Help with drum room

[Strange Leaf]

Hi. I have a little problem.
I've re-built the garage at home to a studio, and so far I have control room + vocal booth. Now, there's one room left, which I intend to record drums and other stuff in, but mostly drums. I refer to it as the drumroom from now on.

The drumroom is 2,5 x 3,5 meters in area, so it's not very large.
It's of course large enough for getting the drums IN there, but my main concern/problem is how to make sure the drums won't sound boxy in there ? I really don't want the room to end up in the recordings. Not too much anyway.

Here's a small picture I made of the room:



The colored dots in the corners are for reference only.

As you can see, the room has a rather strange ceiling, with 2 different heights. It's kind of a loft up there, so I can stash mic stands, guitar cases and stuff on top of the black area. I'd like to keep it that way, but it does make the ceiling height over the black part of the room a little low maybe. i don't know, that's why I'm here.

Anyways. This is what I thought about doing. Feel free to correct any bad ideas I have.

Since three of the corners (blue, yellow, red) have doors nearby, I thought about having the drummer sit with his back towards the green corner, so people can still get in and out of the doors. I'd loose a bit eyecontact with him, since the studiowindow is on his side then, but what the heck.

Since I would wanna aim a lot of microphones towards the absorbing material, I'd thought about putting up some sort of absorbing materials at the top and left (on the pic) walls. And maybe the right wall too.
The bottom wall is trickier, cause it has both window, door and radiators, so it's hasn't got much area to put absorbers on.

Could I leave this wall out ? How about a heavy curtain that could be placed near the ceiling (higher ceiling here) and rolled down over the enntire wall during tracking, covering the door and window ?
That way I could control acoustics a tiny bit too.

Does heavy curtains absorb the "boxiness" out of a room ?

How about the ceiling ? Since the drums will prolly be placed at the green corner, is it enough to treat the ceiling in the black area ?

Is it possible to get a good sound out of this room at all ?

I'm gonna stop here. The more I write, the more I get the feel that I'm just rambling about something I don't know shit about.

I'll wait for a reply instead.

Btw. The room is all wooden walls, floor & ceiling.



Thanks in advance for your kind help
Best regards

Stefan Elmblad
Strange Leaf productions

[John Sayers]

Stefan - check out the booth at left Bank - I've recorded drums in there and there is no room sound

http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm

cheers
john

[Strange Leaf]

That's a really nice studio. But also way out of my league.
Problem is, my walls are wooden panel, and I'm not allowed to change that. So I must find a solution that absorbs well enough to get a reasonably dry drum sound without modifying the construction of the walls.

[knightfly]

Wooden panels can work good for drums as far as lows are concerned, other than isolation from outside (not much) - dry is relatively easy to accomplish with portable treatment, such as rigid fiberglas panels.

Can you give us an idea of what you ARE allowed to do in the room, and a rough budget? Steve

[Strange Leaf]

Well, I can attach pretty much anything to the walls, (as long as it fits, got 3 doors and 2 windows in there) but not tear them down and rebuild. I also don't need much in isolation, nearest neighbour is about 100 meters away. What I want is someway to treat the room, so it don't sound obviously boxy and small when recorded.

I'm gonna record drums in there mainly. Problem is I haven't recorded anything in there yet, so I don't know if there's any fault with the sound to begin with, but I'm just assuming it will be, since the room is quite small.

I'm not looking for a complete dead sound either. It's perfectly ok to have some room sound going into the mics, as long as it's not a shitty room sound. I don't want it to sound as a garage type of thing.'

Budget is limited for know, maybe a couple of hundred dollars.

But if there is any way to get this done that would really make a difference, I could always save up for some more money.

[John Sayers]

The boxy sound is caused by low - low mids so I'd go for low mid absorption using slots or Ethan's panels because they don't suck up the highs like insulation does plus you can angle them to break up the standing waves.

cheers
john

[knightfly]

Actually, depending on how thick your wood panel walls are you may already HAVE the equivalent of Ethan's panel absorbers installed - do you know what the thickness of these wood panels is?

Of course, you'd still have the flutter from parallel walls to control... Steve

[Strange Leaf]

The thickness of the panels would prolly be about ½" or so.
Would I be way off base just to buy an auralex room kit and smack up on the walls ? As I said, I don't want it to sound completely dead. i just wanna make sure the room doesn't sound boxy when recorded, so I guess basstraps is the main concern and then some additional absorbers to even out the damped frequencies a little ?

I feel I have to little knowledge to start constructing things I don't know shit about.

[giles117]

You don't want the Auralex, it is the same as insulation in that it will absorb your highs and make your room sound dull.

Bryan Giles

[knightfly]

If you mean too little general construction knowledge, maybe you have a friend that knows more - if you mean too little acoustic knowledge, we can help somewhat. Maybe this page will help - all these units are free-standing, and all would help your room in various places. The slat absorbers will take the boxiness out (they're tunable by slat/slot width) and still leave highs in the room -

http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm

Read everything on that page and see if it's doable in your situation... Steve