Really tall ceiling.. vocal booth???????

[Oxcyde]

Ok guys I've built a small vocal booth that would have worked so damn well in a more "modern" home but I'm living in an old-style terrace house with massive ceilings. I've built booths before and they've worked great but even after building this booth my voice still seems to escape which is ok for natural reverb but this room is so spacious it has atleast a second or so reverb and my mic is picking up the whole lot.
The recording takes sound like poo and I really need some advice in what I could actually do, because I really don't want to spend much more money and I don't want this booth to go to waste!!!

Thanks.
P.S If you need pics I got pics.

[Dani Pace]

Do you have a top on your booth? If not, add one.

[Nightfire]

What ^^ said. Put a roof on that thing.
And post some pics for those of us interested in doing the same thing.


Mike

[Oxcyde]

There is a roof I have made which sits on top... what I did was bought 2 large pieces of wood, about door size, then hinged them together and nailed in egg crate foam.

The remainder off-cuts of foam I had left, I just stapled the foam to some cardboard which just sits on top.

What I also did was, in the corner of this room I've just stuck some velcro on the wall and applied it to 2 pieces of foam, so it creates a corner foam which also makes it non-permanent. Then just sat the booth I made in the corner so it's 4 walls.

Now there are gaps...but small ones. But holy crap it just sounds like there is no walls at all.. this room is acoustic paradise!
I really need some sorta of bass trap contraption going on here...

[Oxcyde]

PS I'll get pics up asap!

[Dani Pace]

Cardboard and foam on top? Total waste of time!
Bare wood, hinged together? Another wasted effort.
You need solid walls and top, with some broadband absorbers, maybe carpet on the floor too. I've learned from experience that cheap flimsy booths just don't work, they neither seperate or isolate and usually sound like crap.

[Oxcyde]

I've built the same things before and have worked great, it's just this room. The wooden panels are padded with foam btw.

[Dani Pace]

The purpose of a vocal booth is to NOT record the room. The booth you have described allows sounds out, they bounce around the room, they get back in and the mic picks them up. The reason that type of booth worked in other rooms is obvious, they were better sounding rooms, you got less room sound because there was less to start with. As an experiment, try recording a vocal without the booth, same voice, same position, same settings, then set up your booth and record again. If the recording with the booth still has room sounds (ambience) the booth is not serving it's intended purpose.

[Oxcyde]

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to these replies... but is there anything you can think of that could reduce the acoustics some more? Or know of a source I could read up on?

I'll try that experiment you suggested.

[Dani Pace]

Read as many responses from Ethan Winer as possible here on the bbs, check out his website too, ethanwiner.com. He knows more about treating rooms for the best sound than anyone else I can think of. He knows all the technical stuff but can explain things in terms the average person can easily understand. This wont help but I tried various materals for building a vocal booth without much success, finally I ended up using a seperate room for vocals, this was easier than building a booth tight enough to serve its real purpose. My main tracking room is smaller than yours (mine is 13'X27' with 10' ceiling) and it took quite a bit of treatment to get it to sound decent for recording, the room I mostly use for vocals is 9'X11' with 8' ceiling and moderately treated.