Please help! Studio question.

I'm new. Hi all. I'm Josh. I'm from Albany, NY. Thanks for the great forum! I currently own a professional project studio. Here is my problem. It just cost too much to keep going. I'm thinking of moving it home. I have two rooms next to each other in my house. The one that could be the recording room is 11'5 x 13'5 with 8 ft ceilings. Is there any way to get a good drum sound in such a small space? Even though there would still be the rafters, would taking out the ceiling and utilizing the attic space help any? I am spoiled by my nice room. It's twice the size and the ceilings are 10ft. I get a good drum sound there. If it's not possible to get a good drum sound with the measurments I said, I can't see moving the studio home. Any advice would be great. Thanks for the help.

It is definitely going to sound different in the small room, no doubt. Due to the small size, you might need to go for a dead drum sound by putting deadening treatment around the kit and on the ceiling above the OHs, and then add back in some ambiance with a convolution reverb during mixdown. Removing the ceiling might help, but with a small room like that, it is going to be hard to get a great room sound. I would close mic everything, deaden what you can in the room, and then add it back in artificially. Not ideal, but it is what a lot of us deal with in low-ceilinged rooms. You will miss your nice tracking room for sure.

Thanks for the response. I do have a dead room in my current studio that was designed as the "drum room". It's a real flat acoustically designed dead room. Can I get my bedroom to sound as good as the dead room in my studio. I understand that I can't make a good live room with those specs. I guess I'll have to think about an addition later on. What do you think the smallest a live room should be to sound half way decent? Thanks

doublehelix wrote:

It is definitely going to sound different in the small room, no doubt. Due to the small size, you might need to go for a dead drum sound by putting deadening treatment around the kit and on the ceiling above the OHs, and then add back in some ambiance with a convolution reverb during mixdown. Removing the ceiling might help, but with a small room like that, it is going to be hard to get a great room sound. I would close mic everything, deaden what you can in the room, and then add it back in artificially. Not ideal, but it is what a lot of us deal with in low-ceilinged rooms. You will miss your nice tracking room for sure.