$500 Drum Booth Follow Up: Is Room Treatment Still Worth It When We Apply Compression?

This is the follow up to my last video where we compared the different stages of treatment of my drum room: before treatment, when I installed the walls of the booth, and finally when the whole booth was complete.

One of the main takeaways from that first video was that while there was a difference between the three tests, in a practical real world setting, we would typically be using compression to get the drums to sit well in the mix. I had a hunch that the three different levels of treatment might take to processing differently, and thus this second test!

In this test, I take the same tracks and put them through the type of processing I would typically use for drums.

Phase 1: No treatment, so that we could hear what all three phases of the build sound like, so this was our controll group.

Phase 2: I applied parallel compression, which is when you send the raw track to a second highly compressed, aggressively eqed track with accentuated low and high frequencies that sits underneath the main track to add more presence, punch, and even out the performance.

Phase 3: I utilized the same parallel compression, but added a plate reverb to get a bit more room sound into the mix. I would do this in a normal mix so that the drums would sit back better and add a subtle touch of ambiance.

Phase 4: We concluded the test with the 1176 "nuke trick", which is when you push down all the buttons on an 1176. This trick is typically used on room mics to get things pumping and add some harmonics, but I felt it would be a fun and useful addition to the test.

I learned a lot about my room from building my drum booth and making these comparisons. Which phase of the test do you think sounded the best? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction To Test
2:17 Before Treatment
2:37 Parallel Compression
2:59 Parallel Compression With Plate Reverb
3:19 1176 Nuke Trick
3:39 Side By Side No Treatment vs. Fully Treated
4:29 Final Thoughts

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