# I'm thinking of building a cheep vocal booth, will this plan work? Or will it sound horrible?



## newbycomposer (Jan 16, 2016)

Ok, so I've been wanting to do this for a while but I finally figured out a way to make space in my room so it may be possible (i think). Currently the room is a decent size, its 16ft by 14ft. The ceilings are quite high, I'll put some picture below from last time I ask a question regarding the room (good while back, rearranged since then).

I record with an sm7b or sm58, most of the time I put myself as close to the dead center of the room and throw a blanket over the drum set when recording vocals. However I mainly record metal vocals, I have a pretty powerful voice even for screams, and even my cleans have a lot of projection on them. The result is I will fill this entire room with sounds when I record, it doesn't really show up much on the recording until you add compression, and sense screams use a pretty heavy amount of compression it can becomes somewhat problematic. Especially since I added a cloud lifter to use with my sm7b.

I don't have a lot of money (ok basically none right now cause my top priority is saving up for a new interface so I can actually start recording stuff again), so Ive been putting off since I'm mostly just recording myself for my projects, and only recently have started doing even that semi frequently, but I would like it to sound good. If your going to do it, do it the best you can right? So thinking about a booth, I hear somewhere that bookshelves full of books are good for acoustic treatment. How well would it work if I made a booth out of bookshelves? We have plenty of bookshelves at my house and more books than I can even imagine, we never need to get to them either so its not really a problem. I'm thinking building 3 sides out of bookshelf, loading them up with books, then placing a piece of plywood on the top for the roof, then covering the all the surfaces inside with semi-thick blankets, then rigging up the heaviest blankets I can find to hang behind whoever recording. I mean, it can't be worse than using a closet (which is the only other idea I have, but its got ceilings just as high, my house is weird, so I would still have to hang a bunch of blankets). this wouldn't be in the middle of the room but probably one of the corners against the wall. Would this work well or is this the worst Idea Ive ever had? I can't really try it cause my interface went out and its going to be a while to get it fixed/replaced. So, hopefully I'll get it fixed soon but till then I can't build it to replace it anyway.

My goal is to get a dead sound, a really dead sound, so I can do everything in the box and not have to deal with adding reverb to something that already has a noticeable amount of room noise.

This is a joke song I wrote around a year ago, its a mess I knew even less then than I do now about recording/mixing but you can probably hear the room in it, and its even more relevant now.

This is what my room looks like. though Ive moved stuff around since then and hung some guitars on the wall



Edit: to add, I also am EVENTUALLY wanting to get a condenser mic and I'm going to need SOMETHING if I record with one cause my house has a lot of ambient noise at times, the squires love running around on the walls outside my room, they arn't to bad but could definitely show up on a recording if I wasn't using a dynamic mic.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 16, 2016)

Booths are for isolation. You probably don't need one just to get a dead sound.

There are smaller solutions, but these work very well: http://www.auralex.com/products/absorption/freestanding/

It's just foam skewered on a mic stand.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 16, 2016)

I should add that you have to be careful not to get a boomy sound with that technique. It's not much of a danger screaming into an SM58 - beyond the usual proximity effect it has already - but you're filtering out the highs in the room.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jan 16, 2016)

If you box yourself in then you run into problems with low frequencies and get a "boxy" sound. Using bookshelves won't do much and that's for creating diffusion which in this case probably wouldn't help much.

I'd suggest either getting some foam up around the room which could reduce a lot of the room sound. Something like one of the Auralex packs that come with 2' x 2' x 12. I'm not sure if that would be enough and it might be outside of what you can afford. The other thing which you could do is set up some blankets around the mic. This stops some of the higher frequencies while letting through the lower frequencies so that you don't get a build up. I've hung up blankets using mic stands with the boom arm making a 'T' shape and used that for some vocal recording in a living room and it worked fairly well.
You can see it and hear it in this song with 3 different singers I wrote for a school project a while back:


Here's a newer video in my live room which just has some general absorption around the room so you can hear how that sounds:


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## GULL (Jan 16, 2016)

Standing from good distance from walls, an absorbing pad on front, and couple of duvet on your back should work. And, Nick said, you don't need a 'dead' sound. This SOS article should help. 
Para 3. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun06/articles/voxrecording.htm#para3


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## reddognoyz (Jan 16, 2016)

Agreed re: sound treating your room vs an iso booth. It's difficult to get a neutral sounding small booth with good isolation w/o spending a lot of money or man hours, and there are many ways to do it wrong.


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## Wes Antczak (Jan 16, 2016)

I think the other problem with an iso booth is that you probably want your vocalists to be able to breath if you know what I mean.


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## Morodiene (Jan 16, 2016)

I have the same problem with my operatic vocals. I have a big voice, and while I've been able to eliminate the early reflections, I still have the issue of being in a room that's just too small for the sound. The end result is the sound is bit "boxed in". My next option is to try recording at my church, which is carpeted, and fairly dead. I think I'll set up two music stands behind the mic in a "V" and cover that with a heavy blanket, and then maybe use a couple more stands behind me with a heavy blanket and see if that's enough.

Anyways, it seems to be a lot of tweaking to find what works.


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## hummingbird (Jan 16, 2016)

I use folding screens and quilts to get rid of room noise, put the screens around the mike in front and back, and use a broom handle to hold up the quilted 'ceiling'. However I am usually recording intimate new agey vocals and nothing big like opera or heavy medal :D


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## newbycomposer (Jan 23, 2016)

To everyone I'm replying to: This is a short example showing how much my room bleeds through. Its just a few lines from a vocal cover I did a while back all chopped up so they arn't in time anymore so the clip isn't as long, the screams are pretty bad but it will show you whats happening. Its a minute something long, the first go through is completely dry, absolutely nothing happening, just dry audio. The second one ONLY has compression, though I use the "gain reduction" plugin which adds a little bit of other stuff to it, but it still shows my problem. The ONLY thing being added is compression. Its the exact same waveform just copy/pasted, but with compression.







Gerhard Westphalen said:


> If you box yourself in then you run into problems with low frequencies and get a "boxy" sound. Using bookshelves won't do much and that's for creating diffusion which in this case probably wouldn't help much.
> 
> I'd suggest either getting some foam up around the room which could reduce a lot of the room sound. Something like one of the Auralex packs that come with 2' x 2' x 12. I'm not sure if that would be enough and it might be outside of what you can afford. The other thing which you could do is set up some blankets around the mic. This stops some of the higher frequencies while letting through the lower frequencies so that you don't get a build up. I've hung up blankets using mic stands with the boom arm making a 'T' shape and used that for some vocal recording in a living room and it worked fairly well.
> You can see it and hear it in this song with 3 different singers I wrote for a school project a while back:




Here's a newer video in my live room which just has some general absorption around the room so you can hear how that sounds:[/QUOTE]


I like the sound your getting, but I feel like those vocalist arn't NEARLY as loud. Imagine telling a brass instrument to "play that note as loud and ugly as you can" and your probably getting closer to the sound of screams, it might not be THAT loud but its closer, so when throw a heavy compressor on it (which you need for screams) you get a problem with room noise suddenly being everywhere.



GULL said:


> Standing from good distance from walls, an absorbing pad on front, and couple of duvet on your back should work. And, Nick said, you don't need a 'dead' sound. This SOS article should help.
> Para 3



Why would a dead sound be bad, I really can't stress the fact that compression happens and at this volume it pulls a lot of the room into the sound. Listen to the example I posted at the top to see what I mean.




reddognoyz said:


> Agreed re: sound treating your room vs an iso booth. It's difficult to get a neutral sounding small booth with good isolation w/o spending a lot of money or man hours, and there are many ways to do it wrong.



Ok ,what if I did a little bit of both? I'm rearranging my room so I'm trying to make it more sound friendly but the tall roofs arn't helping. Do you have any resources I could use on how to properly treat a room, thats not just a "how" but also a "why" so I understand whats happening (which I need since I'm working on a budget and either making my own stuff to treat it with or using cheaper material).




Morodiene said:


> I think I'll set up two music stands behind the mic in a "V" and cover that with a heavy blanket, and then maybe use a couple more stands behind me with a heavy blanket and see if that's enough.



I'm leaning towards something like this at this point. Heavy moving blankets are cheap and thick, so they would probably work well.



hummingbird said:


> I use folding screens and quilts to get rid of room noise, put the screens around the mike in front and back, and use a broom handle to hold up the quilted 'ceiling'. However I am usually recording intimate new agey vocals and nothing big like opera or heavy medal :D



Ive tried throwing a blanket over my head, but the problem wasn't really helped, though Its been a while and I don't remember if the result was good enough or not.



Wes Antczak said:


> I think the other problem with an iso booth is that you probably want your vocalists to be able to breath if you know what I mean.



The main vocalist using this 90% of the time will be me, so I'm not to worried.

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Main questions:

I'm rearranging the room majorly, I managed to free up a significant amout of space, so how much space would I need to get a good sound. Right now I'm thinking of putting something in the corner, Bookshelf with books and a thick blanket on one wall, bed mattress on the other wall, then either making a triangle shape with one thick blanket layer I can push aside to get inside the "booth", or making 2 "walls" out of blankets, with some more thrown over the top. Would that significantly cut out the room noise?

Also, how do I treat my room, whats the best way I can treat it so I get a correct sound from my studio monitors? I don't know anything about accoustic treatment AND am having to do it on a TIGHT budget.


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## Morodiene (Jan 23, 2016)

Here's an example of me singing operatically in my new setup. I'm in my bedroom, carpeted, about 15 x 18 with a trayed ceiling. I pulled the heavy curtains over the sliding glass doors, blankets over the doorway into the room and on the armoire (which was directly behind me) and the dresser/mirror. 

Then I placed the mic about 8-10' away to record. I placed two music stands behind the mic in a V with a blanket over them. 

https://app.box.com/s/mwycpnohqxv1dcvx30iesmyo5p96l68k

I'd prefer a larger space, but I don't think it turned out half bad.


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## thesteelydane (Jan 23, 2016)

newbycomposer said:


> Also, how do I treat my room, whats the best way I can treat it so I get a correct sound from my studio monitors? I don't know anything about accoustic treatment AND am having to do it on a TIGHT budget.



That's a really huge question. I spend 3 months learning about acoustics before I build my recording space. What it comes down to is this: Learn about room modes (standing waves), how room geometry affects the standing waves, and finally how to minimise them. Bass traps play a much larger role in the latter than most people are willing to admit, but the good news is that DIY solutions are just as effective as the expensive pro products, if you know what you are doing. Dollar for dollar, nothing beats rockwool (fiber glass insulation), when it comes to absorption, it beats foam on single every parameter. I built my own bass traps and acoustic panels from it, you just need some fibreglass of the correct density, wood and some fabric thin enough that you can blow through it. It's a pain in the ass to work with, but you'll save a lot of money. Plenty of tutorials online. There's a good one at Lynda.com with Bobby Owsinski that covers all the basics of home studio building: Geometry, isolation and treatment. Highly recommended to get you started!

P.S. When it comes to recording and minimising room tone, most people forget that what's behind the performer is just as important as what't behind the mic.


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## GULL (Feb 1, 2016)

newbycomposer said:


> Why would a dead sound be bad,



Well a live room should help to record vocal with no added reverb by the room. It can be called 'dry' for our purpose. The real dead room thing like a Anechoic chamber has been tried and not preferred anymore as I understand.

The problem is, we don't normally experience a voice in a practically dead room. So it may sound strange to human ear. I must stress a point that though we approach things using scientific principles, in real world, those scientific principles won't work in the way expected. This is science too.

I can never imagine a commercial products work as good as they are explained by scientific principles. Referring to room modes, there is no geometry that assures you a modal free room (But we know cubic is problematic). Acoustic anomalies are part and parcel of practical acoustics, and they can not be cured. But they can be treated. 

Never forget 80 20 rule. 80% of acoustic improvement is easy and practical with 20% effort. An improvement from 90 to 91% can take a million to attain. So what we are discussing is, all about the trade-off. There is no Holy grail.

Just be reasonable to gain the best you can. 
Life is not cured; It is managed


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## newbycomposer (Feb 4, 2016)

GULL said:


> Well a live room should help to record vocal with no added reverb by the room. It can be called 'dry' for our purpose. The real dead room thing like a Anechoic chamber has been tried and not preferred anymore as I understand.
> 
> The problem is, we don't normally experience a voice in a practically dead room. So it may sound strange to human ear. I must stress a point that though we approach things using scientific principles, in real world, those scientific principles won't work in the way expected. This is science too.
> 
> ...



Any idea on how I can go about learning to treat my room and the principles. 

As for recording vocals, right now from what I'm hearing a "box" is probably a bad idea. what I'm considering is a triangle, Put a bookshelf full of books and covered with moving blankets on one side. The other side having a bed mattress, then take some heavy blanks hanging over the top and letting some blanks hang down to close the triangle off, then have the vocalist/mic stand inside singing out into the room (so the mic is facing the inside of the triangle but the vocalist is facing the room). Would that work well or is it a disastrous idea? 

likewise, I don't really know the "practical" stuff on how to get my room treated. I keep hearing about putting base traps in corners, but frankly I don't have any room in my corners for ANYTHING. I'm packed as it is to get everything in this room and its the only room I have to do music in. I'm just trying to get the best sound with what Ive got


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## thesteelydane (Feb 4, 2016)

newbycomposer said:


> Any idea on how I can go about learning to treat my room and the principles.



Yes, I pointed you to a very good tutorial on exactly that above. Ass for bass traps, there are 12 corners in a room, I don't believe you have stuff in all of them?


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## GULL (Feb 6, 2016)

newbycomposer said:


> Any idea on how I can go about learning to treat my room and the principles.



There are many resources available, Google and check yourself to see if you can grab userful information from. I would like to share this SOS article link. It has five parts. 
*Practical Acoustic Treatment, Part 1*
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/acoustics1.html

And, you said you are trying to get best out what you have got. That is the point. Check the article to see if you can make things better with your resources. Be practical, just try to do your best. Try different mic placements, different distance setups to finalize a box/pad/booth setup. 

After that point you should get busy in recording your songs I believe


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