Linoleum on a drum room floor?

[the riff]

I'm building a drum room that is approximately 16' x 18'. I wanted to know if I could get away with doing the floors with linoleum and still get a decent sound...? I guess my next step up price wise would be Pergo. I realize hardwood is the ultimate choice but I'm pretty sure I can't afford that.

Any other options?

What would people here recommend?

BTW the ceilings will be 9 feet high.

The walls will be Gyp Board.

[carlsaff]

I believe Albini's first studio (in the basement of his house) had linoleum on the drum room floor. Shorter ceilings than yours, too.

Lots of cool drum sounds captured there... Archers of Loaf's "Vee Vee" and Polvo's "Today's Active Lifestyles" (both recorded there with Bob Weston engineering) come to mind...

[the riff]

Wow, that's very good information. 1 argument for Linoleum anyway

[drumsound]

Bill Putnam's rooms had Linoleum floors. Universar in Chicago and the big room at what was Cello.

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[cgarges]

Some of my favorite drum rooms I've ever been in have had linoleum floors.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[the riff]

DAMN, I didn't know Cello had them as well when they were around.

Linoleum it is then .

Thanks guys.

[JohnDavisNYC]

Room C in Avatar has linoleum in the drum room in the back right. can't remember if it was half linoleum and half carpet... something like that. the main part of C is all wood, but there is a room with linoleum. haven't been there in like 6 years, though... can't remnember.

john

[goldstar]

Riff

I think the sound of your room is going to be determined more by it's proportions than the surface covering. The acoustic designer I've worked with would, I think, agree that 90% (+ or -) of the sound comes from room proportion vs. the other bit that would come from one hard surface treatment vs. another (wood, gypboard, linoleum, etc.). Something softer, like carpet or cork, will change it some due to more tendency to absorb high frequencies, but even that still pales in comparison to the effect of room modes.

I'm guessing that your room length being twice the height will cause way more effect than using lino vs. something else, because of modal reinforcement; this could be really good or really bad, depending on how those reinforced frequencies work with the drum sound you're after.

You can make any of them sound OK if room modes are spaced as evenly as you can. The place to check this further would be Alton Everest's books (Master Handbook of Acoustics if you want a reference on all things acoustic, Build a Small Budget Recording Studio from Scratch for something with more applications to your situation.) Another place to look for help would be John Sayer's studio construction forum (www.johnlsayers.com).

Good luck; let us know what you decide on.

Frank

[the riff]

Thanks Frank. I'll check that stuff out. I've been reading a lot on the JohnlSayers site since I started this.
One thing about the room is that non of the walls will be paralell which will hopefully help out a lot. I know I'm going to need diffusers and bass traps but I'm just going to take it step by step and see what needs to be purchased.

[PaulWells]

I recently finished my first room which is just a sectioned off portion of my garage. I put vinyl tile over concrete for the floors for two reasons.

The first being that I thought a reflective floor with semi aborbive ceiling would sound much better to the overhead mics than an absorbive floor and reflective ceiling would. I'm pretty sure reflective floor and ceiling would not be a good idea because of the potential for comb filtering. In the end this proved to be very true to my ears. The room has a very live yet tight sound... but much of the tight portion of this is due to the acoustic treatments I have done to the room in terms of bass traps, broadband absorbtion and some diffusion.

The second reason however I used vinyl tile is you can make it look really cool. I had allot of fun with the various colors and patterns. Do a google search on tile patterns and you'll see some really great ideas. I would have used linoleum as you can get even cooler colors than with viny tile but linoleum is really expensive compared to vinyl tile...last I checked it was between 3.50 to 5.00 dollars per square foot as opposed to 1.25 or so a square foot for vinyl.

here's a picture of my floor during construction:

[drumsound]

Here's my control room floor.

[soundguy]

If I remember right the main room at cherokee had linoleum floors and its possible that the big big room at sound city does as well, you can find linoleum in lots of places. Dont look at the floor as this isolated thing that is gonna influence your room this way or that, its just one surface thats part of a complicated system. There are obvious advantages to this kind of material compared to that kind of material, but whatever material you chose, its then up to you to make the rest of the surfaces in the system work together as a whole. Linoleum is a good starting point if you are trying to make a "tight" sounding room. Many ways to skin a cat though.

stepping up price wise to pergo might not be a step up sonically compared to vinyl tile, especially not so if you can find a tile that has a matte finish. With the budget I had at the time I installed pergo type floors in my control room and in retrospect I probably would have been better off with linoleum, to me, it seems like it might be an easier material to make sound good as part of a whole system (compared to pergo) if you have a limited budget.

dave

[jmoose]

FWIW, Pergo is probably the WORST choice you can make for a high traffic floor that's going to get beat on...like a live room. It's basically a picture of wood that's about 1/16" thick and it doesn't take long for it to start looking like crap. At one time I worked out of a shop that had Pergo in the live room and there were few 3 or 4 foot long gashs from shuffling cases around, moving the B3 and stuff like that. Not to mention tons of little digs and dents and it all adds up. You can always resurface real wood but the only "fix" for Pergo is replacement. The ONLY place I'd use it is the lounge, office or bedroom.

Another option that's really cool if you want wood is to lay sheets of furniture grade plywood and apply a dozen or so coats of poly to it. I'm not sure what it works out to in cost per square foot because it depends on the type of ply you get (birch, oak, maple etc) and thickness...but I've seen it done and those 4x8' sheets looked killer!

[the riff]

I had a feeling about that and pergo. I have it in my control room and it does fine, but I figured with drums, amps being lugged around, I'm sure it could get pretty damaged. I'm definitely going with linoleum.