So I moved away from my band, but would still like to record with them.
However there's no space where my drummer can play.
I had an idea to make a 'cube' from PVC tubes, and hang a heavy curtain around the drums; maybe also a roof (though I don't want to suffocate him).
A heavy pleated curtain should absorb a lot of sound, no? Plus something on the floor (carpet). The mics would of course need to stay inside the cube.
Any ideas? How effective would it be for isolating the drums as well as getting a better (drier) quality recording? It should make recordings quite dry, as any reflections would have to pass through the curtains twice... maybe the biggest worry it the drummer suffocating? It would have 3x the needed material to surround the drummer, so the pleat would be very thick.
So I moved away from my band, but would still like to record with them.
However there's no space where my drummer can play.
I had an idea to make a 'cube' from PVC tubes, and hang a heavy curtain around the drums; maybe also a roof (though I don't want to suffocate him).
A heavy pleated curtain should absorb a lot of sound, no? Plus something on the floor (carpet). The mics would of course need to stay inside the cube.
Any ideas? How effective would it be for isolating the drums as well as getting a better (drier) quality recording? It should make recordings quite dry, as any reflections would have to pass through the curtains twice... maybe the biggest worry it the drummer suffocating? It would have 3x the needed material to surround the drummer, so the pleat would be very thick.
Hi Mr. PC, well if you do it, it will certainly be interesting to see how it turns out.
To record drums well, they need some space with good acoustics. Dry is only better than bad acoustics, and even then it may or may not be.
I guess if it don't cost too much, I'd say go ahead, you'll surely learn a lot from it.
What exactly are you doing, trying to isolate the drums from the rest of the band? Or just trying to avoid some bad acoustics?
Back in my early career, I had the opportunity to produce some of my clients in a fairly well known studio at the time, and I learned a few things about this. One of them was a way to isolate the drums using what they called "gobos". What I ended up doing, is I built several 2ft x 4ft gobos with 4 inches of 701 insulation in them. I covered one side with 3/16ths plywood, and the other side with cloth. I put plastic under the cloth to avoid any fiberglass leakage. I used these to surround the drummer, but still left an opening so he could communicate with the rest of the band.
The way set it up is, I had the drummer's back basically against a wall with a big window that had fairly heavy curtains. Then I stood the gobos on end and completely surrounded him in a half circle. I also suspended gobos around from the ceiling on their side, and they lined up with the gobos on the floor. The ceiling was 9 feet high so it gave 3 feet of open space for the drummer to communicate with the rest of the band. It worked very well, and I recorded quite a few bands that way.
I'm not suggesting you do that, if you don't have the means to build them yourself, it can be pretty expensive. Here's a link that shows some that are being made and used today.
Something else to be concerned about is the floor, if you're on cement, it should be okay, but if you're on a floor with flooring over floor joist, then it can be a real problem. The sound from the drums goes into the floor and gets picked up by the mic stands, and that's not good. I had that problem at one time and I made my own shock mounts for the mics, that pretty much took care of the problem.
Attenuating sounds takes mass. Curtains won't cut it unless they're made of lead =) Think of the sound wave entering the medium and having to move the atoms like little barbells as the wave passes through. The denser the material, the more attenuation because the sound wave has more work to do as it travels.
I would love to be wrong but I think you won't get much out of your curtained-cage idea; instead, you could layer the room with 4-5 plies of drywall.
Best of luck
Packing blankets are a solid solution, and frequently a 5' x 6' one is $5.99 at Harbor Freight. I'd go for Pony clips and wood over PVC, but understand PVC is easy to work with. Good luck!
I would hate to be the guy sweating and suffocating in that cube. Just another verse, chorus, and ending. Hang in there buddy!
What androo said about mass. Blankets will tame some of the higher frequencies, but that's about it. You're still going to hear the body and crack of the drums loud and clear. And the same applies for room reflections. The higher frequencies will be 'dry', but not everything below.
Did you ever notice how a drum kit doesn't sound as loud outside in wide open space? It's because the reflections aren't summing nearly as much as happens inside of a room. The best that you will be able to achieve (dryness and decreased sound level) inside a room will be nowhere near as good as outside. So my recommendation is take a kit and drummer outside, somewhere in the wide open, and listen to it. That is the best case (you won't get there inside of a room). And listen to the kit and drummer inside without any absorption. That is the worst case. The best that you will get with any treatement inside a room will lie somewhere inbetween those two, and it's most likely going to be much closer to the room version than the outdoor version.
__________________
It's time to take a stand against the synthesizer.
Last edited by brainwreck; 08-14-2017 at 09:59 PM.
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
My solution was to use an e-kit.
I occasionally record "real" hats and cymbals , but mostly just the e-kit. Surprising how good it can be and of course almost silent in the room, plus the drums can be whatever you want them to be once you have MIDI captured.
My solution was to use an e-kit.
I occasionally record "real" hats and cymbals , but mostly just the e-kit. Surprising how good it can be and of course almost silent in the room, plus the drums can be whatever you want them to be once you have MIDI captured.
My goal for this is to get a dry recording, but also to minimize bleed and disturbance of housemates.
I was thinking moving blankets before, but if the curtain is really heavy, plus it has pleats, couldnt it be better?
My main fear is reflecting some signal back from the 'cube walls', making the room sound even smaller. How reflective are moving blankets? Is itpossible to pleat them? Maybe moving blankets overed in foamwedges, but then portabilitywoul be an issue.
I've been reading about moving blankets vs sound blankets,
In short, it seems moving blankets tend to have denser outer layers, causing them to reflect more sound rather than absorb.
I've also considered making my own blankets from towels. The curtains from my first link however seem to have a higher NRC than anything (though I didn't see low frequency absorption specs for those).
50"x 95": 95" L x 50" W x 0.25" H; 3 lbs. Not sure how that compares to the weight of other blankets, put if I just add more more more and pleat them, that gives more mass, no?
Then we could also add a bass trap on either side of the kick drum. I also thought about blankets around the kick, and maybe toms (like drum clothing) but maybe that would harm the tone.
Which is a $40 DIY diaphram based bass-trap. I think it would be big, heavy, and 1 more thing to move (since we're a homeless band and trying to record wherever we can find space, and cramming guitars, basses, keyboards, drums etc into whatever car we can borrow). OTOH it seems pretty good. Any experience here?
One of the reviews says that it's indeed the best, but only because it has the right density, which is 3 pounds per cubic foot, and apparently hard to find. But if I can find some cheap 3lb/foot3 fiberglass (or rockwool) will it be just as good? Maybe we wouldn't even bother cutting them, just wrap them all in towels, and stack them for bass traps, and surround the drums with them (maybe hanging them around the drums). Still... that sounds like a lot of panels, and difficult to move around.
If there's a carpet under the drum kit, then the sound shouldn't go into the floor and through the mic stands, right? We use shock-mounts anyone, but I just like to know.
"By appropriately using layers of different absorbent materials it is possible to gain additional absorption from porous absorbers. Ideally, a porous absorbent should offer an impedance which matches that of air to remove reflections, while offering high internal acoustic attenuation. These two requirements are difficult to achieve in a thin layer of a single material, and can be more easily achieved in multi-layered linings. The front material has the necessary impedance matching that of air, and the inner layers attenuate the sound wave. This is achieved by having layers with the outside layer having a low flow resistivity, and the inner layers offering more resistance. Ideally, the impedance should only change gradually between internal layers to minimize reflections. This arrangement can be modelled by repeated application of the transfer matrix equations. (An alternative approach to achieving impedance matching is to corrugate the front face of the porous absorber."
So maybe I can simply buy some fiberglass boards of different densities, cover them in fabric, then when I'm "on location" place them accordingly, with the less dense boards closer to the sound source, and denser boards further, maybe with a few inches between them (maybe even foam wedges on the outermost layer). That can help reduce bass and broad range with minimal near-reflections if I want to put the bass trap right beside the kick, but I still want to minimize sound escaping to help make our sessions less annoying to anyone else in the house, which is why I was thinking of a sealed cube around the drummer. Another thought - we could make his stool into another bass trap (but maybe that's not the best location for a bass trap). I know traps go in corners, but this would all be inside a non-reflective inner-room.
From there I could order 2.5lb, 6lb and 8lb boards, so working together you could get max absorbtion with minimal reflection...
So basically, the outside should be less dense, and the inside more dense, in order to minimize reflections. Makes sense.
Personally, I just also want to say, I love dead rooms. More anechoic is better, and I can always add verb. I love sample modelling (recorded in anechoic chambers), LASS, and other dry samples, and want to mix my recordings with those. So deader is better in my world.
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
a blanket under an acoustic kit is NOT going to attenuate any floor-born noise.
A full blown acoustic platform would do better but you are still going to get a lot of transmitted noise.
I use a smallish one under my little bass amp and it is surprisingly effective. Auralex make the best bang for the buck of the commercial ones IMO
My little home studio has a floating floor (on rubber U-boats) and is stuffed with various different treatments in 2ft squares. Everything from the pink stuff, RW303 sand concrete...) and I still have to use an E-kit. However with a nice wooden floor and a carpet over the aforementioned treatment, the noise of feet tromping on the kit is far less obtrusive. Happily I tend to record drums as MIDI data and then add the audio bit AFTER. Zero bleed that way!
Funnily enough, I have loads of experience with Harbor Freight blankets attached to PVC pipes. Keep them in the trunk of the car, in fact. (Well, the wife told me to get them the hell out of the apartment, but I digress) I create a structure depending on the space and clip the blankets up with 2" Home Depot clips. Sometimes it's just gobo-like objects moved around according to results, sometimes a big enclosed tent., sometimes another layer of fabric over the moving blankets, since, as noted, their best attribute is their cost not their sound absorbing capability. Very, very helpful in making good recordings in a crummy sounding room when pouring concrete or building with sheetrock is out of the question, and especially when it has to be dismantled at the end of the day.
Does zilch for bleed and not disturbing others, though. All it really does is change what the mics are getting, mostly in terms of reflections. Neighbors won't be sending thanks for solving the drum noise problem.
__________________
The reason rain dances work is because they don't stop dancing until it rains.
I feel like whenever I'm looking for a solution to the problem, things get more and more difficult. Do I really need a floating platform for the drums? Eferything except the kick we can shockmount, or even hang from the ceiling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze
Funnily enough, I have loads of experience with Harbor Freight blankets attached to PVC pipes. Keep them in the trunk of the car, in fact. (Well, the wife told me to get them the hell out of the apartment, but I digress) I create a structure depending on the space and clip the blankets up with 2" Home Depot clips. Sometimes it's just gobo-like objects moved around according to results, sometimes a big enclosed tent., sometimes another layer of fabric over the moving blankets, since, as noted, their best attribute is their cost not their sound absorbing capability. Very, very helpful in making good recordings in a crummy sounding room when pouring concrete or building with sheetrock is out of the question, and especially when it has to be dismantled at the end of the day.
Does zilch for bleed and not disturbing others, though. All it really does is change what the mics are getting, mostly in terms of reflections. Neighbors won't be sending thanks for solving the drum noise problem.
So you're already doing excactly what I want to do. I think that to stop leakage you really need a complete seal. I was reading a lot on gearsluts yesterday, and people who had noise coming in through their window. The only solution was complerely sealing the window, no amount of sound isolation could fix it.
Making a totally sealed tent seems impossible/ impractical. So maybe I should just look at maximum absorbtion. I'm worried about rockwool and fiberglass in terms of health... otherwise I could maybe create rockwool/fiberglass blankets. Is wrapping a fiberglass board in a towel enough to prevent health risks? Putting my drummer in a figerglass room seems dangerous.
So no amount of sound blankets, fiberglass, minerwool or any other material can reduce neighbour-annoyance. If this is 100% true, then it's possible the cube idea might not be best.
Maybe it's best to actually put isolation around each mic (an idea I had some time ago).
The problem with this idea was always that early reflections caused by putting material near the mic can make the sound worse (e.g. products like the recording eyeball).
Which means there are 2 solutions. Sound reflection is caused by the pressure differential; non-dense materials won't reflect, but are also ineffective absorbers. So you could make a gradual pressure gradient around the mic. Lite foam, thicker foam, fiberglass, and on the outside wood. Nothing should get reflected into the mic that way.
^^ Forgetting foam for a second, a shape like that could be made from anything, even wood, and because the sound should be deflected back into the wedge (and not the mic) it should get a pretty anechoic recording. The foam in that link had an NFC of "125 Hz - 0.39", so not the best at low frequency (being foam) but if we combine ideas, and put fiberglass/wood behind it, it should give broad spectrum absorption with no reflection, yes?
Still, that would mean building a 'mic box' for every single microphone, which is a pain when you need 5+ mics on the kit. Still, in theory that should give an ultra-dry recording, no?
The unfortunate thing for soundproofing small rooms is that the only thing that will deal with those pesky bass frequencies is a significant amount of thick and heavy, space eating mass. Little panels will do bugger all for nuisance noise.
Modern MIDI drums. Not cheap but pretty darn impressive:
My drummer is a purist, and would never touch an e-kit.
So-your drummer can still pure drum-the advantages of virtual kits is your not stuck to 1 kit and environment.
A better 'investment' might be some gigs worths of libraries--you can shape these kits endlessly-and still maintain your drummers 'feel',record anywhere-anytime,with your own reverb or convolution'spaces'. yip.
It also gives your drummer a new option to learn how to play with fingers- on a keyboard- 10 fingers v 4 (possibly 5 if your using head ) limbs is quite liberating if managed!!
So-your drummer can still pure drum-the advantages of virtual kits is your not stuck to 1 kit and environment.
A better 'investment' might be some gigs worths of libraries--you can shape these kits endlessly-and still maintain your drummers 'feel',record anywhere-anytime,with your own reverb or convolution'spaces'. yip.
It also gives your drummer a new option to learn how to play with fingers- on a keyboard- 10 fingers v 4 (possibly 5 if your using head ) limbs is quite liberating if managed!!
Well, between e-kits, recording guitar/bass direct-in and using modelled amps, using samples for keyboards, you can record an entire rock band without mics. Well, singers will need mics, so buy 1 good mic, surround it with insulation, and you got a million dollar sound. Aside, what's a good e-kit to use?
But it's not me you need to convince, it's my drummer.
Back to sound absorption. I think moving sound absorbing materials closer to the sound source / mics will give more bang for your buck, with the drawback of early reflections. And I think the solution to that is having a gradual density shift, light, medium, heavy, ultra heavy materials. I'm thinking for the wedge concept to work properly they would need to be very steep wedges, yes?
Well, between e-kits, recording guitar/bass direct-in and using modelled amps, using samples for keyboards, you can record an entire rock band without mics. Well, singers will need mics, so buy 1 good mic, surround it with insulation, and you got a million dollar sound. Aside, what's a good e-kit to use?
You state your own solutions-honestly the way technology is going,i'm sure you will eventually come to the conclusion that a well programmed robotic machine will out-perform most humans any day of the week (>until humans become >enlightened) -so 'knowing' this 1 might look at becoming a better programmer.
Would it not be better to just hire a local studio with everything already 'in-place' (dead rooms etc) because your looking at great expenses otherwise??
I reckon local studios are crying out for punters right now-because of the changes in digital recording.
E-kits to recommend?? dunno -check availability and costs to suit your needs I guess.
You can use a decent sampler and midi otherwise npz=same output effect.
Sorry, by e-kit I just meant sample library. Actually, going that route I'd just ditch the drummer and program drums myself. I still prefer real drums (and yes, soon composers and everything else will be replaced by robots).
There are no good local studios, and if there were paying regularly to practice wouldn't be feasible.
I think I could build something much cheaper using better materials. It would need to be wider, but not as tall.
Roxul AFB 2", Green Glue, and towels, if we could get a 100% seal I think it would work... maybe a bucket of ice to keep him cool (he sweats like a pig whenever he plays).
Maybe we'll go down in history as the last band with a real sweaty alcoholic drummer.
Maybe we'll go down in history as the last band with a real sweaty alcoholic drummer.
Lolz-the last band? I don't think so humans are extremely persistant.
I am in no way knocking real drums/real drummers.. but let's be practical these days---a lot of musicians are on a budget and even for bigger bands there is a big cost to cater for them drums>(travelling//storage//setting-up,maintanence etc etc).... > going virtual seems not such a bad idea,but your loosing the person's actual live performances--I mean,let's face it--music is kinda 1/2 technique/1/2 showmanship __from my perspective.
Craftmanship is also a big factor with instruments and digital designs eh..
In regards to libraries--well there's just fashgabilliunz out there on the market--like real drum kits.Take your pick and knock yourself out is my advice- I use lots of different methods to get what I want--although currently am enjoying strike2,which I can now programme sufficiently.
Big love for all drums,so a hybrid seems ripe for my selections,but maybe not yours,or your friendly drummer's.
Hope your find your way,"let there be drums!!!"
absorption coefficient 0.95 @125Hz with 3". (no data below that for any material in the world, but this does better than anything else at 125Hz, so I'm guessing it also does better down to 40Hz).
It seems totally safe, so I can buy 1, or maybe 2 of these and totally surround the drums, maybe throw a layer on top of the kick to get some more bass absorbed.
The Drum Cube
) limbs is quite liberating if managed!!
Linear Mode
