A room in my room

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RobbieD

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hey im thinking of building a room within my bedroom just for vocals, and maybe guitar... SOme people say a booth is too small for vocals and ill get a boxy sound, but is a room with width being 50 inches, length 58 inches and height 7 feet good enough, help please, because im sick of trying to record vocals in my room... with bad results...
 
Even ignoring acoustics for a second, that sounds awfully small to me. With a typical boom-arm mic stand, even on the long axis you'd have the end of the boom practically touching one wall while your back was against the other. Acoustically, with untreated walls it would indeed sound very boxy. Your only hope would be some very drastic room treatment to make it completely dead like a voice over booth--but that would diminish your internal dimensions even more.

Instead of a permanent structure, may I suggest some portable screens (even just things you build yourself out of cheap plastic piping) with soft goods (something like a mover's blanket or duvet) hung over them. With these you can move them around the room and play with mic position until you get a sound you like
 
Truthfully, I've never had a problem recording in a bedroom. It just takes a bit of creativity. I like having the few reflections controlled only to a point; it's why now I consider 32 sq. ft. of foam for $50 to be a fair deal, whereas before when I thought I had to deaden everything, I saw it as a ripoff.

The amount of money you'd spend on making a new room, you could spend instead on treating yours. You'll grow immensely as a recording engineer.
 
ok so whats a good amount of space that would be good for that, the minimum amount of space
 
John Brandt recommends a minimum of 42 cubic metres (1,500 cubic feet) as a minimum. The smaller the room the more boxy the sound will be and so the more acoustic treatment you will need. As Kierkes says, it takes a bit of creativity ... but not with foam.
 
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RobbieD said:
ok so whats a good amount of space that would be good for that, the minimum amount of space
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I don't know, but this..
Kierkes said:
...I like having the few reflections controlled only to a point..
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The idea here is if you can't have a bigger nicer room knock down the amount of the room the mic picks up.
Make the most with the size you have.
 
ok i have about 1000 cubic feet, what do you mean it takes more creativity but not with foam????
 
RAMI said:
I'm sure it does.
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:D Just tugging your boat. Really meant to say that you tend to get over the $50 for 32 sq.ft when your sound does still improve quite a bit, and 32 sq.ft seems to be enough for a bedroom 1000 cu.ft.

RobbieD said:
ok i have about 1000 cubic feet, what do you mean it takes more creativity but not with foam????
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RobbieD said:
ok i have about 1000 cubic feet, what do you mean it takes more creativity but not with foam????
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Sorry, creative was not a very descriptive word.

Someone over at Gearslutz wanted a jargon-free explanation. This is what I wrote. You might find it helps explain why acoustic treatment improves the sound within a room by treating corners and reflection points.

Making your own traps is cheaper (around 40% of the cost of ready made traps) but requires time, effort and tools. I am not yet finished but you can have a look at my room and home made traps here.

GIK Acoustics sell ready made traps. As well as the products the web site has a helpful Education section.
 
Kierkes said:
:D Just tugging your boat. Really meant to say that you tend to get over the $50 for 32 sq.ft when your sound does still improve quite a bit, and 32 sq.ft seems to be enough for a bedroom 1000 cu.ft.
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I don't care if you have $50,000 worth of "foam", it isn't helping your sound. In fact, it's probably making it worse in many ways.
 
so how did u make those traps? and if i fix my room for tracking, itll be good for vocals too right? and why do people have sell vocal booths if theyre too small????
 
RAMI said:
I don't care if you have $50,000 worth of "foam", it isn't helping your sound. In fact, it's probably making it worse in many ways.
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Can you please tell me how it makes the sound worse? I understand that it may not be worth to you what it is worth to me, but I'd really like to know how it actually makes the sound objectively "worse" than not treating at all.

I mean, I'll admit that I have never actually made a trap or been in a situation in which I could reference a room with and without a homemade trap, and I'm open and in fact, embracing of the idea that they're better than foam, from what I've heard from others. But they make the sound...worse?

RobbieD said:
so how did u make those traps? and if i fix my room for tracking, itll be good for vocals too right? and why do people have sell vocal booths if theyre too small????
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As stated before, vocal booths exist to deaden sound as much as possible. For singing, people usually like to have just a bit of the room in the sound. Reverb plugins aren't perfect.
 
Kierkes said:
Can you please tell me how it makes the sound worse? I understand that it may not be worth to you what it is worth to me, but I'd really like to know how it actually makes the sound objectively "worse" than not treating at all.
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It can make it worse because foam doesn't do anything for bass frequencies. And unfortunately, 99% of the problem in 99% of rooms is the low end (I can guarantee you that your room is no exception). So, by putting foam up all over the place, all you did was kill your high's and high-mids. So, you now made the bass 100% of your problem. You "think" it sounds better with foam because you probably got rid of a bit of reflections, but you probably made the room very dull and dead sounding, and not in a good way.

Foam can MAYBE come in handy only AFTER you've placed bass traps made of the proper materials (NOT FOAM) in as many corners as possible, at your first reflection points, as a cloud over your listening area,etc.....Then, you might need a very little amount of foam for a little spot treatment.
 
Before this becomes a runaway train... ;)

What exactly do you think is wrong with your vocals that a booth or involved room treatment will make significantly better?
Can you explain?

I think you're doing a knee-jerk and opting for a nuts-n-bolts "solution", when I bet your vocals have issues other than the "room".
IOW...there's no way all your other tracks or great except for the vocals, because of the "room". If you have room issues, you'll have problems with all the instruemnts long before you have problems with just the vocal (unless you are recording everything else as synths or with DI setups).

Sure, proper room treatment is always a positive thing, but I don't think that alone is going to make huge difference in just your singing/vocal quality...except if you're Barbara Streisand, and everything else is already perfect other than the room. :D

Unless your room is an empty hull, with all kinds of flutter echo and nasty spikes (which I doubt, as most bedrooms have furniture, carpet, "stuff")...you might want to work on mic position, signal chain, and most of all, singing technique...
...before building anything. :)

Most home rooms have one or two good "spots" for doing vocals. You can put up a portable screen/gobo type affair if you want to knock off some early wall reflections. There's all kinds of ready-made contraptions that you can buy...or just make one yourself. It can be as simple as a blanket/quilt hung a few feet away from your singing position, and between you and the nearest wall.
 
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Hey, miroslav, thanks.

There is some background to this topic:
- Room in the closet
- can i still make it good without isolating a room
- help with room, lots of pics and diagram

miroslav said:
... I don't think that alone is going to make huge difference in just your singing/vocal quality...except if you're Barbara Streisand ...
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Not Barbara Streisand but RobbieD has a voice that won him, to quote his YouTube channel, "... first place singing Pou einai i agapi in Montreal for I can be a star. Going to Toronto for finals in january."
 
Yes...I know all that.

Looking at picture #3 in his photobucket page...if that's where his mic is when he sings...that's one problem, as he is basically singing into a corner. So a simple move out into the middle of the room away from walls would be an improvement.

And that YouTube track is way to ambient...sounds like he added a lot of reverb to everything...so that's another problem.

Oh...he's still not Babs. ;)

I'm just saying that he can get a good vocal sound in that room, as-is...with a little adjustment. What he does with it in the mix is another thing.
 
RAMI said:
It can make it worse because foam doesn't do anything for bass frequencies. And unfortunately, 99% of the problem in 99% of rooms is the low end (I can guarantee you that your room is no exception). So, by putting foam up all over the place, all you did was kill your high's and high-mids. So, you now made the bass 100% of your problem. You "think" it sounds better with foam because you probably got rid of a bit of reflections, but you probably made the room very dull and dead sounding, and not in a good way.

Foam can MAYBE come in handy only AFTER you've placed bass traps made of the proper materials (NOT FOAM) in as many corners as possible, at your first reflection points, as a cloud over your listening area,etc.....Then, you might need a very little amount of foam for a little spot treatment.
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Ahh thanks you for clearing that up for me. I've never been in a situation where I heard a room before and after bass traps. (The only rooms I've ever been in with bass traps already had them up the first time I stepped into them.)
 
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