Where to track drums? (New House)

Where should I record?

  • Garage

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Basement

    Votes: 2 100.0%
  • Upstairs

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2

tatertot1999

New member
So, I am not a beginner engineer by any means, and I know a lot about treatment and acoustics. However, I am wrestling with where in my house to record my next project. I have three spaces: a large garage, pit basement, and an upstairs attic witch has been converted into a bonus room. I can reach any of these places easily with my snake, obviously the garage would give me the best isolation from the source in my control room, but I'm not too worried about that. I'm tracking later this week and just moved into this place, so I won't have time to do much treatment, otherwise I'd probably just use the garage in the future once I can build some absorbers. All the spaces are less than ideal at the moment, and I just can't find an obvious choice. Needing open roomy drum sounds for an Americana style project.
Garage:
20' x 8.5'
UNPAINTED Cinderblock Walls and concrete floor, one studded wall covered in paneling (divides two half of garage)
ceiling is 8' drywall
I've placed carpet on the floor, but when the doors shut, it still sounds like a garage. With some treatment, it will be workable, but now I'm worried it just won't be the best option.

Basement:
100% below grade pit basement, walls are rock and dirt for the most part
Ceiling is about 7'
Does not sound awful, obviously its incredibly dead, but the rough walls seem to diffuse a lot of sound. But its still not great.
My biggest concern is that my control room is right above the only logical place where the kit can go. Also going to be difficult to get good roomy sounds out of a dead room. (but there's other ways to get that at least I'd be starting from dead)
This obviously would be a tough permanent solution being in a unfinished, below grade basement. Not exactly appealing to clients either.

Upstairs:
25' x 10' room
6.5' acoustic tile ceiling (sloped on sides)
Wood floors and wood paneled walls
Directly above my control room
Not bad sound, but theres some serious flutter echo in places. Also placed rugs on floor, didn't change very much.

So I'm dealing with two main variables here, the sound of the drum room itself, and the isolation from direct sound (kit) in my control room. I don't know if it would be better to have good isolation and just mess around with mic and instrument placement in the garage and know exactly what I'm getting, or to go with one of the other options which sound better, but will leave me with some questioning. Of course, I don't know how bad the bleed will be into my control room either, wish I had a kit here so that I could record some samples and hear each and to test the bleed, but I don't.
 
Given the option between a dead space and a space with flutter, I would go with dead. Easy enough to add space with a good reverb, hard as HECK to fix bad flutter echo (I think you really just disguise or bury it).
 
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