Drum Room Treatment

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Michael Jones

Michael Jones

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I'm quite a ways off from being able to do this, but there's no better time for planning than now right.

I have a really good idea on how I'm going to handle the acoustics for all of my rooms except the drum room.
With the 2 sliding glass doors in there it seems to make for a lot of reflective surfaces. However the high ceilings give ample opportunity for some absorptive treatment ABOVE the doors; utilizing the usual suspects for this area.

I intend to have a raised floating platform for the drum kit. It's the wall surface behind the drumkit I was kicking around ideas on as to how to treat. So I was out catin' around today and I ran across a place that sells stone.

I was thinking of using a stone wall behind the drum kit to sort of act as a diffuser. The stone could be set so the you see the "edges" and not the face and the could have varying depths. With the stone, and some "up-lighting" set into the platform, it could be extremely dramatic!

Below is a picture of the stone I was considering, and a plan view of the drum room.

Could this work, or is it just too many reflective surfaces?
 

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I was thinking I had seen something like that in one of John's studios, but all I could find was the wall of tin in Guruland.

It sounds like a reasonable approach, but I'm just a collector of data without any real experience. There's always the "try it and see" approach, but in this case that would be expensive and require a lot of work for an experiment.

Good luck!!

Darryl.....
 
just a thought..
how about a big slat resonator where you wanted the stones and a couple of bass traps on sides of it or if you can in the corners.....a smaller slat resonator above your slider...and the rest fibreglass covered with cloth.... I guess that would make it balanced and not too dead, which you obviously don't want, since you had the stone idea....I hope this at least gives you some more combinations...
cheers
 
I'm curious what a small highly diffused room would sound like. I haven't had a chance to really play with one but it seems like it would be a good thing. Maybe the trick for the back wall would be some moveable panels so you could do diffusion or absorption.
 
The slat resonator in the back is an idea, but it seems to me that in a small room you'd want to avoid resonance. Too much resonance and parts of the drum kit are going to be sympathetic to that introduced resonance and possibly emmit unwanted sounds like snares rattling when you don't want them to, or cymbals ringing. But I dunno.....

I think diffusion and absorption would be the way to go in a smaller room. Absorb the front or attack wall, and difuse the rear.
But, heck, I could be totally wrong.

Maybe somebody that knows more will chime in here.
 
i don't know the first thing about building a drum room, but just wanted to say i've been thinking about the same sort of thing. only I was going to put the absorbtion behind the kit and diffusion in front of it. i don't know why. but i'm interested to see what you come up with.

i was looking at the same sort of stone wall type thing though, i happen to have a lot of extra rock just like that piled up in my yard.
 
Michael - it depends on what sort of drum sound you are looking for.

If you look at Left Bank's small drum room it's about the same size as your room and also has two walls entirely glass doors. The ceiling is fully treated with hangers and the opposite walls to the glass are either fully 703 or slots and a door. This room is really nice - the drummers like it because it's not dead sounding but it's still clean and tight. Your voice doesn't sound dull in there. The glass and the slats keep it bright, the hangers and the 703 keep it tight.

On the other hand if you look at the drum booth in Cloud Studios it's also around the same size, maybe a bit bigger, but also has glass walls on two sides. Here all walls, floor and ceiling are totally bright. Glass, timber and a slate floor. No traps or anything. This room is very live but it's verb time is no more than 1.2 sec if that. It's a great drum room also but has a totally different sound. I've recorded fiddle in it and I've recorded drums in it. sounds great.

Horses for courses;);)

Cheers
JOhn
 
John - So, the rocks would work for diffusion, but may tend to make the room brighter?
Sorry for the questions, its about time for a phone call here...
 
With your rock, I would think you might want some sticking out a few inches and some recessed a few inches to help creat a wide dispersion. Good idea though and it would look fantastic.

Third Eye Blind built a studio about a year ago that had bricks that were stacked and offset to creat diffusion. They only did this on the back wall though.

There is a video about it all and I am posting the link. Just click the "Video Highlight" box on the right.

http://www.techtv.com/audiofile/musictech/story/0,23008,3370716,00.html

Hope this helps

Beez
 
Great video beezoboy! He went into a lot more depth in his discussion than I thought he would.

With the rock, I was planning on varying the depths so that it would have some diffuse properties. No doubt it would look great, but would it work well in that smaller room?

The rock sells for $150/ton, and I think about a ton and a half would do it, so its not REAL expensive, but if it didn't work, it would be a MAJOR pain to take down.
 
Yes also not to mention the weight. Thats going to be a lot in a small concentrated area. I am sure it would hold, but over time who knows.

Of course on a concrete slab floor it really wouldn't matter.

I am no expert, but I think the idea is you have a reflective surface for one wall in the room and then treat the others. Did you ever say what the size of this room was?

One thing for certain is that an untreated square room with one relfective + harwood floor should probably sound like a raquetball court with a lesser reverberation time. I think it would be better to start with a more live room because you'll always be able to tone it down in liveness, but you'll have a much harder time adding "livelyness" to a dead room.

Personally I like a bit of room sound to recordings, especially drums. Thats the cool thing about having 2 rooms. You'll be able to have that room as an option, and the main room as an option.

Glad the video helped
Beez
 
I have a fireplace that has brick from floor to ceiling, so I'm not worried about the weight. The concrete slab will support it.

The size of the room is irregular. There's a floor plan of it in my first post.

Thanks again for the input.
 
I'd go with the rock and have some 703 absorbers ready that you could hang over it when you want a more dead sound.
 
Your biggest challenge will be anchoring the stones to the wall so that they are stable without having to grout it all up and lose a lot of the diffusive characteristics. Sill I like the idea of a rockin ' drum room :)
 
Innovations said:
Your biggest challenge will be anchoring the stones to the wall so that they are stable without having to grout it all up and lose a lot of the diffusive characteristics. Sill I like the idea of a rockin ' drum room :)
Click to expand...
Well, you're going to HAVE to have mortar between the stones. There's no way around that. But varying the depth of the protrusion of the stone would still allow for diffusion.
To anchor it to the wall, you just put in "tiebacks" every 5th or 6th course. The tieback is a metal strip that goes in the mortar, between the stones, then gets screwed to the wall behind it.

John - Curtians are OUT! I'm not going to have any curtians in my studio, but it would be possible to have some 703 set in frames that could be "unfolded" from the wall to vary the level of absorbtion.

I just got 2 doors in today! One outside door, and one slider for the drum room. The outside door is the "patio" door. I still need my main front door. The rest are set for delivery on June 16th. :(
 
Michael,
I don't know if this will help you , however there is product called
stone veneer or somesuch. Its actually made of concrete or stucco type material. It comes in various facia styles and sizes. Approximately 2x2' size. Just guessing.
Sorry I don;t know too much about it, but thought it may be an alternative, guessing it may be less expensive for labor rates?
PLus you have choices in the look and color ect.
T
 
Tonio said:
Michael,
I don't know if this will help you , however there is product called
stone veneer or somesuch. Its actually made of concrete or stucco type material. It comes in various facia styles and sizes. Approximately 2x2' size. Just guessing.
Sorry I don;t know too much about it, but thought it may be an alternative, guessing it may be less expensive for labor rates?
PLus you have choices in the look and color ect.
T
Click to expand...
Yeah, we have something here similar called "Synthetic Stone". Its not very dense (not heavy) so I doubt its a viable alternative. That may be different from what your talking about though.

The natural stone is relatively inexpensive though at $150/ton, and labor is somewhere around $3/sq.ft. So if I did say an area about 8' wide and 10' high, I could get the whole thing done for just under $400.

Or I could have that same area in cloth covered 703 for around $300. The cloth being by far the most expensive item as 703 runs about 75 cents per sq.ft.

If the stone could provide a fair amount of diffusion, I'd like to go that way, because it'd look cool as all get out!
(But I don't want to sacrifice sound, for looks of course.)
 
I have a stacked stone fireplace and also on a large area arourd my front door. There is no mortar between the stones. They seem to have a flat surface on the back and are attached with some kind of adhesive. (maybe liquid nails?)
 

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