Treating a rehearsal room for recording......

[bryan_kilco]

My band will be doing a DIY recording again soon. Main concern, obviously, is the drums. My last recording I did in this room came out pretty muddy and I'm afraid it has to do with the OH's and no sound treatment.

Now, I'll probably catch shit for this, but we don't have proper treatment. Right now we have a bunch of carpet and the layer of foam that lays under the carpet at our disposal.

Don't know exact dimensions of the room, but it's about 20'x20' or so. 2 walls are concrete (cinder block) and 2 walls are drywall.

Is there any "go-to" areas where we should be placing our "panels"? Or should we not even worry about it at all?

There was also talk of possibly forking out $ to record drums at a real studio. But I'm going to do a test song first. I love the challenge of trying to 1-Up my mixes.

 

[RedDog]

Is the room symmetrical with no objecting structures? How high is the ceiling?

 

[bryan_kilco]

I'll be there tonight. I'll take measurements. There is a furnace down there in it's own little "side room", so there is an opening there. And there is an oil tank in there. It's not my idea of a recording room by any means, but it's all we have to work with as our guitarist turned his other room into a bar area.

I know, it's gonna be rough either way, but I figured ANTHING I can do to help would be good. I'm going to record a 30-60 second test song and see how it turns out, as well as program drums for the same test....this way I can present both versions to the guys and let them decide which one they like better.

 

[Sloan]

dude, check out google sketchup, you can input real world measurements.
i used it a while back to kind of plan for moving a bunch of stuff around, to see if it would fit right. you could use your sketchup thing to possibly help notice first reflection points etc...

http://www.sketchup.com/

big pic, so i linked instead of embedded:
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/478389_405639659469426_507507677_o.jpg

 

[bryan_kilco]

Awesome, thanks! I'll check this out now.

EDIT: Ok, that's pretty cool. But it's beyond my abilities so far until I mess with it a bit more.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Pretty crude example of our room. But of course we could move the drums wherever would be best.