slanted walls, they'll just become harder to predict (plus as you shrink the room, the modes can become much more of a problem)

If it was my room, I'd prefer a really well treated rectilinear room of that size over a smaller room with slanted walls. Perhaps other people have different opinions, but I'd rather just keep the room big and pushing 2000 cubic feet than spending the time/effort/$$ to slant things around.

A lot also depends on the isolation you are going to need - any guesstimate on that?

[bpape]

While you need a good amount of splay in the walls to minimize bass issues, a moderate amount can help with mid and high frequency issues while still retaining good room volume.

Say you made one end 10 feet but at an angle and brought the 20' wall in say 18" over 20', that would make a nice difference.

You could also take the ceiling from 8' at one end to 9' at the other so you could easily use stereo far miking for a better image.

The initial dimensions give you approx 1800 cu ft. With these changes, (didn't do the exact math), you'd still likely end up with 1500 or more.

Bryan

[xaMdaM]

Ditto's on Bryan's thoughts....

Take any one corner and splay the walls by even 1 degree, into that corner.

You can take the cavity/space created by the angles, and fill them with mineral wool or 703. Take some lumber and place random widths over it for a pseudo Helmholtz effect.

I would put the framing up, fill the cavity with 703 and cover the while thing with IFR fabric. Then, I would get a freq response curve of the room.

You would then start to hone in on what problem frequencies you might have and what the Helmholtz pattern would be to tame those particular frequencies.

The slats would give you back some reflectivity that the 703 would otherwise be eating up.

[tINY]

Big is a good shape. Don't make it smaller by adding walls (unless you desparately need isolation).

Curved panel diffusors and 2" rockwool go a long way...



-tINY

[Caz]

tINY

I understand where you are coming from, but I am looking to keep the room size small. I am looking forward to experimenting with tight, focused drums that I can compress to hell without worrying about fighting off room sounds (especially since the room ain't big or tall to begin with). So shape, not size, is what I was asking about, but I read something on John Sayers site that has made a lot of sense to me---since the room will be small & basically dead the shape doesn't matter much.

[tINY]

Yes - but big and dead is even better...

I think you have the idea now - lots of rockwool....




-tINY