Building a vocal booth

[Darnell Music]

I'm building a 4'x4'x 6 and 1/2 feet tall vocal booth. I need it to be portable.
Any suggestions on materials? ie: plexiglass, plywood, or glass (beveled or not)? using 2" pyramid auralex inside, with mat carpeting on the floor and 1" to 2" plywood for the base. I'm planning on hinging all 4 sides for collapsability. It will have split front doors hinged to open left and right.
What's the best possible way of doing this? I plan on sitting the entire base on 4 rubber locking coaster wheels and putting foam or styrofoam between the floor and the base.
Cooling, ventilation, and lighting is a factor. What about those three?
Any tips on doing this?
I would like to do this for under $1000.00.
Rotating hinges/collapsability are my concerns.

Darnell Music

 

[johnnypraze]

I'm building a 4'x4'x 6 and 1/2 feet tall vocal booth. I need it to be portable.
Any suggestions on materials? ie: plexiglass, plywood, or glass (beveled or not)? using 2" pyramid auralex inside, with mat carpeting on the floor and 1" to 2" plywood for the base. I'm planning on hinging all 4 sides for collapsability. It will have split front doors hinged to open left and right.
What's the best possible way of doing this? I plan on sitting the entire base on 4 rubber locking coaster wheels and putting foam or styrofoam between the floor and the base.
Cooling, ventilation, and lighting is a factor. What about those three?
Any tips on doing this?
I would like to do this for under $1000.00.
Rotating hinges/collapsability are my concerns.

Darnell Music

I have a booth that is 4x4x7. I built it out of 4'x8' sheets of particle board.
It was originally hinged together but now is screwed together with hinged door.

I used cheap foambymail foam on the inside.

Here are the pros and cons...

Pros: It looks pretty and does a pretty good job at keeping sound in and unwanted sounds out.

Cons: It's heavy and sounds like crap.

I am going to tear it down and treat my entire room with Panels OC703.

 

[mikeh]

4' x 4' will be reallly tight and normally, square rooms are never ideal for sound applications (although better a vocal booth than a control room).

I'm am no expert and hopefully some better qualified people will respond - but I'll share my thoughts.

If you plan on moving it around you need it as light as possible - I would likely go with plywood contruction (thin plywood is faily light and also affordable). I don't know if it would eventually warp - but it would be worth a try. While you can certainly go with Auralex - an option would be 703 rigid fiberglass, which you could possibly build right into the framing (as an example - plywood outer walls, 2" framing and then insert the 703 into the frame and cover the inside with your fabric of choice). You would maybe want a plywood cover to protect the sound treatment while transporting - but not while in use.

Lighting should be relatively easy - whatever overhead lighting you think is best with an AC chord leading out of the box (allowing you to plug the box into an outlet). You should not need a lot of light and with a 4'x4' you don't need to introduce anymore heat than possible. There are also many battery operated lights (LED type lights) that could be used instead of AC.

Cooling/ventilation would be a concern - a 4x4 could get real warm, real fast. Unfortunately, almost any powered cooling will be too noisy. Maybe a huge cooler full of ice with the lid off - but then you would need more than 4X4.. You may simply have to ask a vocalist to do a take and then come out for air.

I suppose you could drill numerous holes into the 4 walls of the box - in between whatever sound treatment you install for some ventilation. However any actual powered cooling would be difficult to achieve. There are water cooled and other "silent" fans for computers - but that can be a very costly route and I'm not that convinced it would be silent enough for a vocal booth.

Good luck!

 

[johnnypraze]

BTW, My foam is black. I used Pink and purple cold cathodes for lighting. (No heat whatsoever)

 

[gullfo]

4'x5'x7' would be a good size. use a slat resonator wall to angle it and provide low-mid treatment. this design is roughly that and (in theory) you could build it to pull it apart (use rubber seals and pin hinges) by making each wall a separate assembly. in the attached sketchup file, i remove the track light and fan (in silencer boxes) components to make the file small enough to fit...