Building a vocal booth in my bedroom.100% soundproof. suggestions please!

C

ChrisP

New member
I want to make a vocal booth in my room. It is under/outside of the house's a/c unit. There is a park outside of my house and my window is facing it. My room is next to a washroom as well. The attic is on top of my room as well. there is noise coming into my room from every darn wall. from the ceiling and the floor. So to be precise: The room is noisy as you can possibly imagine. I want to completely soundproof the booth and make it easy to assemble and dissemble.

I want to be able to see my desk from the booth so a window will be required on one panel. That wall will also include a shelf for a cpu keyboard and one for a mouse. another for a screen.


Is it possible to build a booth in which I can record professional sounding vocals, bass and guitar tracks? Can I make one that won't allow sound to escape from the booth and won't allow any noise from outside into it. 100% soundproof!?

6 x 4.5 and 8 ft high are my restrictions. Will it be too small? will my tracks sound dead or shitty? what shape should it be considering my space restrictions? octogonal, hexagonal? rectangular?


Given the space constrictions we are looking at one person in the booth at a time.

I am guessing I will need the floor to be a foot high with dense material in it to keep rumbles and noise from other rooms to penetrate through it, same for the ceiling. Can I get away with only foams and fabrics on the interior surfaces of the wall. What kind of glass will I need? Can that glass be soundproof?


I will need to drill holes so that my interface( scarlett 2i4) mouse, keyboard and cpu screen that will connect to my laptop outside of it on a desk, can be in the booth, with two mic stands. Will the holes let sound through? Will the glass cause sound reflection.

What and how much material will i need? what will I need in there? bass traps? accoustic foams? fabrics for every interior surface ? etc etc etc etc!!!?????

Can I do it for 1 thousand bucks canadian or less? 1.5 k canadian max is my budget. am I dreaming or is this a plausible project?
 
with the small space and the requirement to be "completely soundproof", then no. you would need more traps than you can fit inside the room, can you make it better? sure. but 100 % soundproof? no. soundproofing and sound treatment are completely different animals. :D
 
6 X 4.5 is pretty small. If it isn't completely dead, it will sound boxy.

Is your bedroom on the 2nd floor? What is the floor made of? If it isn't a concrete slab you shouldn't consider building anything. You don't want to risk your additions weighing more than the house was built for. Soundproofing a room means adding mass. Enough mass to be effective is heavy.

But!! You might be surprised with how much extraneous noise you can have without it being heard in a mix. I used to have a window a/c unit permanently mounted in the wall of my studio and it was loud. Sometimes I forgot to turn it off when I recorded vocals. I could hear it when I solo'd the vocal track, but in the mix, it wasn't discernible.

You might also try hanging moving blankets along the walls. I never thought much of it, but someone came here a while ago and said it worked well for him.
 
ChrisP said:
I want to completely soundproof the booth and make it easy to assemble and dissemble.

..........

Can I do it for 1 thousand bucks canadian or less? 1.5 k canadian max is my budget. am I dreaming or is this a plausible project?
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Good luck. :)

It takes bit of mass, and building experience/knowledge to make it really soundproof...and then, you also want to be able to easily assemble and disassemble....?
That's a tall order.

I would say...buy a ready-made one...like what they have here: WhisperRoom, Inc.™ Sound Isolation Enclosures
Though...even the smallest one is out of your budget, and they're not made for constant assembling and disassembling.


I would the $1-$1.5k and use to treat the whole room...because always working in a small sound booth is not going to be very exciting or comfortable. You will hate it.
 
I know that by removing some low end with a bit of eq and applying gate compression, I get a lot of the ac noise/rumble out. It's just that I am in a town house, on the second floor, next to a washroom, someone flushes their dump... there goes one take...people usually have the sixth sense of knowing when I am nailing the perfect one before they pull :D ....my neighbor's bedroom is next to mine. The kitchen is under my room. People play loud music in my house etc etc..cars dogs..the only thing I am missing is african tribes singing with vuvuzelas going off constantly like at the world cup in south africa...I won't be surprised if one day that ends up in the background of one of my mixes..

Oh well...so it looks like I will have to keep the cats and dogs going at it with the squirrels humping in my mixes :S

thanks for the feedback though :D
 
Use your money for proper acoustic treatment - bass traps. Figure out when to do your recording - middle of the day (take a sick day from work), etc. Or just save your money up to go to a small local studio.
 
bedroom layout.jpg
in terms of soundproofing, how many decibels of noise do you think I can keep from coming in or out of the room with 1.5 thousand dollars? I am thinking of making panels to block off the door and closet areas, insulate the door as well with neoprene. one panel to clamp around the window and some panels along the wall on the right hand side (D side)

Would that be doable and to what degree would it soundproof my room to a certain degree?
 
"in terms of soundproofing, how many decibels of noise do you think I can keep from coming in or out of the room with 1.5 thousand dollars? I am thinking of making panels to block off the door and closet areas, insulate the door as well with neoprene. one panel to clamp around the window and some panels along the wall on the right hand side (D side)
Would that be doable and to what degree would it soundproof my room to a certain degree? "

I think you're on to a better direction- that being rather than thinking 'sound proof. I'm not sure but I think it might be you can use absorbent panels to fashion something enclosure-like, but with the 'walls, top, with out it becoming a resonant box and knocking the noises down significantly.
Fiber panels are quite inexpensive if you do your own mounting and covers. And my guess is it wouldn't need to be a' tight fitting' affair. May actually be better if it isn't. We'll get some gooder' guys chime in on this :>)
 
It's never easy for the guys recording at home....especially in apartments and condos and such. :D

Yes....spend the money on the room to improve the sound, maybe panels that you can place in front of the windows and trouble spots...and then pick your critical recording times based on what's going on around you.
Do more close-mic stuff, and if you have to crank the guitars at times...be very nice to your neighbors. :)
It is what is.

Only way out of that, without moving, is for you to build a room within a room...but you're not going to do it with that budget.
 
ChrisP said:
what am I looking at in terms of building a room inside of a room, money wise
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It's going to be an involved project...if you're talking about floating the entire room inside the existing room, which would be the totally pro way to do it.
Do you own the townhouse or is this a rental property...?

Anyway...I would maybe go about it differently.
Add like at least 2 layers of 3/4" sheetrock on top of the exiting walls/ceiling...and don't just nail them on, put some adhesive between them and use screws instead of nails.
That should add substantial mass to the walls/ceiling, and go a long way to cutting down the sound transmission.
Ideally, you would want to add some sort of decoupling layer, some sort of membrane, between those two layers and the existing wall...just to further break down the sound transmission.

The floor and the windows...you'll have to sort that out...but you could do the same, a decoupling layer, then drop some plywood, and then another finished layer. You could always create some bass traps that fit into the window frames, that you can remove when not recording.

Most of that you can get from your Home Depot store, or whatever hardware store you have that offers building supplies.

A lot of work, and mess...but very doable and it shouldn't be crazy expensive, especially if you are doing it all yourself....and of course, follow any codes that exist...though this wouldn't be a real problem, IMO...you're basically overbuilding what is already there....oh, and don't forget the electric...you will have to leave the existing receptacles, reassessed or pull them out and install them flush with the new layer of sheetrock.

Maybe the mods can mover this to the Studio Building forum...and some of the acoustic pros can chime in on how you can best get where you want to go, with the least cost.
 
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