...,our best engineer in the country for about 3yrs now and some top engineers here record in a booth half to the booth i put up here...he uses presonus audiobox with two preamps below $100,behringer c-3 below $100 and a krk monitors but still get great quality...
I'm curious, what country is that...where are you located?
Who is that best engineer?
AFA the booth...hey, if people need to see a booth for you to get work...then put in the booth...
...but anyone that tells you you can't record quality stuff without a booth, doesn't know what they are talking about.
There are specific uses and times when you have to use one, but you can do a lot of recording without ever needing one.
The "booths" you see in some of the high-end studios are big enough to park a car in
and they are more what you would call "isolation rooms" than booths.
Anyway....more bigger/open spaces are always going to sound better...IF they are acoustically good.
If you have lousy sounding rooms, then sometimes using a booth is a way around that.
Oh...do those same people ask you what kind of DAW you have and what brand of plug-ins you use...?
And RAMI is giving it to you honest and straight. Go to the MP3 Clinic and check out his voclas on the song he posted.
THey sound great...no booth