How to make a small iso-tracking room actually sound good?

[digi001]

Any success stories here?

Learning a lesson from my control room...if you seal it up with double 5/8 drywall and green glue your isolation is great, but the room sounds like crap because everything is reflected inwards. Therefore I want to take a different approach.
In the process of brainstorming now. The room will be about 10 by 7 or so with 8 foot ceiling (going down to 7 foot).

I would like to use it for vocals, guitar amps, bass amps, and drums.

A few things to quickly mention......
I will be using primarily all of my own equipment. Most of it from the 60/70's time frame. Drums will be a small old vintage Ludwig.
Music is soul/jazz/indie style.
No 4x10 Hartke bass cabs. No pearl 24 inch kick drums. No Marshall 4x12s.
I probably wont have an amp in there over 25-30 watts.
I don't record metal or heavy rock.

I think I hate the sound of drywall...yet everyone recommends it. My gut approach was to make the inner walls somewhat breathable with a plywood, then make the outer walls 5/8 type x, maybe even double 5/8s.

The design is a room inside room. I plan to do staggered stud to get some low frequency isolation, but also just get a good thickness in the wall for lots of absorption material. I would like to essentially use the walls as a giant bass trap.... rather than have to build so many bass traps inside the room. Is this a feasible strategy?

It is a room inside room and I just need to get around 25-30 STC or so.....but I need this to actually include the low end ie kick drum. If I can slightly hear mids and highs just outside of the room it isn't an issue as much as upstairs or next door hearing a kick drum.

Any suggestions while I brainstorm ideas for this design?

[digi001]

Just to clarify...by good sounding room I dont actually mean a good 'room sound' where you hear the reflections of the room. (I know that is basically impossible in a small room)

But I'm more so just looking for a nice balanced dry 70's sound ISO-room where I can also track dry 70's style drums. So many thrown together small diy rooms have that god awful soul crushing drywall+foam that resonates and comb filters and makes me want to quit music all together vibe. Just trying to avoid that.

[Soundman2020]

There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to do to assure getting as many responses as possible.
The announcement leads to this post (click here). Actually, several people on this forum who are experts will most likely not reply if you don't do what is written in that post. Many others who are very helpful, will probably not reply out of respect for the moderators' wishes.

if you seal it up with double 5/8 drywall and green glue your isolation is great, but the room sounds like crap because everything is reflected inwards.

Correct. That is, indeed, how it works. And also how it is supposed to work. And the only way it can work!

My gut approach was to make the inner walls somewhat breathable with a plywood,

Why would plywood be more "breathable" than drywall? They are both hard, solid, massive panels, and since plywood is a bit less dense than plywood, either you will need a lot more plywood (much thicker) to get the same isolation, or you'd have to live with less isolation. But if you are OK with less isolation, then it would be cheaper to just use thinner drywall, and end up with the same final outcome! You can't beat the laws of physics by trying to substitute one material for another. You'll still have to compensate, and you'll always end up in the same place.

then make the outer walls 5/8 type x, maybe even double 5/8s.

That would probably be a bad idea! Since the outer walls of a studio are usually the outer walls of the building, and since drywall doesn't hold up too well when soaked by rain, your studio won't last very long if you make the outer walls from drywall...

The design is a room inside room. I plan to do staggered stud to get some low frequency isolation,

Why? Staggered studs has no effect on low frequency isolation. The only ways to improve low frequency isolation are: 1) increase the mass on both leaves, or 2) increase the depth of the cavity between the leaves, or 3) both. Using one type of stud or another makes little difference (except perhaps with rigidity).

but also just get a good thickness in the wall for lots of absorption material.

I'm still not following: The reason for having a larger cavity depth in a two-leaf MSM wall is to bring down the MSM resonant frequency, which improves overall isolation. A larger depth will also allow you to have more insulation, yes, but that's a secondary benefit, not the primary reason for doing it. The purpose of the insulation is to damp the resonances going on inside the wall, thus improving isolation.

I would like to essentially use the walls as a giant bass trap.... rather than have to build so many bass traps inside the room. Is this a feasible strategy?

Only if you do not want any isolation! Think it through: If you do not keep the sound inside the room, then it will leave the room. It's that simple. Sound leaving the room means it goes outside, and annoys the family and the neighbors, who then call the cops....

You cannot absorb that sound with insulation: that's not how it works. It's a common myth, but is myth nevertheless. Porous absorption cannot stop sound getting through. Simple illustration: In your kitchen, you can use a sponge to mop up water that splashed into places where you did not want it. Good. Sponges are good at soaking up water like that. But if you hold that same sponge across the end of your tap and turn the water on, it will let the water flow right through and out the other side: it will NOT stop the water at all! Insulation works in a similar way: It will not prevent sound from "flowing" through to the other side. It will stop the resonances INSIDE the wall, though! Which is equivalent to "mopping up water that spilled".

You are basing your solution in incorrect concepts.

It is a room inside room and I just need to get around 25-30 STC or so.....

So you need LESS isolation than a normal house wall gives you? That's strange... you say you want to play drums in there, and you do not want to annoy the neighbors, but you don't even want as much insulation as an average house wall? Ummm..... Not making much sense...

but I need this to actually include the low end ie kick drum.

Good luck with that! Getting 30 dB of isolation in the bottom end of the spectrum is a major task! Why do you need so much?

Also, you are very literally asking for the impossible. You want STC-30 at the fundamental frequency of the kick drum, but STC does not even measure that frequency! STC only goes down to 125 Hz, and completely leaves out the bottom two and a half octaves. The fundamental of a kick drum is at least one octave below the bottom end of what STC measures. That's sort of like going to an airline and telling them you want a ticket to the moon: They'll tell you that the don't fly to the moon: it is out of reach. Just like the fundamental frequency of a kick drum is out of reach for STC measurement. STC does not go that far. In fact, STC is pretty useless for judging the isolation of studio walls in any case! It is far better to just look at the TL curves, or the isolation in decibels.

If I can slightly hear mids and highs just outside of the room it isn't an issue as much as upstairs or next door hearing a kick drum.

That would be an impossible situation. It appears that you don't have a good grasp of how isolation works, and how sound propagates, so lets go over that.

Here's a graph of how a typical house wall will isolate, at STC-34 (which is already ten times better than what you want):

IR-761--page-23--STC-34.jpg

That's the typical curve shape that you will always see, for all isolation systems: It starts low down on the left (poor isolation at low frequencies) and slopes upwards to the right (good isolation at high frequencies). That's the way the curve ALWAYS looks, with very few exceptions! It is ALWAYS lower on the left and ALWAYS higher on the right, because of the laws of physics. The only thing that changes for higher isolation, is that the curve moves over a bit, and moves up a bit, as below.

Here's the graph for a wall that isolates to STC-66, which is about one thousand times better than the one above (and ten thousand times better than the wall you want to build):

IR-761--page-351--STC-66.jpg

As you can see, the curve is pretty much the same shape, even though this wall is isolating one thousand times more than the other. It still isolates poorly for low frequencies (although it is a bit better), but it does a much better job at high frequencies.

Now take a close look at the numbers on that graph: A kick drum is often tuned somewhere in the range 50 to 90 Hz. At those frequencies, even the fantastic wall is only giving you about 20-something dB of isolation. And the not-so-good wall is actually about the same! Not a lot of difference in the low end.

In other words, a wall that isolates well in the lows, will isolate MUCH better in the highs, always. I have never found any indication that there is such a thing as a wall that isolates really well at low frequencies, but poorly at high frequencies. There might be, but it would have to be one really strange wall, built from some very unusual materials, and tuned in highly unconventional ways!

So no, there is no wall that will allow you to "slightly hear mids and highs just outside of the room" while also blocking 30 dB of kick drum. You are asking for something the defies the laws of physics.

And the wall you want to build, rated STC-25, would only isolate about one tenth the level of the worst wall above, which is STC-34...

(By the way, in both of those graphs the purple line shows the actual STC curve. From that, you can clearly see that STC does not even take into account anything below 125 Hz, so there's no way you could even measure if a wall will give you "STC-30 at 80 Hz". That's a meaningless statement)

Any suggestions while I brainstorm ideas for this design?

I would suggest that you read the Wyle Report from 1973, and also "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest, to get an understanding of how acoustics works. Then start brainstorming your wall design.

I would like to essentially use the walls as a giant bass trap.... rather than have to build so many bass traps inside the room.

It's a tracking room, not a control room, so I'm not sure why you would need "so many bass traps" inside it. You will need some, yes: that goes without saying. But you don't need to be as intense about it as in a control room. If you have too much unbalanced low frequency absorption in the room, then you'll be killing the highs as well! Rather, you should have enough bass trapping to control the low end nicely, but then balance it with suitable high frequency reflection and diffusion, assuming that the room is large enough to do that. In small rooms, all bets are off.

But I'm more so just looking for a nice balanced dry 70's sound ISO-room where I can also track dry 70's style drums.

Then you are going to need a room that is about the same size as a typical live room in a 70's style studio. In other words, a big room with scarce treatment. In the 70's, studios were big and had high ceilings, so drums sound good in them. You cannot get a natural large room sound in a small room. That's impossible.

So many thrown together small diy rooms have that god awful soul crushing drywall+foam

You seem to be confusing the issue here too. That typical room sound is NOT due to the drywall and foam: it is due the room size! Small rooms sound bad, and there is NOTHING that you can do about that. It's written in stone, deeply engraved in the laws of physics and acoustics. If you want a large room sound, then you need a large room, plain and simple. End of story. A small room will always sound like a small room simply because the Schroeder frequency is unavoidably high due to the small dimensions. If you try to force it down lower by adding treatment, you kill the high end but still don't recover the low end, because small rooms just do not have modal support in the low end, period. You cannot force a room to have more modes than the dimensions of the room allow. The modal response of the room is governed by one single thing: dimensions. If you want a room that sounds better for drums because it has more modal support in the low end, the ONLY way of doing that is to make the room bigger so that it can support more modes. The more modes you want, the bigger the room has to be. There is no relationship here between the building materials and the sound of the room: the "small boxy dull lifeless" sound of small rooms is NOT due to how they are built, or even how they are treated: it is simply due to the size. Drums will NEVER sound good in a small room with a low ceiling, regardless of how you build the room. You could build it entirely from hardened steel plate or entirely from marshmallows, and in both cases the boxy sound would still be there.

drywall+foam that resonates and comb filters

Drywall and foam by themselves do not resonate, nor cause comb filtering. Comb filtering is caused by phase cancellation, and thus requires the interaction of a wave with a reflected, refracted, or time delayed copy of itself. You will get comb filtering if you place a mic, speaker, or instrument too close to a drywall surface, yes, but that's not the drywall's fault! You would get the exact same comb filtering if the wall were made of plywood, MDF, OSB, brick, glass, or any other material. The reason you get comb filtering is because YOU placed the mic, speaker or instrument too close to the surface. YOU are at fault, not the wall. If you move the mic/instrument/speaker far enough away, then the comb filtering will disappear. And this is why I say that it is impossible to get a good drum sound with a low ceiling: the overhead mics will ALWAYS be too close to the ceiling, for all ceilings less than about 10 or 12 feet high. Anything less than that (such as the common 7' or 8' ceiling in typical home studios) and it is impossible to get the overheads far enough away from the ceiling. Hence, lousy drum sound in rooms with low ceilings, independent of the building materials or treatment. If you have your overheads three feet above the crash and ride, then they will be about one foot from the ceiling, and hence you will have a large phase cancellation dip at around 160 Hz, which is the start of the comb filter that goes all the way up the scale, and sucks the life out of the overhead sound. There is NOTHING you can do about that, except to get a higher ceiling. Changing the ceiling from drywall to plywood would have no effect at all. The problem is not the building material; it is the distance.

Just trying to avoid that.

Then build a bigger room! That's the only solution, if you want a natural mic drum sound. A distant second solution is to close-mic the entire kit in a dead room, and add the ambience in the mix, but that's not very satisfying for most engineers and producers. It's fine for some contemporary drum sounds, but no use for 70's style rock band drums.

The room will be about 10 by 7 or so with 8 foot ceiling (going down to 7 foot).

If you build the room that size, then it WILL sound small, boxy, dull, lifeless, etc. There is nothing at all you can do to make it sound any other way, because it has no modal support below 56 Hz, and even with minimal treatment the Schroeder frequency is going to be well over 180 Hz. Your toms, kick, and probably the snare are not going to have any natural room reverb, because none exists for a room that size. There are only a very few sparse individual modes scattered around the low end (a total of just 5 modes below 100 Hz!), so it is physically impossible to have low-end ambient room sound happening. There is no statistical reverberant field in such a small room, and therefore only ugly sound.

The solution is not to change the building materials: the solution is to build a bigger room.


- Stuart -

[digi001]

Wow, Soundman2020 thank you for the detailed reply! It means a lot you took the time to share your info with me.
However at the same time, I think sometimes it is users like you that might fall on the hairy edge of being too absolute and 'matter of fact' that lead to others not perusing other options than the ones tried and tested in general soundproofing guidelines.
As much as experience as you may have in both the practical and theoretical sense, I will NOT be considering all the advice that you have given me.

[digi001]

Why don't we start the conversation with an example. This will give some context to what I am trying to achieve.
I feel like this is always the downfall of these forums. We probably have completely different expectations of the design.

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Take a look at United Recording Studios in LA. Look on their website at the floor plan of Studio B. Notice the Iso-room in the middle/bottom with 3 windows.
http://www.unitedrecordingstudios.com/studio-b

I know for a fact that drums for the latest album by 'Father John Misty' called 'Pure Comedy' were recorded in this small room (around 60 square feet floor plan). You can see this behind the scenes if you watch their short film documentary they did for 'Pure Comedy'. There is a very short clip of the drums in the iso-booth.
https://youtu.be/cejjqC1oyQM

Listen to the album and hear the 70's dry drums in action. This is what I am going for and would hope to at least achieve. Yes I understand my drums wont sound like 'Led Zeppelin When the Levee Breaks' This is clear for me.

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I understand the ceiling is probably pretty high (not sure, maybe someone here who has been in that studio can comment), but can I approximate/simulate that with 12 inches of insulation in the ceiling, would be a question?

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Ignoring isolation for the moment, what would be the way to achieve this room sound? (Basically dead, yet not boxy)

[digi001]

Floorplan of Studio B is on that page if you scroll down.

Or just go here
http://www.unitedrecordingstudios.com/s ... PLAN_0.pdf

Also....by the way, just for reference. I am not really even a fan of 'Father John Misty'. I couldn't tell you any of his albums or songs. I just watched the documentary because it had behind the scenes of a classic studio. But I do appreciate the drums sounds. They sound fine to me.

[Soundman2020]

I will NOT be considering all the advice that you have given me.

Seeing that you flat refuse to even bother obeying the forum rules, despite being instructed to do so multiple times, I can't say I'm surprised by your attitude!

And no, you CANNOT beat the laws of physics by wishful thinking, hoping, guessing, or chanting magical incantations. Small rooms will ALWAYS sound small, simply because they are small. This is not an opinion: it is simple fact. Just because you don't want to accept it will not change it.

I think sometimes it is users like you that might fall on the hairy edge of being too absolute and 'matter of fact'

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with me being a "user" (I'm not: I'm a studio designer), nor with "being too absolute" or "matter of fact": It has to do with actually understanding the laws of physics, as they apply to sound waves. You cannot make a small room sound non-small just by hoping or wanting it to be possible, any more than you can make yourself float off the planet by hoping or wishing that the force of gravity will stop acting on you. Being ignorant of the science of acoustics will not help you make a small room sound big. But learning about acoustics will certainly help you understand why it is not possible. I'm not using the word "ignorance" in a pejorative sense here: I merely use it in the sense of lacking specific and sufficient knowledge. I myself am "ignorant" of many things: for example, I know practically nothing about fishing, except what I see in pictures and videos. And since I recognize that ignorance, if I do want to go fishing for trout in my bathtub, I would ask experts about that, and learn how to do it right. And if the experts tell me that my planned method for trout fishing in a bathtub won't work, then I'll accept that they do know what they are talking about, and I wont' bother trying it. I will not try to convince them that you actually can fish for trout in a bathtub if you only use the right bait, and paint the tub the right color, and put the right water in it. Rather, I'd do some research on trout, on their habits, and their habitat, and on fishing, and I'd learn that in fact it really IS impossible to catch trout in a bathtub. I'd learn that they don't survive in small bodies of stagnant water, and you can only catch them in large bodies of water, such as rivers and lakes. So I would solve my problem of ignorance by learning about it. I'd suggest that you do the same.

lead to others not perusing other options than the ones tried and tested in general soundproofing guidelines.

There is no point in perusing options that are blatantly impossible. The laws of physics, as they apply to sound, are known to be correct, through centuries of experiment and testing.

But since you seem to disagree with those laws, and are positive you can prove them wrong, here's one that you can play around with (as you fish for trout in your bathtub):

TL(dB)= 20log(M) + 20log(f) -47.2

M is surface density, and
f is frequency

It is the simplest, most basic, most fundamental law of physics regarding "soundproofing", and explains the real-world graphs I showed you yesterday, which you ignorantly discarded as being irrelevant, and not applying to you. This equation is often referred to as "Mass Law", since it accurately describes the amount of isolation that you WILL get from any single-leaf barrier. Please note: It does not describe my opinion on how much isolation you will get, as you claim, nor does it describe your belief on how much isolation you think you can get: It describes the actual amount of isolation that you WILL get. Notice that it clearly predicts that isolation will ALWAYS be poor for low frequencies, and much better for high frequencies. Notice that it predicts a rise in isolation of 6 dB for every doubling of frequency for any given mass, and also a rise of 6 dB in isolation for every doubling of mass for any give frequency. This is obvious from the equation itself. Notice that the graphs I gave you reflect what is predicted by this equation. Those graphs were taken from real-world test of real walls, in a real laboratory. They are just two of several hundred such graphs form test performed on several hundred real walls, and all the graphs show the same thing, agreeing with this theoretical equation.

But considering that you apparently do not believe that this law is true, please go ahead and demonstrate what part of it is wrong. It's a simple equation, and can be tested simply, so I'd invite you to test a large number of possible single-leaf barriers, made from whatever materials you can think of, and show us the results of your tests, especially those results that significantly contradict this established, proven, law.

Good luck with that! I mean that sincerely, since all acousticians everywhere would absolutely LOVE to have a new magical material that defies Mass Law, and provides more isolation than it predicts. If you really can produce such a material, you'll be rich overnight, and praised by all studio builders everywhere. So sincerely, I do wish you luck with your experimentation! But I'm certainly not holding my breath, since I understand the principles of physics on which this equation is based, and why it works, every time. And why you will undoubtedly fail in your attempt to prove it wrong.


Now, since you also feel that Schroeder, Bonello and others are totally wrong in their extensive work on modal distribution and the manner in which that effects the overall sound of a room across the entire spectrum (acoustic response and psycho-acoustic response), please do go also ahead and show where they went wrong, and the manner in which you think their equations and deductions should be modified to reflect your new findings.

Most importantly, please show how it is possible to achieve close modal spacing and a high number of modes below 50 Hz, in a room whose largest dimension is less than 10 feet or so.

Since it is well recognized that this is the key factor in defining how a room sounds, I'd be fascinated to see how you plan on creating low frequency standing waves between walls that are too close together to fit in a full wavelength between them for that frequency. Since this will likely require an act of God to produce, please instruct us on how you intend to convince God to suspend the laws of physics, so that this can work. That would be great, actually, as it would also allow me to put 500 gallons of fuel in my car, even though the tank only holds 15 gallons.... I'd also be able to put 50 people inside my car, even though it can only hold seven, and I'd be able to park my car inside my letter box, even though it is way too big to fit. So convincing God to suspend the laws that prevent things from fitting into spaces that are smaller than their dimensions (such as large sound waves in a small room) would be wonderful all around! Since you are convinced that this is possible, I'd LOVE to see you accomplish it! Or if you can't convince God to do this, then perhaps you can call Dr. Who, since he seems to have solved the problem of fitting large things inside impossibly small spaces, with his Tardis.

Moving on: since your basic issue is that you seem to think that small rooms can in fact be made to sound like large ones, you will probably want to go all the way back to the work done by Sabine, and show why his equation is not actually valid any more:

RT60 = 0.16 x V / A

Where:
RT60 = the time taken for a sound in the room to decay by 60 dB (to one millionth of its original intensity)
V = the cubic volume of the room in cubic meters,
A = the amount of perfect absorption in the room, in sabins (where 1 sabin = one square meter of "open hole in the wall")

This is the equation that you must prove wrong. You MUST reject it, totally and completely, since it is the only thing preventing you from making your small room sound big! This equation is the barrier to you being able to build a small room that sounds large, so you will have to find a way to negate it.

You'll note that the equation is stunningly simple, so it should be dead easy to prove it wrong. All you have to do is to build a room where V is small (the volume of the room), and A is large (plenty of absorption to make the room dead, as you say), yet the RT60 time is also large, in the range of 2 to 3 seconds, perhaps.

Go ahead. Please do plug in the values for your room, and show how your room breaks this equation, and proves it wrong.

When you are done proving all those laws wrong (and convincing God that you are right), then there's plenty more to keep you busy.

I feel like this is always the downfall of these forums. We probably have completely different expectations of the design.

That's true, actually! I agree with you 100%. My expectation are based on facts, science, physics, experiment, and how things really work. Your expectations are based on fantasy, wishing, hoping, dreaming, and ignorance. But that won't be the downfall of this forum. It will be the downfall of your success in making a small room sound like a large one.

I know for a fact that drums for the latest album by 'Father John Misty' called 'Pure Comedy' were recorded in this small room (around 60 square feet floor plan). You can see this behind the scenes if you watch their short film documentary they did for 'Pure Comedy'. There is a very short clip of the drums in the iso-booth

You "know this for a fact" because you were there? You were the recording engineer? You set up the drums and mics yourself, then recorded, mixed, and mastered them, personally? Or you "know" this because you saw a music video clip of drums in that booth, and assumed that's how they actually recorded the drums? Please clarify.

Because if it's based on the video, then you should also be attempting to convince us that the soundtrack was recorded to cassette, since that's what the video shows:

father.misty--pure.comedy-1..44.jpg

The video also shows several houses and cars on fire in and around Los Angeles (apparently), so I guess that must have happened for real too?

father.misty--pure.comedy-3..38.jpg

Not only that, but the grand piano was obviously recorded with a single SM-57 placed over the keyboard! Because that's what the video shows...

father.misty--pure.comedy-5..23.jpg

And they even used the same mic setup for the bass guitar! (with appropriate lyrics...):

father.misty--pure.comedy-5..29.jpg

Amazing! I never realized an SM-57 would work so well on bass...

But help me out here: throughout the video, they show the lead singer playing guitar and singing in that tiny booth, yet you say they also have the drums in there at the same time? How come we can't see the drums in that clip where he's singing and playing guitar? How did they keep the drum bleed out of the vocal mic?

Yet at 9:36, the drummer is actually drumming in the control room, while the lead singer is playing the guitar in there too!

father.misty--pure.comedy-9..36.jpg

While at the same time as all that, the sax, trombone, and french horn at around 13:10 make no sound at all, even though they are clearly being played hard in the video!

And at 13:22, the very "clip of the drums in the small booth" that you are referring to, the drum hits are not even synchronized with the sound!

Ooops!

Not to mention the clip at 20 minutes in, which clearly shows the shattered window of the control room... So since it's in the video, I'm certain the studio allowed them to do that too, right? They just said "Sure! go ahead and smash our carefully designed and engineered, very expensive thick laminated glass windows for your video! We don't care! No problem!". Yup. That happened. It must have, because it's in the video:

father.misty--pure.comedy-20..03.jpg

Listen to the album and hear the 70's dry drums in action.

Which I'm pretty darn sure were NOT tracked in that room! If I had to guess, I would say that the drums were actually tracked in this room:

Studio_B_TOP.jpg

... which features "23’ high ceilings" and "is large enough to hold a 40 piece orchestra". That's what it sounds like to me.

It is also billed this way: "the live room in Studio B is incredibly flexible and is known as one of the best drum tracking rooms in the world".

I'm just wondering why a large production for an important album would spend big bucks to rent the studio that has "the best drum tracking room in the world", then track the drums in the vocal booth instead... That's a bit hard to understand.... Maybe you can explain that?

This is what I am going for and would hope to at least achieve.

You can hope all you want, but you wont achieve that in a small room with a low ceiling, unless you close mic everything, kill the room acoustics entirely, and fake the ambience in the mix.

I understand the ceiling is probably pretty high ... but can I approximate/simulate that with 12 inches of insulation in the ceiling, would be a question?

Like I said, you certainly can kill the natural room acoustics with thick, abundant treatment, then close mic your drums and fake the ambient room sound in the mix, with reverb, effects, plug-ins, dynamics, EQ, and all the usual tricks that engineers use when they don't like the natural sound that was picked up by the mics, and have to change it to make it sound good. So yes, you can do that if you want to get big-room drum sounds out of a small room. But it won't be a natural, real big-room drum sound: it will be fake.

what would be the way to achieve this room sound? (Basically dead, yet not boxy)

I've already explained that a few times: the way to achieve that sound is to record the drums in a large room that is suitably treated, such as the "best tracking room in the world" shown on the website for the studio where the drums were recorded. You CANNOT get rid of the boxy sound of a small room with acoustic treatment, in the same way that you CANNOT make spam in a can taste like best fillet steak. If you want the taste of best fillet steak, then you have to actually buy best fillet steak, and cook it suitably to bring out the flavor of best fillet steak. If all you have is spam in a can, then it's only ever going to test like spam in a can! You might be able to improve the flavor a bit by adding abundant condiments, but it would still be fake. Just like you can make close-mic'd drums sound like they are in a big room with abundant plugins... but it would still be fake.

So if you want that sound, you have two options: You can either build a bigger room, or you can kill the small room totally, close mic the kit, and fake it in the mix. There are no other choices.

But I do appreciate the drums sounds. They sound fine to me.

They sound fine to me too, but they clearly and obviously were not recorded in that room. It's not a "making of" video, nor is it a documetary: it's a music video, with a whole bunch of other fake scenes that did not happen in real life. CGI is a wonderful thing, but is no more real than the "room" created by an effects box, or this six foot rainbow trout that I fished out of my bathtub yesterday...

large-rainbow-trout-2-SML.jpg

- Stuart -

[digi001]

You seem to obviously be very passionate about this topic.... and certainly don't want to start a war with you.
(However, sorry to say, I'm still not going to take your advice) ......If any others could comment that would be really helpful for me.

Soundman2020 you can probably teach me many things on the topic of acoustics, but I don't think you are focused on my question or understand what I am saying. You consistently say 'making a small room sound big'.... but that is not what I am trying to do.

[digi001]

Tillman wrote the majority of Pure Comedy throughout 2015 and recorded all the basic tracking and vocals live to tape (in no more than two takes each) at United Studios (fka the legendary Ocean Way Studios, favored by Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys) in Los Angeles March 2016. Album highlights include the title track alongside standouts “Leaving LA,” “Total Entertainment Forever,” “Ballad of the Dying Man,” “When The God Of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell To Pay” and “Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before The Revolution”.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: Tillman and Grant James (“Funtimes in Babylon,” “I Love You, Honeybear”) also co-directed Pure Comedy: The Film. Pure Comedy is a gorgeously rendered black & white document of the live tracking, as well as a surreal look into Tillman’s writing process. A six-person crew, complete with cranes in the tracking rooms, captured every moment of the recording, giving the viewer intimate audience to actual album takes, including the one and only 2:00am performance of the 13-minute “Leaving LA.” It also features the only known recording of Tillman’s love ballad to his sound engineer Trevor Spencer. The 30-minute film is available for viewing now at Father John Misty’s new website.

[digi001]

If we can't agree on the starting point of what is even possible.... I guess this conversation we are having isn't worth it.

Any others out there care to comment/contribute, besides Soundman2020?

[digi001]

Oh and for the record.......

No, I do not believe the following.
-The album was recorded to cassette (but they probably used it for an effect on something)
-The piano was mic-ed with a single SM57 (it's feet away and probably used for a vocal cue)
-The control room glass was shattered (that was part of the CGI at the end showing the world ending)

I do believe the following:
-The drums were recorded in the ISO-room I mentioned by the band to get a dry 70's sound

[Soundman2020]

You consistently say 'making a small room sound big'.... but that is not what I am trying to do.

Yes it is: You want a small room to not sound "boxy", and to sound good for tracking drums. That's what you keep on saying. You might not realize it yet, but that undoubtedly implies that you want a small room to sound like a large room.

Let me put it in simple visual terms. Here is the predicted modal response (and therefore the acoustic "signature") of the room you want to build:

modal-prediction-10-x-7-x-7-room-2.jpg

And here's the predicted modal response for the Studio B live room:

modal-prediction-45-x-35-x-23-room-2.jpg

The Studio B room has hundreds of available modes below 100 Hz. Your room has a grand total of 3 modes below one hundred Hertz (and only 16 in the entire low end!)

Please explain to me how you plan to create a reverberant field in your room for frequencies below 100 Hz, when the room is physically incapable of supporting any reverberant field below 100 Hz. I'd love to hear your plan for that. In fact, your room is physically incapable of doing that below 416 Hz! In other words, your room WILL sound boxy, and dead, at ALL frequencies below 416 Hz. Acoustic fact. It must be that way, because the room does not support any modal field lower than that. The walls are too close together to allow it. The fundamental frequencies of drums are ALL below that threshold: kick, toms, and snare are below that, ranging down to around 50 Hz or so. So there is NOTHING you can do to that room to make it reverberant at the frequencies where it would need to be reverberant in order to make drums sound good.

In contrast, the Studio B room has 721 modes below 200 Hz, and has a reverberant field all the way down to 44 Hz. Drums sound good in there, because the room has more than enough reverberant field to provide support for ALL frequencies produced by drums, even if they adjust the acoustic treatment so the room sounds dry! Take careful note of that last part. They have variable treatment in there, and they can adjust the overall room sound to be dry, but the modal support is still there. In your room, it does not have modal support regardless of how you treat it. Plain hard cold truth.

Note that the volume of the Studio B room is seventy three times greater than the volume of your room: 36,000 cubic feet, vs. 490 cubic feet.

That's why drums will sound good, airy, large, bright, deep, vibrant, clean, etc. when played in the Studio B room, while they will ALWAYS sound boxy when played in your room.

Studio B has modal support all the way down to the bottom end of the audible spectrum. Your room has not modal support at all in the bottom two octaves of the musical scale.

It's that simple. So yes, even though you refuse to admit it, you are indeed wanting to make a small room sound like a large one, which is impossible.

And you are STILL ignoring the REQUIREMENT to abide by the forum rules (click here), which every other member here is required to do. Do you think you should be exempt from those rules as well, just like you want to be exempt form the laws of physics?


- Stuart -

[digi001]

Sorry I live in Puente Alto, Chile...the town just next to yours. Want to meet for coffee sometime? I know a small little shop down that street...that sounds huge!

jk I'm in Philadelphia, PA

[Soundman2020]

If we can't agree on the starting point of what is even possible.... I guess this conversation we are having isn't worth it.

Well, hopefully one day you will take the time to learn about acoustics, and physics, and room sounds, and what is possible, and what is not possible, then you can come back and we can continue this conversation.

(I'm not the one insisting that it is possible to catch six foot rainbow trout in a bathtub).


- Stuart -

[digi001]

....but if I did actually live in Chile I would still get coffee with you and buy one for you, if you could stand all my questions.

But your looking at the wrong room! They didn't track drums in there!