vocal booth disaster. Help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter alphadelta80
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alphadelta80

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I think I screwed up. I have a cedar closet in my basement that I tried to convert into a vocal booth. It's 6ftX7ft with a 7ft ceiling. The floor is cement of coarse and 1 of the 4 walls is an exterior wall. Because the furnace is about 10 feet away from the booth I decided to cover the outside of the room (including the door) with carpet padding to absorb the hum of the furnace. That works ok I guess. But the entire inside space Including the ceiling I covered with a bunch of Aurilex foam pads. The wedge design 2x4ft kind. I notice my vocals sound completely dead. It sucks. The highs are gone and I'm saddened by this. How can I possibly get my highs back? Should I place something in the room to reflect the sound? I want to keep the sound isolation I have because I dont disturb my roommates but I want the vocals to sound good. Not dry and dead. Is there a way to keep most of the sound in my room and still have some of the highs in my vocal tracks?
 
The foam probably isnt doin much for sound isolation, so you could probably take a few of the pieces down. But, then you may be faced with some wierd short reflection problems since its such a small room (which its supposed to be since its a booth;) ) Have you tried adding a digital reverb? I guess I always thought that the point of making a booth is to have a super dry room so you can add your own ambience to taste(digitally). You can always add reverb to a track- but once its there you cant take it off.
 
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Thanx. So is this a popular solution to my problem? Am I making too-big-a-deal of this high freq thing? Iwas also wondering if It would help If I removed some low end from the vocals with the EQ and probably add a little high freqs after the vocals are recorded. Would this help in addition to the digital reverb you suggested?
 
You might want to look up user John Sayers on this BBS.

He designs studios for a living and is one of the best. He's always great about giving free advice to us poor home studio freaks. :)

John's a real great guy... look him up and PM him. I'm sure he'll give you the best advice possible in this matter.

- Tanlith -
 
Start by removing about 1/3 of the foam.

Maybe by taking out a couple tiles on the ceiling in the center.

Then take out one tile on each wall right about mic-high, in the center of the wall.

Continue until you get the balance of live/dead that suits you.

Foam is treatment, not soundproofing. And it's not very good treatment to begin with.
 
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