Vocal booth design help needed.... bad

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:02 am

I am wanting to add a vocal booth to my studio room located in the basement and i was thinking of using the 2 concrete walls and just covering them with foam, auralex, etc as part of the vocal booth. The other two walls would be made out of wood studs, sheetrock, etc. The area is only 3'2" wide X 6' long X 7' high. I can make it smaller if need be, but can i have a great vocal booth in that kind of space? If not, what would be the best measurements to have? If this is confusing, i can definetly explain more and send pictures. The control room is 15'7 x 10' and all of the ceilings are 7' high. I desperately need help, and the more i read, the more confused i get. ANY help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:37 am

That's pretty narrow.

What are you expecting performance wise out of a booth? Is it isolation from the outside noise? Is it a bigger vocal sound?

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:11 pm

Well, isolation from outside noise, mainly... i am not sure of what "ideal" dimensions are. I have heard a perfect square and i have read more of a rectangle... I'm just wondering if i can make this sound like a pro booth.

Thanks, Matt

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 8:13 pm

If your concern is outside noise, then foam on the concrete will not help that at all.

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:27 pm

Then what will help? I thought being in a basement, and putting foam to kill the reflection, would help or be beneficial. Any ideas?

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:41 pm

Foam will help with reflection but not with any noise from the outside. How much noise can you really be getting into the basement anyway? I cant imagine anything that will make a difference from the outside will penetrate earth and concrete walls,that is if you basement truely is under yours house, ie with dirst packed up to the walls of the basement? If not then you should build out from the concrete walls, leaving an airspace between the concrete and your stud wall. look in one of the sticky post to get details on consruction. If you dont float a floor you will still get transmission loss going outside through the slab,( low freq. waves like kick drum and bass) but if thats not a concern it doesnt matter. Those low frequencies will only transmit through the slab in your live room or control room. In the vocal both you wont get any transmission loss recording the human vioce. If you stick a bass amp in there, well thats a different story. Describe your "basement better"

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:03 am

Let me change that.... im not getting any noise from the concrete walls, that was just the reason i was building a vocal booth. It is solid wall, packed dirt behind it under the house, so i thought it would be a great area to start. I thought the foam would help just "deaden" the area. The other 2 walls, would have to be constructed, and i could do something like a floating ceiling, but i only have 7'. I can attach a pic, but i cant get the darn thing to upload right.. any ideas on that? Can i upload it from my harddrive or do i have to have it out on the web? I mainly want it for vocals, and possibly a guitar or bass, but the main build is for vocals. What do you think about the dimensions?

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:54 am

audio-tracks wrote:

Well, isolation from outside noise, mainly... i am not sure of what "ideal" dimensions are. I have heard a perfect square and i have read more of a rectangle... I'm just wondering if i can make this sound like a pro booth.

Thanks, Matt

OK, let's hit a couple of things essential first. A square room is a major NO-NO. The only thing worse than a square room is a perfect cube. Odd dimensions and/or odd shapes make for better tracking rooms.

When you say "Pro Booth" what exactly are you envisioning and what's the primary purpose of the booth? If it's for VO work, then yeah... a small booth is cool... not great, but servicable. If you're expecting a small booth for tracking vocal that will sound like rooms that "the big boys" use... you are being lulled into a pseudo stereotypical thought process. (Me too!!!)

This is a dirty little secret in our industry... so shhhhhhh... don't tell nobody... In actuality, there are many times that the vocal booth is used to do nothing but the scratch vox. You don't want those scratch vox getting in the other instruments since they're scratch and liable to change signicantly.

The real vocal takes are then done in the bigger main room... where you have better natural ambiance and reverberation. This in consideration that to get a good/unnatural/processed sounding reverb, delay, FX, etc, you then WOULD track in the booth as you DON'T want any extraneous natural ambiance... or very limited anyway.

IMHO, since you are limited to a fairly small sized room, you want to design your room factoring in LOTS of broadband absorbtion... EVERYWHERE... i.e. every corner... walls and ceiling. That dictates that the room is going to need to be a bit larger than you are probably envisioning.

I would allow for the corner absorbtion to be at least 2 feet diagnonally across the corners... 4 feet would be better... again, making a larger room by a factor of two. In a 3'-2" wide booth, you would have something like 4" of wall between the corner absorbers. So you couldn't have a door on that side.

Be sure to take into account some sort of ventilation no matter what size you end up with.

As far as "ideal" vocal booth sizes... that's a loaded question... as big as you can make it I spose... Some vocal booths are 4x7 (final inside dimension) up to 12x20. What I'd have a tendancy to do is to try to find out what the smallest size area that you would feel comfortable standing in for 30 minutes.

Can you rework your design to maybe use the 3'-2" dimension and the 6' dimension as just one wall each of two sides? Then take the remaining space to create a slightly bigger/odd shaped room.

Max

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 9:47 am

Thanks for the reply... Well, i would like to be able to do voice over work, as well as record vocals for music as well. The MAIN purpose for this booth would be for recording the vocals for music. If i could get this pic to upload, you can see better what im up against, but im not sure if it has to be out on the web or if i can point it to my harddrive.
Do you have a pic or drawing of what you have in mind? I am very anxious to get started, but i want to do the right thing.

Thanks again,

Matt

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 10:56 am

audio-tracks wrote:

Thanks for the reply... Well, i would like to be able to do voice over work, as well as record vocals for music as well. The MAIN purpose for this booth would be for recording the vocals for music. If i could get this pic to upload, you can see better what im up against, but im not sure if it has to be out on the web or if i can point it to my harddrive.
Do you have a pic or drawing of what you have in mind? I am very anxious to get started, but i want to do the right thing.

Thanks again,

Matt

Matt,

Either pop me a PM with your email addy, or send me an email through my profile... you can attach that image to the email... and I'll send you a pdf of what I'm talkin' about.

To upload images here, you have to have a url to upload them to. We (as in community) don't have enough server space and/or bandwidth/sponsorship for Big Tree to just give us free reign on uploading to the RO servers...

Which is a good chance to remind and encourage everyone... myself included, to make a donation to RO, to help cover the expenses of running this place.

I have no idea as to what the "income" is here... but I can more than likely guess the Big Tree sure as hell ain't gettin' rich off this site. I'd be suprised if "we're" even in the black. Heck, who knows... if we all were to actually pitch in enough, we could possibly get some image space... whatcha' think Big Tree? is it possible?

Max

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:27 pm

PM sent.

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 5:44 pm

Max is giving good advice. I have made alot of records, none of which have had final vocals recorded in a booth. Look into some rigid fiberglass as opposed to "foam" for your broad banding.
good luck

Moz

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:53 pm

I agree on the good advise.. please elaborate on the vocals not being recorded in a booth, and explain more on the rigid fiberglass please.

Thanks

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 10:22 pm

audio-tracks wrote:

I agree on the good advise.. please elaborate on the vocals not being recorded in a booth, and explain more on the rigid fiberglass please.

Thanks

Didn't get the PM yet... dunno why not... may want to try again.

Rigid Fiberglass... a high density fiberglass panel. Where "Pink Flufy" like R-19 is 3 lbs/sq ft, Rigid (like OwensCorning 703) has actually been tested for it's absorbtion characteristics and weighs in at double that of an R19. It's density is such that it is litterally rigid-enough to virtually stand on it's own. OC 703 is typically found in either a 2" or 4" thickness.

Moz is refering to the point that I made about many final vocal tracks are made in the main room as opposed to the vox booth.

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:43 am

I sent you an email instead, so i could enclose the pictures.... sorry for the mixup. Let me know if you dont get it.

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