vocal booth

  • Thread starter Thread starter daav
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daav

daav

Flailing up a storm.
THis is probabaly a total "duh!" question, but....

If a person has the space and abilty to construct a middling to decent vocal booth (no 100% isolation, but reasonably close) would it be worth it to do? More than investing a couple hundres bucks toward some other form of gear?

I think this is my next best step, and am considering making it big enough that it could house a sitting guitarist and/or hand percussionist or the like. Just looking to see if this kind of project will be likely to have a nice payoff with the quality of vocal recordings, in particular clean recordings that can sit on top of the mix nicely.

While we are at it and I am going to list a bunch of gear, any input on good next steps for gear would be appreciated. I ahve never been wanting for inputs since I have not really been recording more than a couple people doing anythign at once. I do all mixing and effects on the PC for now. My focus is mostly on tracking at this point, when i get good at making good source recordings, i will focus more on getting more in depth with mixing and effects.

P4 w 1GB mem 300 GB HD
Echo Layla 24/96 interface (8 in 2 dig in, same out).
cubase SX
DMP3
Focusrite platnuim pre with compression
soundcraft M4 mixer (4 pres)
SP B3
Octava 319
EV RE27
SM 57
SM 58
2 MXL 603s
4 or 5 electric and acoustic guitars LP Studio, Jap. Strat, cheap steel string acoustic, cheap nylon, nearly unplayable 12 string
Mexi fender jazz bass
Sonor force 2001 drum set with Zildjian A custom hats and cymbals .
cheap yamaha keyboard to serve as midi controller.
various bass traps and auralex panels.

My biggest intrument needs (as i see) are a decent snare and a decent digital piano/controller.

Thanks,
Daav
 
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I definitely think it's worth it. I built a pretty cheap flexible gobo a little while ago for isolating my tracks. I use it for everything that I record, vocals, bass, guitar. I just set up the cabs in there and run a snake to the middle. It has been working pretty well considering. If I were to build them all over again I probably would have used different materials but oh well, it works for now and the general idea is sound. http://riffster.com/links.html
 
The thing with a booth is that it may solve some problems but create others if not designed and built correctly. What in your present environment are you're trying to fix?
 
I record in a small room...and the echo is pretty bad. MY friend does the same thing but recently he moved into his closet. He drilled a small hole to run wires thru the door. He place padding all over the wall. TO me it's alright but he managed to eliminate more than half of the problem we both faced in the beginning.

The only down side to this is it can get pretty hot in there....and having your whole equipment in there is a bad idea too.
 
I've said it before and will say it again, check ASC Studio Traps. Don't make this harder than it needs to be. If you're interested in controlling the sound at the mike, that's the most versatile way to go.

Otto
 
steveanthony said:
The thing with a booth is that it may solve some problems but create others if not designed and built correctly. What in your present environment are you're trying to fix?
Click to expand...

I record in my basement, which is an open 24 x 30 foot area, with 7-8 ft ceileing. It is cut in half by stairs and therre are shleves long several of the walls and a (sometimes loud) furnace and laundry stuff that i am trying to isolate from a bit, but i can also jsut not have this stuff running when recording if needed.

Right now, the vocal stuff i record sounds fairly clear and I expect to make improvements with technique, but I am pretty handy, so was thinking that the vocal booth project was somehting i could do in a weekend.

daav
 
While I like to record some space around most instruments, I find it best to work with a blank canvas for vocals.... in other words, no room sound at all. A vocal booth is a good way to do that, and to have good seperation for concurrent instrument and vocal takes . Also, most home recording rooms are not entirely dead silent, so a booth will knock the noise floor down in most cases. This is particularly good for vocals, which are frequently both compressed and up front in the mix, bringing any noise floor issues out with them. Do your homework though, so you don't end up with resonance problems with tenors.
 
There's quite a bit of info in the Studio Building and Display forum. But the key things you'll probably focus on are:

Don't build a square booth or dimensions that are 1 x 1 1/2 (4x6, 5x10, for example).

If possible, don't build parallel walls.

There are a couple of wall designs you can chose from - single leaf, double leaf, even a sheet or two of MDF. Again, check the Studio Building forum for details.

Treatment - Bass Traps and broadband absorbers seem to be the preferred way to treat a room or booth. Owens Corning 703 rigid fiberglass is used quite often for both purposes.

Good luck
 
For vocals, the biggest problem is probably going to be reflections. Some people find that something like this works:

* one piece of cheap styrofoam from home depot.
* 6 squares of Auralex or other acoustic foam.
* Four pieces of wood, cut to about 1"x6"x4".
* Four pieces of wood cut to twice the height of an Auralex panel plus two inches (or possibly a few inches longer)

Cut the styrofoam into three pieces, each big enough to hold two squares of Auralex vertically by one square horizontally, with about a half inch of bare styrofoam exposed at the top and bottom.
_________
|foamfoam|
|-----------|
|auralexau|
|ralexaura|
|lexaurale|
|-----------|
|xauralexa|
|uralexaur|
|alexaural|
|exauralex|
|-----------|
|foamfoam|
|________|

Next, place these three together so that the bare foam edges are at the top and bottom, with about 135º angles between them. They should form a sort of choral-shell-like surface that is three squares wide by two squares tall:

..__
/.....\

Cut a groove (about a half inch deep) into one face of each of the four small pieces of wood. The intent is for these pieces of wood to hold the foam at the 135º angles. Thus, the groove should start in the middle at one end, go about halfway, then bend 45 degrees, and end up coming out roughly the corner of the board. IMPORTANT: half the boards must be mirror images of each other!

Place two of the boards on the ground, slip the foam into them, then place the other two on top. Flip this unit on its face and place it on a stool or similar. Nail one of the three longer boards to the back side of two of the smaller pieces (vertically). Repeat with the second board for the other two smaller pieces. Finally, nail two horizontal pieces between those pieces.

Mount this somewhere. The easy solution is to drill a hole in the bottom board (the right size) and screw it onto a spare microphone stand.

Presto. Instant vocal booth. Total cost: about $5 plus the cost of the Auralex (and the mic stand). :D

BTW, I tend to agree with Robert that for vocals, bass traps and room improvements aren't the right direction for a home studio. You're usually better off with no room acoustics at all than you would be with the natural room acoustics of most places. That doesn't mean you shouldn't add bass traps and stuff to improve the sound of your room for other recording, of course....

On the other hand, given the relatively large size of the room, you might be better off just carpeting the floor and adding a few bass traps in the corners. Your biggest problem is likely to be slap between the floor and the ceiling, IMHO.
 
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