Isolation/vocal booth - Dimensions and material advise needed

dennis_hs

New member
Hello forum,
Newbie here. :)

I am currently considering building a vocal booth, but need a little guidance. The primary purpose of the booth is to not disturb the neighbors. Or put differently, I don't want them to hear me!
Also, heavy acoustic treatment and bass-trapping is of course a prime concern.

But I am facing some issues regarding the internal size. In Denmark, external building close to the neighbor's property must comply with certain rules. One is that it must not exceed a certain height. With floor and roof this gives very little space within that building to create a room within a room. Inside there is roughly about 220 cm of height to work with. And external width cannot exceed 170 cm due to floor construction. So, in this regard I need the most optimum length and width. I expect wall thickness around 10 cm (give and take a little based on the materials).

A different approach is to take the Bolt-area into the equation. But does this make sense in booths this size? The best I can get for the internal height (190 cm) is 190x150x120 cm (HxLxW). A width of 110 cm shows as even better. Can this be right? Is this really the best size for that height? I used the calculator from amroc.andymel.eu

Another thing is what I should use for beams. Possibly 99 % of all pictures on Google shows wooden frames. But I am gradually leaning towards steel. I know that some say that the steel cannot hold the weight of the ceiling. But what it the corner steel beams are reinforced by wood? Is steel even something to consider? Of course, wood is stronger and can be taken apart more easily than steel if needed. Temperature change is also a factor that could play a part. Right now there is no heating unit installed of any kind. But a heat pump is scheduled to be installed this year. But the entire building is made of wood, not bricks.

I plan on using fiber gypsum which is 80 % gypsum and 20 % paper fibers and packs more density and weight than standard gypsum. There will be one layer per side. Insulation, Rockwool of some kind..

I’ve spend a lot of hours searching as much info as possible, but my primary concern here is the size of my future booth.

Any thoughts and considerations will be greatly appreciated! :)

PS. I will definitely NOT be singing falsetto, quite the contrary! Unless doing a King Diamond cover :)

....sorry for length and clutter :)
 
Mmm...I'm kinda lost in what it is you are trying to build and where.
Are you talking about building an external space...like outside....or are you talking about building a vocal booth inside your house/studio space?

Not really following all the stuff about the codes for dimensions, etc. I mean, if you are building an iso-booth inside, just build it as big as you can/want.
 
I see the text might seem confusing :)

I have an small wooden building decoupled from the main house. Inside that building I want to build a vocal booth (room within a room).

And my main problem here is, should I build as large as possible or should I take Bolt-area into consideration and pay attention to dimension ratios? :)
 
TBH...regardless of where you build it...with a small vocal/iso booth, there's not going to be much question about proper dimensions and acoustics. IOW...you're going for dead-quiet...right?...which is the same thing as taking the room acoustics out of the equation.
 
I have no idea what the dimensions are as I don't do metric, however, the bolt area tells you if your room is adequate for recording/mixing/mastering. The ideal situation is to have three different dimensions. 10 foot x 12 foot with 8 foot ceilings, etc. Now, this is only a suggestion and I have seen it in action and it works.

Get some 2 inch pvc pipe and fittings. Build a frame and then layer heavy moving blankets or quilts all over that puppy! As far as an iso booth goes, it is pretty sweet. Normal conversation is around 65dbs. The last one I was in, had 74dbs on the inside and 50dbs 10 foot away on the outside and 40dbs 20 feet away. I will be building one this week end. I will build a diagram for you if you like, you just need to give me the dimensions in feet and inches.
 
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http://www.massivemastering.com/special/SmallVocalBooth.pdf
Good isolation *and* decent acoustics. Can be left lively or made very dry.

Now that is a good size vocal booth...more like a small iso-room than a "booth". For many home-rec studios, that would probably fill up most of their available space.

Most home-rec people end up building something the not much bigger than a phone booth...and for them, "acoustics" aren't going to be a relative concern, just make it super-dead....which I don't put much value in. Maybe for voice-overs.
 
If you are already in a small room why have a vocal booth? My main studio is my vocal booth and it's 34 sq Mtrs (366 sq Feet).

Alan.
 
I'm not even sure if I still have this online but I'm going to type a URL and see what happens:

massivemastering.com/special/SmallVocalBooth.pdf

[EDIT] Holy crap - I remembered it! Good isolation *and* decent acoustics. Can be left lively or made very dry.

Hello John.

That looks pretty interesting :)
Quick question: Would you think it is possible to scale down and adjust accordingly?

The total space I have available right now is: 5.5' (w) x 6' (l) x 7' (h)
And this is the external space. Walls will roughly be 5 inches thick. So this would give internal dimensions (WxLxH) of around 5' x 5.5' x 6'.
Length can be stretched, but not far.
Sadly, dimension are limited. Mainly because of the floor and door location.

To give a better understanding, here is a pic of the room:

The rulers was just to see how much 5'x5' would look like..

drive.google.com/open?id=0B_oPpMEBrQ9rM1VteTAtbHRWeEU
 

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Don't forget about some sort of ventilation...mostly cooling and fresh air.
A small booth will get uncomfortable pretty fast without it.

IMO...you should get over the shyness and just use that entire space. :)
You will get much better results.
 
Your dimensional mockup only considered 1 wall in each direction, if you have 5" thick walls (which probably are not enough to block ALL sound), then 2 walls (left and right, back and front) = 10", so you're going to be down to 4'8" x 5"2". If the inside walls are left as cloth, then whatever insulation (rockwool, pink stuff, whatever) will do some abosrption inside, but if you have any kind of hard surface inside (sheetrock, wood), then you are going to need trapping inside to deaden it more. A small room like this might be ok for voiceovers, but not for singing.
 
First job IMHO is to gather data! Buy a sound level meter and pay a reasonable sum and make sure it has a 'C' scale on it.

Then setup a small loudspeaker in your room at about 'singing' head height and play some vocal tracks from a CD/Tube. Note the average SPL around the room, you want about 80dB (but Massive might comment) .

Now go outside and check, can you hear it and what is the reading? Doing this will tell you how much you need to reduce the sound level and if it is practical to get there.

Dave.
 
Sadly, dimension are limited. Mainly because of the floor and door location. To give a better understanding, here is a pic of the room: The rulers was just to see how much 5'x5' would look like..
drive.google.com/open?id=0B_oPpMEBrQ9rM1VteTAtbHRWeEU

If you plan on doing heavy bass trapping as well as sound treatment in this small room, so others can not hear you, you will likely suck the life out of your vocals. 33% Treated, 33% UN treated and 33% diffusion is a great place to start.

First job IMHO is to gather data! Buy a sound level meter and pay a reasonable sum and make sure it has a 'C' scale on it. Then setup a small loudspeaker in your room at about 'singing' head height and play some vocal tracks from a CD/Tube. Note the average SPL around the room, you want about 80dB (but Massive might comment) . Now go outside and check, can you hear it and what is the reading? Doing this will tell you how much you need to reduce the sound level and if it is practical to get there. Dave.

VERY GOOD ADVICE!
 
Hey, sorry for the (very) late reply. I have not around much to play around with the plans.

I did a little Photoshop based on the excellent pdf drawing from Massive Master. Mainly angles and degrees (unless I f'ed up somewhere in the application).

drive.google.com/file/d/0B_oPpMEBrQ9rWDNjenZrWWZlZ00/view?usp=sharing

How would this work out? I think it's pretty much the best I can do with the space I have and the great advises I have got here...
 
Been a while since I seen the Hulk in a sound booth! LOL. As far as singing goes you may be able to scale it down with favorable results. A lot of these dimensions have the angles for that particular layout. As far as sound proofing goes, especially bass trapping, IMHO, you simply do not have the space needed.
 
If the inside walls are left as cloth, then whatever insulation (rockwool, pink stuff, whatever) will do some abosrption inside...
This is the best answer. You've built 4" deep broadband absorbers over the entire inside area. Why would you then cover them with drywall and make them useless? Then you have to put more traps inside that!

There's also this thing they talk about regarding the number of "leaves" in the system. I don't completely get that part but from what I can tell "leaves" are basically the hard walls with space between them, and some people who went to school for exactly this have said that two leaves is good and three leaves is bad. If this is going inside a typical shed-type structure, that's one leaf. The outside drywall on your new structure is two, then IF you put drywall inside, that makes three and for whatever reason won't be as effective.

Put all the drywall on the outside. Use as many layers as practical, and preferably with green glue between. In some situations, people will try to save outside dimensions by putting cutting it and fitting it between the studs, but you shouldn't have to. Stuff the cavities with as much of the heaviest insulation you can find and cover it with some kind of fabric. Weedstop fabric from your local lawn and garden store is cheap and works, but it's ugly as shit.

Don't even think about leaving reflective surfaces. Nothing that small can possibly sound good unless you kill it to death.
 
This is the best answer. You've built 4" deep broadband absorbers over the entire inside area. Why would you then cover them with drywall and make them useless? Then you have to put more traps inside that!

Because the OP wants a isolation booth to keep the sound in as not to disturb his neighbors. You will find this request in the first post. To build 2x4 walls and fill them with insulation covered in cloth is nothing but a waste of money. Even if he/she wanted to build a room inside a room, they simply do not have the space needed to do it properly.
 
The primary purpose of the booth is to not disturb the neighbors. Or put differently, I don't want them to hear me!
@Ashcat_It. Like I said, the first post! The key word here is "Primary". And yes, the best and cheapest thing the OP can do is to build some flutter control inside the room using heavy moving blankets and pvc pipe, unless you want to explain to him why he will spend thousands of dollars trying to sound proof it and then and few more hundred more to apply room treatment for vocals.
 
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