Room Acoustics Affecting Drum Sounds | Season Four, Episode 10

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Our friends at GIK Acoustics have a MOUNTAIN of excellent resources on acoustics and acoustic treatment! Learn more here: sladl.ink/GIK

[@austinshoupe3003]

This definitely needs a part two. You've made the point about untreated vs treated but trouble shooting or tell us how to start is completely absent. Round 2!

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

We’re not acousticians and so this is not our place to present the information you’re looking for. Seek out experts! Our recommendation is to work with GIK as they offer free consultations from their engineers- that’s how we assembled our setup.

[@jonashellborg8320]

Playing gigs in unfamiliar venues introduces a room challenge. And you need to bring out your drum key, dampening etc and listen to the room! I don’t know how many bad gigs i’ve done in the past, with drummer, guitarist, bass player come with their static settings, and get surprised when the untreated pub doesn’t handle reflections as well as the music practise room. :-) Great episode - as always!

[@matthewzagorski9161]

"I'm sure you've clicked off and gotten bored." Nope! I have watched every one of your regular series videos, some of them multiple times.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Thank you!

[@BeatsAndMeats]

Please do like 100 videos on this subject, as its quite literally THE most important part or recording drums

[@marty9464]

One of the best acoustic treatments I've found is hanging inexpensive, but very heavy curtains on one wall in your space. Use cheap curtain rods to keep the cost down. The beauty of this is that your treatment is now adjustable to allow you to vary the effect..... sometimes you want a bit boomier sound, particularly with auxiliary percussion. Another plus to this approach is that you can also spice up your studio visually at the same time!! There's always much more you can do, but this is a great cost effective first approach that's easy to install and allows you to experiment with the sound you like best......

[@ChannelTheHistory]

I made bass traps for my very small, oddly shaped drum studio. They’re made of the type of closet doors with vented screens that fold in the middle. I wrapped them in fairly heavy fabric and mounted them in all the corners. They are extremely effective. For mid and high end absorption I’ve placed fabric wrapped oak panels and some acoustic foam strategically to eliminate parallel untreated surfaces. All in all I’m very happy with the results.

[@clayfoster8234]

Cody with the jazz cat face at 10:46 as he’s feeling it. Chefs kiss❤️

[@DylanWissing]

Great video, gentlemen! The "Before/After" clips were extremely instructive, especially from a recording perspective. Without treatment, the drums are wild and raw, like you would find at a venue where acoustics were never considered (which is a great many of them, from what I've seen). With the treatment, the sounds are suddenly warm, punchy and controlled (in a very good way). The mix engineer would be much happier with the "After" files, I'm quite sure. Kudos to GIK Acoustics as well. I used exactly the service you described several used ago, and their advice and products transformed my room (including eliminating a NASTY flutter echo). Looking forward to the rest of the series!

[@weschilton]

Last year I took the plunge with my home studio and got GIK to help me outfit my space with appropriate acoustic treatment and am VERY happy with how much better this room sounds.

[@harrysmart6236]

Thanks for this. I play in a church, with the kit jammed back into a corner, with two very reflective walls just a couple of feet away, and mostly very reflective surfaces around the whole sanctuary. This is a great resource for drummers to show to non-drummers. I guess you have limited options to illustrate this, but something on drum placement in a room would be good, and a discussion of screen placement, which a lot of worship settings use: how much clearance behind the screen do you need, is it possible without in-ears, etc. Personally the thought of being behind a screen with reflective walls close behind would be a grim prospect, but again, the problem is to get non-drummers to understand why.

[@mrpants6370]

Very apropos - was thinking of this today and knowing I needed to do something - the differences you demonstrated here were literally astronomical ! Thanks !!

[@montearnstam6827]

It absolutely focuses the sound. But interestingly enough it all still comes down to personal preference. Im sure if you were tracking something you wanted to be more ambient then inevitably you would then need to add that in post. Really great well recorded video to demonstrate the differences yall! thanks!

[@ARDrummer]

I have a drum room with several kits. They almost resonate off of each other when I play....sounds great to my ear :)

[@djentlover]

This video illustrated how much I love untreated drum rooms, sounds so lively! With treatmeant I feel anxious and like holding my breath for some reason.

[@djentlover]

For other people that like lively and explosive drum rooms, I recommend treating just the ceiling above the drumset. That attenuates the honky midrange and makes the low end sound fuller.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

You can still get a lively sound with a treated room! All of our mics are pretty close to the drums and yet they picked up a TON of obnoxious room sound (and suffered from standing waves and peaks/nodes) in the untreated demos. It's actually still lively in here (the diffusion vs. absorption helps quite a bit with this) if you back the mics up a bit and/or use a mic out at a distance. Regarding treatment options, some basic absorption above the drums makes a HUGE difference. Depending on the size of space and positioning of the drums, you'll likely need additional absorption/diffusion to tame overtones and prevent the overall sound from being too muddy. When we take away the GOBOs we are able to capture a lot more of that room ambience but without the heinous acoustic issues.

[@TwoScoopsOfTubert]

Yup same, for simply playing or listening to drums I love the sound of a "crappy" room. But for anything beyond that you're just asking for headaches all the way down the production line.

[@Chris-vr8cd]

once you add processing to the mix, the room becomes very obvious

[@joecooper8527]

Figuring out how to build one soon. This came out just in time.

[@arturosaenz9120]

Great info,I play on a regular basis,different halls,with different acoustics,some venues have carpeted stages,low ceilings,just a disaster ,sucks all the life out of the drum set,only way around this after tuning to actual acoutics, put away your iem,bring out the wedges,so in a studio setting you can control this,can you gives us show us some tricks from your experience under a live setting ,great info here,keep it coming.

[@bogartsandoval]

Don’t forget to mention that a carpet can really add acoustic treatment. Also it may add sustain to the drums as it isolates the vibrations from being chocked from hard surfaces transfered by stands or racks.

[@famitory]

honestly a great way to get diffusion is to just have shelves storing stuff around the drums. patch cables, phantom power boxes, spare heads, ECT all haphazardly sitting in a wooden shelving unit is effectively performing the job of a big difusion panel while also being useful as storage

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

That will certainly provide some diffusion, however the placement and the type of diffusion across specific frequency ranges makes a world of difference by comparison. Likewise, a big couch or a mattress will provide diffusion but the placement and mass of these objects isn't usually done with room acoustics in mind- Maybe GIK needs to start making studio couches and beds.... 😉

[@Upbeat_JMF_Drums]

Thank you for your high level of needery. Need more of this!

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

We’ve got plenty more! Cheers!

[@raptors13jays]

Hoping for a part 2 to this. Would love an even deeper dive

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

We’ll be addressing LOTS more around this topic throughout the season. Cheers!

[@napkinshoplifta5163]

HUGE impact

[@trollakhinmemeborn3278]

I stuck my drumkit under a bunk bed that reaches to the ceiling, combined with the large carpet it's on, and curtains I put all around I got some bootleg soundtreatment that way. Really got a lot of naked walls all around the rest of the room however, should do something about it. In the video I found that the floor tom & kick drum seem to be really affected by the room's acoustic treatment, and I find that the "'untreated" sound really matches the kind of sound I'm getting here, a lot of odd high end, really long boioioioiong sound. It could also definitely be my tuning, but I'll definitely look into trying to take care of those naked walls around the room. PS: Really liked that groove at 10:20, props to Cody!

[@Jirka-h2e]

every topic you make is great, thanks for that!

[@TheLaunchPadQLD]

Thank you so much for this video!

[@balcofono666]

A super amazing series would be to analyze certain drum recordings/videos and explain how a certain drum sound is achieved

[@Assimilator702]

To cover this topic one would need access to the recording engineer and the room along with the drum gear used and more specifically the exact drum heads. Although the drums themselves are probably the least important.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Visit our friends over at Creating the Sound for more on this: www.creatingthesound.com/

[@MdhLV]

Would you guys consider making a video on tuning acrylic drums?? They've become really popular I'm the last few years and more and more guys and girls are getting in to them because of how cool they look and how punchy they sound. I got a set of Pearl Crystal Beats about a year ago and tuning has been a big challenge. There aren't many videos on how to install and tune them acrylics in general. My experience they are way different that any type of wood. Alot of traditional techniques don't work well with acrylic drums. Very tricky to properly seat the head especially. Just a suggestion!! Thanks guys!! Love what you do and Im a huge fan.

[@michaelbruhl4425]

...super cool and helpful topic, thanks for that !!!

[@drummercarson896]

Such an awesome video

[@plexibreath]

Wow. I'm going to have to reevaluate building acoustic panels, the treatment really sucked the life out of the drum sound. Maybe going with only diffusion panels around the drums and save the absorption panels for the mixing area will be my better solution.

[@thedutchdjentleman]

Their free acoustic advice is super sick and has helped me tons. Also, are those the Matt Halpern sticks you guys are using here?

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Glad to hear tat you've had a chance to benefit from their resources! The sticks Cody's using here are the Anika Niles signature model. Cheers! -Ben

[@patdeniston3697]

Do vintage posters, like Farrah Faucet, Frank Zappa, keep on truckin, count as sound treatment? 😀

[@BCSchmerker]

+soundslikeadrum *Thanks for a vid on percussion interaction with the installation space.* I've a poplarbuilt TAMA®/Hoshino® six-piece at one end of essentially a finished barn, on a riser that damps the floor toms by the legs; MEINL® HCS™ brasses interact with the space well enough for rehearsal. I've also a Pearl® eight-piece (all shells downsized in diameter) in concept formulation for Shinoda Hall, OMS Japanese Christian Church (Walnut Creek, CA, USA), where the existing YAMAHA® RY2T4 birchbuilt with MSD1460AF maple center drum and PAiSTE® bronzes overproject; don't know of any manufacturer audition programs to match the cymbals to the space, unfortunately.

[@artcorvolet]

Interesting, I like the untreated snare and kick, but prefer the treated toms🤔. During first comparison

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

And that's totally fine to have that initial reaction. That said, there are a TON of issues with the bass drum and snare sounds in the pre-treatment demos. The focused tone and minimization of acoustic anomalies in the

[@thedutchdjentleman]

For me it’s basically the opposite, I loved the treated kick and the untreated snare and toms.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

@@thedutchdjentleman The key here is that it's not so much about those tones themselves- it's about the difference. Once you've accounted for the acoustic anomalies you'll have a FAR easier time with tuning and achieving whatever the desired sound is. We recognize that not everyone is going to love the particular sounds we went with in this episodes but that's not at all the point.

[@artcorvolet]

Sounds Like A Drum have you done a video from audience perspective? Like how the pitch drops in a room and tuning higher can compensate…more for an un-mic’d gig in my experience…that’s a big animal there..lol. Sound changes room to room gig to gig. Great channel!

[@thedutchdjentleman]

@@SoundsLikeADrum for me it wasn’t nescessarily the drums themselves, but the ambience. I love rooms with a big explosive ambience.

[@Oneness100]

You still didn't address the low frequency problem. I would recommend going to another acoustic treatment company that understands low frequency problems. There's a drum riser made by another company that is absolutely the best thing for drums. Check out the acoustic fields drum risers.

[@frank0563]

Too dead after the treatment. You almost completely killed the decay of the kick and snare. I would think individual muffling would be a better way to go for that. Were the recordings all mics or just room mics? I professionally treated my room a few years back. My room is on the dead side, but I still have decay.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Hey Frank! The mic placement didn't change and they're all quite close to the drums (the overheads are 36" from the snare). It wasn't just an issue of room ambience but also some really bad acoustic anomalies that create some wonky overtones in the drums. If you back off the distance on the mics or rely far more on overheads than close mics OR add in a room mic, you can capture more space and ambience. For the purpose of our series, clarity of drum sound is 100% key. If we'd used nothing but diffusion then everything would sound quite dead but as it stands, there's plenty of liveliness in the space depending on how it's captured. Also, the entire space is 20 x 40 so we've got PLENTY of area for room/ambience mics if that's what we're going for. Still, our goal with this treatment was to clean up the muddy low frequencies, cut down on the peaks & lulls, and allow for a natural (far from dead) drum sound. We're quite happy with the flexibility that this has provided. Cheers! -Ben

[@frank0563]

@@SoundsLikeADrum It certainly cleaned up the source. Take the snare for instance. I can imagine the overtone anomalies being a bother. What Struck me immediately was that it seemed to take out more mid range than anything else. Could just be my ears. I think I hear what you're liking. It just sounded suffocating to me at first. Fortunately you have plenty of range for character shaping as you said.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

If anything it means that we'll likely shift the balance more to the overheads because the drums maintain so much more clarity at a distance now. Getting the room to cooperate, particularly since we aren't doing anything in the way of EQ/gating/compression to the tracks, definitely makes me feel more confident in the way that our concepts translate through demonstration. It's a learning process for us too!

[@frank0563]

@@SoundsLikeADrum Right on!

[@AboutThings_byTarif]

I love you guys and think you're awesome but this the first video I've ever watched from you where I didn't feel like I've learned anything. It's 15 minutes to tell me that room acoustics matter with no information that improved my understanding and no practical advice of any kind. Don't mean to be a jerk but I take everything you do seriously so I'm giving you serious feedback. I've told you this before, you're the best drumming channel out there, sorry about the negative feedback.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Thanks for watching. Other people got something out of this episode so perhaps it wasn’t for you.

[@dancorvalan3205]

Could u talk about the first layer of accoustic problems, which is being able to play. I had an awesome kit with 11 cymbals but could not play it because of noise and vibration to neighbors. Then after 3 years of frustration i sold it. But i still want to play. So it will be amazing when i can have those issues of inside the room sound quality and how to improve it. But first, help me be able to play at all. And i do believe this is the absolute setback the majority of people face in order to begin with this beautiful and very expensive instrument. Thanks bro

[@bpooboi]

Is this that guys brother ?!

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Haha, nope. I’m usually the one behind the cameras, engineering the episodes, and editing plus everything you see on social. -Ben

[@joeyollie123]

I actually think the drums sounded a lot better when the room was untreated! I think it's important to make the distinction between "live" and "bad" sounding rooms. This is clearly a good sounding room, most likely due to dimensions and the materials. Live does not necessarily mean bad - it's all down to preference. Of course, a more controlled acoustic is far easy to work with when recording, but dead sounding rooms can be horrible and uninspiring to play in, which will affect how the musician plays their instrument and ultimately affect the recording, regardless of your ability to play about with the sound when mixing.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Oh man…this is a *horrible* room without treatment. Nodes, modes, and horrific flutter echo. The acoustic treatment wrangles the acoustic mess without turning it into a dead, empty sounding space. Even with everything in place the sound is hardly dead at the kit (especially compared to what we’ve seen out of some acoustics product manufacturers who opt to completely cover the walls and ceiling). We can open up the positioning of the gobos as needed and place mics at a distance for a more spacious sound but this room was an acoustic nightmare beforehand.

[@bogartsandoval]

Room air pressure also affects the drum tone.