Vocal booth on the cheap

  • Thread starter Thread starter ecktronic
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ecktronic

ecktronic

Mixing and Mastering.
I am looking to make my own vocal booth with next to no money.
I heard that using the foamy stuff under carpets works well for deadening any reflections.
Does anyone have any pointers on what to use and how to use it to acheive a totally dead vocal booth?
Remembering im on a very very tight budget. :)

Cheers.,
Eck
 
ecktronic said:
I heard that using the foamy stuff under carpets works well for deadening any reflections.
Click to expand...

No, no, no, no, no.

My cheapo vocal booth:

In the bedroom do you have a closet with sliding or bifold doors? Open the doors as wide as you can exposing the most hanging clothes. That would be mrs apl's at my house. Put the micstand in between the clothes so that the mic is outside the clothes by about 6". Stand in the bedroom and sing toward the clothes.

The clothes act as a major kickin' good absorber acting on almost 180° of your projection. There is very little left to go bouncin' round the room and hit the mic again. The bed is a big absorber, too. Open up the other closets if you can. This makes for a very localized acoustically dead space which will take care of 99% of those echoes and reflections.
 
lol.
Nice idea man. I can seee how that would work pretty well.
Unfortunately we dont have any cupboards of clothes in our studio.
We do have a small hallway which can be closed off with doors. So if we can find the right materials to stick up on the walls then we would be jammin!

I was thinking of placing some sort of material up in one of the corners so we get almost 180 degrees of material around the mic.

Here is a diagam of my idea if anyone wants to add any ideas on material to use.

https://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a222/Serotone/Vocalbooth.jpg

I have some carpet we could use. Does anyone know if this would be suitable for a really dead sound?

Cheers,
Eck
 
ecktronic said:
lol.
Nice idea man. I can seee how that would work pretty well.
Unfortunately we dont have any cupboards of clothes in our studio.
We do have a small hallway which can be closed off with doors. So if we can find the right materials to stick up on the walls then we would be jammin!

I was thinking of placing some sort of material up in one of the corners so we get almost 180 degrees of material around the mic.

Here is a diagam of my idea if anyone wants to add any ideas on material to use.

https://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a222/Serotone/Vocalbooth.jpg

I have some carpet we could use. Does anyone know if this would be suitable for a really dead sound?

Cheers,
Eck
Click to expand...
Having tried the carpet thing, I definitely do not recommend it.

I gotta try apl's idea!
 
cellardweller said:
Having tried the carpet thing, I definitely do not recommend it.

I gotta try apl's idea!
Click to expand...
It works!


I used to do that when I was still recording. Being on the open ocean gives you lots of song ideas, no way to put them down outside of a handheld mini recorder for humming melodies or singing (don't go there) song ideas... :(
 
may sound stupid but a few years ago we built a booth that is dead as it gets we used 2x4's , plywood, and insualtion and the foam from the bedding stores only thing it was yellow lolol but the room was dead the booth is ruffly 6ft tall and 4x4.. ruffly 400 bucks but im sure u can do it cheaper than that. btw we used a corner so we didnt have to use more wood.
 
WesP1106 said:
may sound stupid but a few years ago we built a booth that is dead as it gets we used 2x4's , plywood, and insualtion and the foam from the bedding stores only thing it was yellow lolol but the room was dead the booth is ruffly 6ft tall and 4x4.. ruffly 400 bucks but im sure u can do it cheaper than that. btw we used a corner so we didnt have to use more wood.
Click to expand...

No, no, no! That's a horrible firetrap.
 
Ok so the capret idea is out the window then.
Corner idea still stands strong.
Good idea on getting foam from a bed shop.
What about using a duvet? Anyone had experience with using a duvet for sound proofing?

Cheers all.
Eck
 
I have made makeshift 'vocal booths' using mic stands and moving blankets.

Sounded great!

-LIMiT
 
stand a couple mattresses up in the corner, and record in the "booth" made thier by.
very temporary, very cheep, a little dead, kinda insulated.
 
ecktronic said:
Ok so the capret idea is out the window then.
Corner idea still stands strong.
Good idea on getting foam from a bed shop.
What about using a duvet? Anyone had experience with using a duvet for sound proofing?

Cheers all.
Eck
Click to expand...
No, never use duvet's.
Only use comforters.
The acoustics of comforters as opposed to duvets has been thoroughly documented and is well known to be exceedingly superior. :rolleyes: :D
 
Here is what i did the other night.

I have a bunch of panels for treatment that are blue faom things that you put on the outside of a house. These have auralex glued on them. I normally have these leaning up against various walls in reflexion points.
to make a vocal booth, i hung them from the rafters (i record in a basement that at least for now has esposed rafters), with a big one behind and two samller ones in a 'V' shape with the mic at the tip of the V. i did my best to close this up and it made a nice makeshift vocal booth.

An added benefit, witht he panels removed from all the walls around my drumset, the set sounded about 15 times more alive after that. First time i experienced TOO dead.

Daav
 
OK, first, I just have to mention my delight in snagging four more ASC Studio Traps last week for a mere $400 (plus a nontrivial amount for shipping).

I still firmly believe they are the sh_t when it comes to treating the sound around the mike. Now I'm up to 8. If all you want is dead, you can come pretty close with home brew traps:

The 1" thick fiberglas tubes made for lining round heat ducts can be covered with cheap bedsheets, put wooden caps on the ends and then mount them on your choice of cheap stands to position them around the mike. It doesn't create a dead room, but if there isn't a lot of sound coming into the studio from outside, you can dial in the amount of reflected sound you want at the mike by the spacing or pretty much make it totally dead by leaving small spaces. the advantage of the round absorbers and spaces in between is that it has less of that weird fluttery effect you get from having your ears surrounded by large thick dead materials with no spaces.

Alternatively, you could just use R-11 or R-19 fiberglas batts inside round tubes of some kind of fence, say the 4 foot fence with the 2x4 inch gaps, with the non paper side of the batts facing out and then cheap bedsheets around the outside. again top off with wood caps on the ends and mount as you see fit on stands, etc. I use really big versions of this as corner bass traps with 4 mil plastic sheet on the outer surface facing into the room to maintain high frequency diffuse reflections.

Just my thought,

Otto
 
Thanks all.
ANy more suggestions on cheap materials that deaden aroom for vocals are very much welcome.

:)
Eck
 
Office partitions
:confused:
I was thinking of trying that someday. They are made to control sound.
 
Why not just build some framed panels out of rigid fiberglass/rockwool and place them around the singer? Unless you make it airtight, it won't be anywhere near "soundproof," but it will kill reflections for a fairly dead vocal sound.
 
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