The stoneage problem: drums too loud

Zwiebelchen

Zwiebelchen

Fractal Fanatic
We recently downgraded from a comfy 60 squaremeter rehearsal place to a room much much smaller than that (unfortunately, no other choice here; the rehearsal space situation is terrible in my town).

We used to play without earplugs just fine in the old room. Now, after the downgrade, we simply can not do that anymore. Earplugs, however, suck away the sound and clarity. Everything sounds muffled and just overall worse than without.
So what's the solution?

Obviously, there's only so much you can do as a drummer in terms of playing softer if the room is just way too small.
We applied what acoustic treatment kits we had to at least reduce early reflections a bit. Nothing really helped. Still piercing volume levels from the drums.

I know there are these plexi glass drum shields, but I'd rather have that option as a last resort, simply because they are expensive (not like we couldn't pay for it... it's just that I feel that $300-600 for three simple cuts of plexiglass is an outright SCAM and it also makes the monitoring situation harder. Also, I'm not sure if that really solves our problem.



Any suggestions? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who deals with this problem. What helped? What didn't? Share your experiences!
 
I'm afraid every solution has its price.

Plexi shields.... do not absorb, so the sound will be reflected, depending on what's on the walls.

Silent rehearsing with a JamHub or mixer with a lot of AUX buses... I like that a lot.

Electronic drums...

You also have acoustic drum sets which sound softer....

Other drum sticks...
 
yek said:
I'm afraid every solution has its price.

Plexi shields.... do not absorb, so the sound will be reflected, depending on what's on the walls.

Silent rehearsing with a JamHub or mixer with a lot of AUX buses... I like that a lot.

Electronic drums...

You also have acoustic drum sets which sound softer....

Other drum sticks...
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Hmm; the problem is that I'm not a drummer, so there is no value for me in investing into anything that is only useful for the drummer per se. And our drummer is broke as fuck and I'm the only one with disposable income.

But I also thought about the headphones solution. I was thinking about getting one of those 4-channel headphone amps... they are cheap as fuck for what they do and offer a lot of extra routing options. And a good pair of cans can isolate sound pretty well. The problem is that this makes communication between band members a lot harder, unless they all have vocal mics.
Also, it makes leveling of presets a bit harder to do, as headphone levels do not translate well to live levels.
 
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Our drummer's dynamics go from extremely loud to "neighbors called the cops again". We use a headphone mixer amp and stations for each person (Furman HDS6/HR6). Haven't had the need to mic the drums much, just 2 overheads.. Guitar/bass direct. Everything runs through a Presonus Firestudio.

The only problem we ended up with was that a majority of the headphones we tried didn't block enough noise. Invested in GK Ultraphones and it was all set. Our space is small as well.. one thing worth paying attention to is mic placement and type (directional, etc).
 
Have you tried hearos? They're expensive but, well worth it. They're earplugs that retain sound quality a lot better than regular ones do.
 
Second the musician earplugs. There's a slight loss of high end, but it's pretty minor, and the overall experience has been great for me. I use a -9 dB filter in a custom fitted set and it's about perfect. If your rehearsal volume is hellishly loud, you can also get -15 and -25 dB filters, I think.
 
We rented a plexi shield for a recent lower volume gig and it worked great for limiting the drum volumes into the room.
 
I use the -15db custom plugs.
It does cut a ton of high end but after 20 years I'm used to it.
If I play without, it sounds too shrill for me now (with drums).
 
After going through all of this for me the only thing that really worked was to buy a pair of vater drummers plugs......

you can't really do anything about a small room unless you go with electronic drums.
 
glad my drummer likes electric drums, easy to play at any level, quick to set up. just don't look as cool! of course a real good drummer learns this thing called dynamics!
 
paranoid said:
glad my drummer likes electric drums, easy to play at any level, quick to set up. just don't look as cool! of course a real good drummer learns this thing called dynamics!
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I bought a Roland TD 11k set myself as I like to lay down beats for scratch tracks. My only complaint is the snare. you pretty much need a real snare IMO.
 
Severed said:
I bought a Roland TD 11k set myself as I like to lay down beats for scratch tracks. My only complaint is the snare. you pretty much need a real snare IMO.
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I am not a drummer at all but I don't like to program drums either so I have a Yamaha set my self. yes most e kits are not the same as an acoustic set but at stage volume at a bar most would not be able to tell the difference if they could not see it!
 
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