diffusors, a good damping solution?

[AmirH]

Hello,

I was talking to my friend the other day who's in broadcasting and I mentioned that I might have to record drums for our album in the garage and asked if he though thick blankets would help enough. He mentioned that I could just build diffusors(like, just out of wood) and stratigically set them up to prevent the sound from reflecting off the walls. This sounded odd to me, but seems a cool idea. Has anyone here tried this? Do you think it's worth a shot or would I be better off with big thick blankets along the walls?

 

[Ermz]

Hmm. I thought the strategic placement thing mainly applied to control rooms. To my knowledge a drumkit is going to be throwing sound all over the place. But I think what recording floorspaces normally have is a 'live' floor and one diffused wall or somesuch.

Diffusing the garage will keep the reverberated environment and room sound when you record, whereas damping everything with blankets will effectively kill it (as far as I'm aware).

I think most folks preffer to keep the drums in a live room, but I'm not speaking from experience or anything. I've yet to record drums.

 

[Nebulous]

Ive seen drummers record in a few rooms. Try to mix it up a bit, throw blankets on one wall, and diffuse the rest. Also, it might help a bit if you put the drum set on a rug or something. A live sound in a garage can be good, but you still have to have some control, especialy if you have a larger garage. And dont feel too bad about putting blankets up on the walls if you are after a live sound, they dont work THAT well.
Just experiment dude. If you do try anything with mixing it up, i would say to "Deaden" the wall behind the drummer and diffuse the rest.
One last note, it all depends on whether you give a shit about the neighbours hearing your drumming.........

Good luck dude

Daniel\m/

 

[AmirH]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try to keep this stuff in mind when setting it all up. I'm sooo nervous about getting an acceptable drum sound this time... I think what I may do is set him up in a corner and pad the walls right behind him and then diffuse from the other sides. I don't want too much reflection though because it's gonna be untriggered and I'm just gonna have to spend gobs of time mixing.