Need advice - Drums oriented small recording room at home advice

ljpdb

New member
Hi,

This is my first post and I am looking for advice for sound treatment (and maybe a bit of proofing so not a lot of sound escapes to the neighbors) on a small carpeted room that is roughly 11' x 13' and 8' tall. The shorter wall has the room door and closet doors and the opposite wall has a single mid size window. I live in a townhome and below is a drawing of what the layout is


drum room layout.png

You can see that I have my drums facing diagonally out towards a corner where the room door is.

My set is a 5 piece kit with a few cymbals. I have mics for every individual drum plus a couple of OH mics. All these are going into a focusrite interface which is plugged into a PC running Reaper (sorry ... but I don't have enough $$$ to invest on a better DAW).

I used to have my drums in a larger room and after putting some noise gates and EQ I was OK with the sound I was getting thanks to some good tips via this series of youtube videos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRCJQosS-7M

Anyways my deal now is that I'd like to treat my room so I can get a decent drum sound again in my recording. Not sure how to use diffusers, traps and absorbers or if I should use either one of them instead of the other. If possible also sound proof it a bit too so it is not too loud out there for other people outside of the room or next door to the neighbors (Btw this room does not share walls with the houses next to me)


I appreciate in advance any ideas and suggestions.... thanks!
 
By the way the circle is where the drums are and the red arrow is where they are pointing to... the recording gear is behind me when I am playing.
 
Don't know jack about recording drums!
But as to soundPROOFING? Forget it. Short of putting a de-coupled, massy room inside that one there is little you can do. Make sure the room is airtight, windows and doors but after that you are largely stumped.
Do you have monitors? If so I would suggest that you treat the room for the best monitoring acoustics and live with what the drums do. You don't have to worry much about noise INgress so you will have to do what many of us have to, make a pact with the neighbours!

Dave.
 
Have you recorded anything yet in the room as is?......Im always curious if people get their room ready but then don't actually record because they think they need a bunch of room treatments? Or they record one or two things then conclude that the reason its not meeting their expectations is because of a less than ideal recording space?

Record a few things , move your mics around and really listen , you will hear what you need to do and who knows it may have nothing to do with installing bass traps.

There is nothing wrong Reaper.
 
Move your desk (and PC, and assume you have monitors?) to the 11' wall on the left. Move the drums over to the corner near the closet. Cover over the window with heavy drapes. Read the sticky thread in the Studio Building section of these forums on small room acoustics.
You're going to need plenty of bass traps in a room that small. Like Dave said re soundproofing - forget it.
 
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