Removable vocal / acoustic recording room

mcmac74

Active member
We'll soon be moving house and will finally have a spare room so I can move past recording at the dining room table or on the sofa...sadly the spare room won't be a dedicated studio space but it is at least somewhere I can camp out in for the odd day here and there ?...I'm therefore looking for a temporary structure to record in rather than room treatment. I came across this idea on the web and would be interested to hear folks thoughts on it for recording vocals and acoustic guitar. The structure definitely needs to be something I can pack away

How to Build The Best DIY Vocal Booth (On a Budget)

Cheers Mark
 
A makeshift 'blanket booth' may be ok if you are doing voiceovers, but tend to make singing vocals boxy. YMMV

Much better is to make/buy acoustic 'bass' traps - rockwool or compressed fiberglass at least 4" thick. These gobo panels can be moved, stacked, stored, etc.
 
A makeshift 'blanket booth' may be ok if you are doing voiceovers, but tend to make singing vocals boxy. YMMV

Much better is to make/buy acoustic 'bass' traps - rockwool or compressed fiberglass at least 4" thick. These gobo panels can be moved, stacked, stored, etc.

Ok...i had another thought that those tall folding exhibition stands curved around the mic with acoustic blankets draped over may also make a decent temporary treatment that isn't completely dry?
 
If you want to simplify your life without needing to make any kind of temporary vocal booth...just use any larger closet in the house, with the clothes in there.
If you have a walk-in closet...even better.
 
If you want to simplify your life without needing to make any kind of temporary vocal booth...just use any larger closet in the house, with the clothes in there.
If you have a walk-in closet...even better.

Really? Very few houses have a walk in wardrobe as such and most wardrobes aren't as tall or wide as an average person...so how would you expect to do a decent vocal performance in there whilst also doing what you need to on your DAW?
 
If you are not able to have a dedicated room for recording, and need to have a demountable system, just get hold of a trolley of some sort, put everything on it, and when you want to record, just wheel it into the biggest room of the house.
 
If you are not able to have a dedicated room for recording, and need to have a demountable system, just get hold of a trolley of some sort, put everything on it, and when you want to record, just wheel it into the biggest room of the house.

The room my gear will be in is a decent sized double bedroom. As its gonna be a guest room at times I can't treat it as a permanent studio hence my need for a temporary recording solution. Room size is not necessarily the issue and I dont yet know how the room will be to record in as we haven't moved yet...much of what I read about room treatments are about removing refections etc, hence me looking at some kind of booth or acoustic screening set within the room.


Mark
 
When we closed up one of our manufacturing plants, I grabbed 4 of the office divider panels which are 6ft x 4ft. They won't do much for stopping deep bass frequencies, but for vocal work, they are great. I can set up 2 panels in a V and add a 3rd behind me to control the room sound.

When I first got my R24, I did my vocal work in the bedroom. A double wide closet full of clothes, plus a king size bed with a thick duvet, carpet and drapes gives a pretty nice space without much flutter or slap echo. The R24 is so portable that I could be in and out in about 20 minutes.
 
Really? Very few houses have a walk in wardrobe as such and most wardrobes aren't as tall or wide as an average person...so how would you expect to do a decent vocal performance in there whilst also doing what you need to on your DAW?

You must not be from the USA! Many/most houses here have large closets. But you'll get the same effect as surrounding yourself with blankets - a boxy sound. The highs get absorbed, but not the low-mids or lows.
 
You must not be from the USA! Many/most houses here have large closets. But you'll get the same effect as surrounding yourself with blankets - a boxy sound. The highs get absorbed, but not the low-mids or lows.

That hasn't been my experience. I just got a mostly dry sound. I don't have enough lows or low-mids in my voice to get lots of frequency buildup. At ~150 Hz the wavelength is about 7.5 ft so I am not trying to record wavelengths a lot longer than the room. Most vocal sounds are from 2-300Hz to about 3kHz. Most room modes above 300Hz get obscured by other room effects anyway, so having a lot of absorbent surfaces, plus furniture really breaks up most reflections.

I guess if the room was mostly empty, things would be different.
 
You must not be from the USA! Many/most houses here have large closets. But you'll get the same effect as surrounding yourself with blankets - a boxy sound. The highs get absorbed, but not the low-mids or lows.

Ha ha...you'd be right there. We live in relative shoeboxes by comparison!

When we closed up one of our manufacturing plants, I grabbed 4 of the office divider panels which are 6ft x 4ft. They won't do much for stopping deep bass frequencies, but for vocal work, they are great. I can set up 2 panels in a V and add a 3rd behind me to control the room sound.

When I first got my R24, I did my vocal work in the bedroom. A double wide closet full of clothes, plus a king size bed with a thick duvet, carpet and drapes gives a pretty nice space without much flutter or slap echo. The R24 is so portable that I could be in and out in about 20 minutes.

Yeah,just the sort of idea I had.

Is there any benefit to recording acoustic guitar in this ' dampened ' environment in your experiences?
 
Yeah,just the sort of idea I had.

Is there any benefit to recording acoustic guitar in this ' dampened ' environment in your experiences?

Certainly, it depends on what your room sounds like by itself. I have some issues in my basement so it helps control things.

GIK Acoustics makes panels that are movable/foldable. They look to be a good solution for a temporary or occasional setup. There are numerous videos on Youtube showing them in use.

If you are handy, you could probably make them yourself, much like Miroslav has done with his studio build.
 
If you are 'doing up' the new place get it wired!
For about $100 you can buy 1000ft of 4 pair CAT5e shielded cable. Run iin as many lines as you can to as many rooms as you can.
You can run 4 mics down each cable or line signals (not in the same cable) video two ways, S/PDIF. VGA. Thus you can set PC and AI etc in a fixed place and have mics in the best room.

You can of course use balanced 'mic' cable but for the same number of 'ways' cost you a shedload more.

Dave.
 
That hasn't been my experience. I just got a mostly dry sound. I don't have enough lows or low-mids in my voice to get lots of frequency buildup. At ~150 Hz the wavelength is about 7.5 ft so I am not trying to record wavelengths a lot longer than the room. Most vocal sounds are from 2-300Hz to about 3kHz. Most room modes above 300Hz get obscured by other room effects anyway, so having a lot of absorbent surfaces, plus furniture really breaks up most reflections.

I guess if the room was mostly empty, things would be different.
For voice, the boxy frequency range is around 600Hz. The highs get absorbed, but not the boxy range, you can then EQ the track(s) during mixdown, but its better to record it well. Depending on how you are listening to the recorded tracks, you may not be able to hear the boxiness, a Spectrum analyzer on the track may show it after tracking.

I resisted the idea of room treatment for a couple of years - making a duvet 'tent' to record vocals in at first, then using my biggest room with duvets hanging behind me. Of course, I could not 'hear' the true mix sound in an untreated room and would need to burn CD-Rs (remember those?) of my mixes to listen on a few different systems, then remix based on notes, and repeat, and repeat.
 
Ha ha...you'd be right there. We live in relative shoeboxes by comparison!



Yeah,just the sort of idea I had.

Is there any benefit to recording acoustic guitar in this ' dampened ' environment in your experiences?

TBH it sounds like you are kinda putting the cart before the horse. IOW first find out how the room sounds when it is complete.

As has been mentioned, a completely "dead" recording may not be the best option. It is often only done to alleviate a problem a particular room is causing. Your finished room may sound just fine for most recording. It depends very much on what the end result is supposed to sound like for the arrangement.

I have found that in even good sounding rooms there are often annoying flutter echoes off the ceiling, however you may or may not find this to be an issue. This can be reduced very easily with the thick blanket/duvet.

So my basic advice is find out what you have to start with by actually recording in the finished space, then decide what correction or sound shaping needs be done.
 
TBH it sounds like you are kinda putting the cart before the horse.

Quite possibly. I've only ever recorded in untreated family rooms so to have a room i can actually leave gear out overnight has me a little excited..I'm looking at all options that may improve the recordings so I'll have to see how the sound shapes up.
 
Basically you are asking for something that doesn't exist and there may be good reasons for that. Like it may be impossible?

There are those portable blanket type vocal booths as already mentioned for voice overs. They may treat the sound inside to a certain degree but do they prevent outside sound from ruining a recording? I doubt it.

So unfortunately the only answer is a dedicated studio/room/booth.
 
"
Is there any benefit to recording acoustic guitar in this ' dampened ' environment in your experiences?"

Possibly not mac'. When you have a 'stuffed' rather dead room as we do it was improved for acoustic guitar by a layer of Hardboard* over the carpet Small room, 12'x12.5'x8.5'.

*Not sure what that is in USA? Brown, 1/8" thick (can be 1/4" but rarer) Has a shiny side and a dull side with minute pimples.

Dave.
 
Basically you are asking for something that doesn't exist and there may be good reasons for that. Like it may be impossible?

There are those portable blanket type vocal booths as already mentioned for voice overs. They may treat the sound inside to a certain degree but do they prevent outside sound from ruining a recording? I doubt it.

So unfortunately the only answer is a dedicated studio/room/booth.

My original post is about something that very much does exist...how fit for purpose that is is debatable and what is being discussed.

I'd imagine the 'only' answer being a dedicated studio / room would be the case if you record for your living...however the vast majority here record as a hobby with various constraints on that whether it being space, time or only a basic grasp of how room acoustics work. Ive posed the question because I like to make small gains where I can and learn as much from folks here with more experience.

"
Is there any benefit to recording acoustic guitar in this ' dampened ' environment in your experiences?"

Possibly not mac'. When you have a 'stuffed' rather dead room as we do it was improved for acoustic guitar by a layer of Hardboard* over the carpet Small room, 12'x12.5'x8.5'.

*Not sure what that is in USA? Brown, 1/8" thick (can be 1/4" but rarer) Has a shiny side and a dull side with minute pimples.

Dave.

I'm UK too Dave so I know my hardboard ?....my dining room has a wooden floor with only hard furniture within it...thus there's quite a nice reverb to the room but I wonder if its too much and would benefit from a wee bit of dampening
 
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