John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

hi all. great site. first post.

out of sheer necessity, i have a small (and i mean REALLY small) sort of L-shaped drum booth for recording in my small new york city located rowhouse. (the whole house is only 11 1/2 feet wide!)

i haven't taken any acoustic measurements, but i know from lots of recording that i have an ugly buildup centered around 500hz or so. any ideas of how to tame that (and the room in general) without losing too much real estate? i did some searching here, but what constitutes a small room for most folks is HUGE in my little world. thanks in advance.

pictures here: http://www.betteroffdead.com/drumroom.htm

the dimensions are as follows:

ceiling height = 5 feet 6 inches (not a misprint!)
width = 7 feet 3 inches down to 56" for door part of L
length = 10 feet 7 inches at longest part of L

Holy crap, I thought Japan was king of the "human sardine" syndrome...

I know you listed your location in the post, but if you edit your profile to include that we'll be able to find it easier as your post count climbs - thanks.

About all I can suggest is to place as MUCH 3 PCF mineral wool or rigid fiberglass absorbent in as many corners as possible, ANYWHERE in the "shoe box" there isn't already something else. The deader the better, hope you have a good digital reverb to put some ambience back in.

Man, I bet you can "duck walk" better'n almost ANYBODY... Steve

what would 8lb mineral wool do for me? seems i can get it cheaply nearby.

That's a bit dense; the upside is better LF absorption, which would indeed save you some critically needed space - the downside is, you would most likely get more HF reflection problems, which can (and usually will) result in comb filtering in upper frequency ranges due to less HF absorption of early reflections near mics... Steve

You might have better luck using a couple inches of the 8 lb. stuff with some of the thinner acoustic foam ON TOP of it - make sure it's REAL acoustic foam though, such as Auralex makes - you definitely do NOT want the "Great White" kind, which seems to be the norm in cheaper foams...