As far as drums go, it's gonna come down to what mic's you are using, and what quality of pre-amps you are using. I take it you do not have any outboard gear (pre-amps)?
You should only need 3 to 5 mic's for a great sound, but the Mackie pre-amps are only so good for drums. IMO

Also .... the 13' by 13' is a problem. Because the dimensions are the same, that room is going to be so full of nulls and nodes there is little you can do other than bass trap the crap out of it and hang a ton of absorption up. But it's gonna be pretty dead sounding.

If that' cool with you, ok. Otherwise perhaps you should seek another space to work in. Here's a hint ..... small rooms suck. You need at least 14 feet in any direction for a "legal" room.

Yeah i know tell me about...i plan on moving to a much better location in a couple months or so, but this is all i have to work with now.....so until i upgrade to a better room, what do you recommend i use for absorption? Any low cost or house hold things that work decent that i can get for the time being?

You should only need 3 to 5 mic's for a great sound, but the Mackie pre-amps are only so good for drums. IMO

Yeah, but it was all i could really afford for the time being, so how bad are they really? Just wondering, since i dont really have access to any other gear really, so i was wondering if pre-amps really make an astounding amount of difference......Also what a some resonably priced mic's i can get for overheads......And what do you recommend....right now im using a Shure Beta 52(Kick) SM57(Snare, Toms, Flr Tom) and my marshall MXL 2001 and 603s for overheads.......so what else do you recommend, or how can i try and make do with these mics?

i also want to thank you for your reply`s guys, finding this site has been a massive discovery for me.....the wealth of info is unreal!

Ok this might sound a bit weird, but what the hell..... bass trap the hell out of the place as Kurt mentioned above (which will kill the room right.) THEN...

I ran into this problem awhile back and did this. Leave the bedroom door open and hang a mic in the hallway or stairwell - whatever's there. It won't be a good verb, it'll probably have a fast slap back - whatever, save the track.

Now once you have your dry drum track add some plugin verb. Don't use a big verb, stick to a room type verb and add only enough until the the drums don't sound dry. Then fade in some of that hallway verb. Again, just enough that you can tell the difference when you mute it.

What I've found is that adding a small dose of this kind of slappy real world verb gets rid of the "fakeness" that plugin verbs tend to sound like - it makes it sound like a real room. You have to be carefull though - if you overdo the hallway verb it can sound really weird depending on the delay. I would aslo add a bit of soft compression to the drums to give a slightly bigger sound BUT I wouldn't compress the hallway track (the opposite of everything people tell me hehehe) because I found the compression on a room mic in this situation enhances the "good, bad, an the ugly". Just fade it in enough to to keep it real.

My drum room is 21X17 and sometimes I play these old drum tracks and it surprises me how real it sounds compared to my "real drums" hehehehe.

Hope this helps, but of course YMMV!

Oh, alos try this mic techique - it should work great with your mic selection

http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=39030&highlight=recorderman+drum

Stood-e-o wrote: 1) So how bad are they really?
2) Do pre-amps really make an astounding amount of difference.

1)The Mackie's are one step above "suck"
2)Yes, yes, yes, the outboard pre-amps are sooooo much better than you could ever imagine. They are not cheap however.

Just as an example of how important good pre's are, with outstanding pre's(not in my studio but a friends) i can literally use two overheads and thats it. I had a friend called BS on me so I brought a song over to my studio from my friends and muted all the other drum tracks, within two minutes he was like WOW. I can't however seem to do that with tracks recorded at my studio as good as I can with stuff recorded at his. Just thought you might find that interesting.

I say the opposite fellas :D

The mackie pre's will only hold you back if you are already getting the most out of them. Your mics, placement, and room have to be good before pre's will make any damn difference. You can get real good tracks through a little experimentation right now. When the day comes and you get better pre's, your good tracks will become better or even great tracks.

But it never ends - there's always something better, start now by getting good tracks with what you have.

awww, the Mackies are fine ... as good as any other inexpensive mic pre. When you're ready to dump some cash on mic pres, ask here and we'll try to help out.

For the time being, use what you have. Luke (hee hee hee I mean) Stewie's right (even though he is planning World domination). Good mic pres can make all the difference in the world even with a cheap SM57 in a room with bad acoustics, if you close mic the source. Actually that is part of the idea of close micing drums amps and instruments. To remove the room from the equation.

Since you're only going to be in that space for a short time, a lot of expensive room treatments would be a waste.

Go to Home Depot or a U Haul store ... or markertek.com and by a couple hundred dollars worth of moving / packing blankets. Staple them up on the walls and across the corners of the room. If you can leave a 2 or 3 inch air space behind the blankets. That will make them even more effective. When you move out, you can take the blankets down and keep them for other uses like covering a bass drum to keep spill out of the kick track, draping them over mic stand for gobos etc. No studio should be without at least several moving / packing blankets.

its that guy again wrote: The Mackie's are one step above suck

I didn't mean to imply that the Mackie wouldn't get the job done. I used Mackie boards for years. Four of them as a matter of fact. And I still use the Mackie near fields and a Mackie SDR hard drive recorder. So to listen to me, I sound like I am a harsh cirtic. And I would say, yes to that notion.
However if you try the GOOD stuff (GR, API, ect.) you would most likely say the same thing after about a weeks time.
And more importantly, if you used, say for instance a GT Brick to record for a week, and then had to record with just the Mackie pre's, you would see the difference REAL quick.
Maybe I should have said
"the Mackie are one step above Behringer" :lol:
Now I'm really stirring the pot