Hi there, Danex, and Welcome!
I've treated a lot of the walls with acoustic foam,
As you already discovered, "acoustic foam" isn't much use for low frequencies! In fact, it isn't a whole heap of use in general, since it only treats the high end and some of the mid range.... which is why acousticians and studio designers don't use it much. Despite what the manufacturers try to tell you, foam isn't a good treatment, and isn't widely used in professional rooms.
I'm having a problems with low-end buildup. Whenever the bass player hits a G, the note rings exceptionally loud
Right! For two reasons. One of them is this: "The dimensions are 10' 3" x 11' 4" x 10' ceiling" That's almost square in section, and not far off from being a cube. Your problem is something called "room modes": All rooms have a series of frequencies where the entire room resonates, because at those specific frequencies, the wave-length fits in exactly between two walls, or between the floor and ceiling. When that happens, the wave bounces back and forth between the walls exactly in phase with itself, and the energy just builds and builds and builds. Then when the note that caused the mode suddenly stops, the mode does NOT stop... it carries on "ringing" for a while, because it has stored so much energy from bouncing around. That ringing can last for a second or more, after the original note stopped.
So you have room modal problems. Room modes are associated with the distance between walls: that sets the frequency where the modes can occur. In your case, the three lowest modes are at 50 Hz, 55 Hz, and 56 Hz. Guess what? Those are all very close to a G. Between G and A, actually, but close enough that either will trigger them.
The next problem is that all room modes start and end in the corners of the room, and your drum throne is right there, in the corner! So not only is the room roaring at around 53 Hz, but you have your head in the exact spot where it is roaring loudest!
I'm not surprised you are unhappy.
Alright, so that's the technical explanation. Now for the "what can you do about it". The answer is "bass trapping". You need massive bass trapping in the corners of that room. Bass trapping is a general term for all types of acoustic treatment that are good at sucking up bass frequencies. It comes in various forms, such as porous absorption, membrane traps, panel traps, perforated panels, slot resonators, and others. It does NOT come in the form of acoustic foam!
Foam is no use at all here, because it is way, way too thin to do anything to such low frequencies. You can use porous absorption, but it has to be VERY thick to get down to 50 Hz. The wavelength of a 50 Hz tone is about 22 feet, and there's a basic rule-of-thumb that porous absorption needs to be at least 1/16th of the wavelength in order to be slightly effective, and 1/8th wave is better. At 22 feet, 1/16th is roughly 17 inches, and 1/8 is roughly 34 inches. Thus, if you go with porous absorption, it would need to be about 3 feet thick. That's not as bad as it sounds, because the best place to put the absorption is in the corners (duh! Because that's where the problem is loudest!), and there is a type of bass trap called a "superchunk" that is triangular, 36" deep, and fits in a room corner very nicely, without taking up too much space. This is what it looks like:
Superchunk-8_737.jpg
It's the yellow thing in the corner.
Here it is being built:
Superchunk-3_707.jpg
In your case, you also have a problem in the vertical direction (floor-ceiling), so you will need bass trapping in those corners too, like this:
superchunks-08-vertical-and-horizontal.jpg
They way you make them is very, very simple: Go to your local Home Depot or other favorite hardware store, buy a pack of Owens Corning OC-703 insulation panels, and cut them up into triangles where the short sides measure 36", then stack up those triangles in the room corners, floor to ceiling, as you see in the photo. That's it. You can also make a light wood frame for the front, and put some attractive fabric on it if you want, because superchunks are not exactly pretty!
I would suggest putting one in the corner right behind your head, another one in at least one other corner of the room, and two more in the wall/ceiling corners along the top of the walls on either side of the drum kit. That should go a long way to controlling the modal issues in the room. It won't kill the 50 Hz issue completely, but it should calm it down quite a lot. It's a small room, it's almost a cube, and that makes it tough to kill the modal problems completely, but this should get you a very noticeable improvement.
There are other devices you could build to get it completely under control, but they are harder to design and build, because they have to be tuned specifically to your modal frequencies, and that's not easy to do.
If you can't find OC-703 at your local hardware store, let me know what they do have, in their stock of house insulation: note down brand name and product number for all of their mineral wool and fiberglass insulation. Let me know what the do have, and I'll tell you which one is best for your case.
- Stuart -