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I have a pretty small recording booth, infact some may call it a closet (roughly 6X5X8 ft). It is coverd with bed padding foam (much cheaper than auralex), and it has a retractable closet door with vent holes in it. I wanted to upgrade to get more isolation by padding the room with auralex and putting in a solid door. I am mainly recording vocals in this room, and I want everything dry as can be. Is this room big enough to sound good? Is the auralex and solid wooden door the answer? thanks in advance?

Layne

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mixfactory Wed, 03/20/2002 - 08:57

Acoustically speaking it will sound like a telephone booth. And with all of the padding and stuff, it may sound worse. What I would do in your situation is the opposite, create some reverberation but not too much. Since everything will be closed mic, a little ambience wouldn't hurt. What will kill the sound of the room is the ceiling height(its too low). But as a solution what I would do is keep one major surface area reflective, preferably the floor(use wood parquet it has a nice sound too it). On the ceiling, i would do maybe 35% surface area absorption. The rest ot the room you have to pick and choose. Have someone in there sing, then record it. Then go in the booth and try some absorption on one wall, than record it and so on. Try accidental placements, not exact(basically this means that they don't match from wall to wall). Some of he best rooms were built by accident and trial and error. Also your absorption ratio should be: General absorption across the freq spectrum should be mostly on the ceiling(like I stated earlier maybe 35% surface area), don't use padding or rug cause that has and imbalanced absorption coefficent(it absorbs mostly highs and that will make your room bassy sounding). The walls will probably have to be a combination of general and mid absorption(remember trial and error). Also one thing to keep in mind, what ever is on the walls/doors maybe damaged because of the size of the booth and that will change how it works. The most important thing is you create a place where someone would want sing and or perform in. If its too dead/live you will have problems to correct in your mix. Hope this helps.

anonymous Wed, 03/20/2002 - 18:00

its just all of the wet sound i hear right now is a slap back delay. i think its coming through the door. as for the floor, it already has carpet. now maybe this is a stupid question, but i thought you wanted a recording booth to be as dry as possible, and leave it up to the processors to add verbs and delay? otherwise, you are stuck with something you can't take off. or is this one of those preference things? i just thought my protools unit could put on much better verb on a voice than a closet can. thanks.

Layne

Guest Thu, 03/21/2002 - 11:04

A common error is to belive padded 'everything' will be good, in fact, while high frequency information will be attenuated, mid & low information will not (that requires REALLY thick padding or 'bass traps') and this situation can sometimes reveal just - 'boomy' bass and unatractive mid... = YUK!

Beware!.

anonymous Sat, 03/23/2002 - 19:32

I'm by no mean an acoustician. However, I work with one. With a room that small and parallel everything, you are going to have standing waves and comb filtering. Because of sound waves bouncing around and cancelling out certain frequencies and boosting others. You need to have bass traps in the corners and aborbtion on the walls. I would start with a totally absorbtive room then start adding reflective sources, depending on budget.

You have to take care of the problematic reflections first, so it won't mess with your recorded sound. I would not go with Auralex, you should costum build your bass traps and use 1"-2" duct board for the walls. This will give you a more even frequency absorbstion, so you are not just taking care of the high frequencies. After you get that taken care of the you can ad some wood strips in different places in the room to bring back some controlled life to the room. A suggestion is old barn wood. It is kinda rough but sounds great, and doesn't cost hardly anything. You can put a strip on the ceiling, a couple on the walls, etc. Record some, add some more, record some, then add some more, till it sounds and feels good.

The bass traps are mandatory! Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to call me, I can get you hooked up with the guy I work with.

Good luck

Darren

anonymous Mon, 03/25/2002 - 11:58

Me so sad.
Me so confounded.
The information i read in this propagation is a compalation of all that was once my elation.
Meaning:
I was pleased as a pig in poop that my home studio area had a big (8' ceiling, 10'L 6'W) walk in closet I could record VOCALS in. Clothes on one side, rug, and the rest bare walls. Was going to put some 701 board fiberglass up on the walls and ceiling- basically make it dead. Thought that was OK. Seems not (?)
I see those recording booths you can buy and they look like 4 walls covered with acoustic foam.
The plan for the 'control room' is abs/diff, tube traps, and diffusion.

How does this sound for the 'vocal booth' closet.
Build a false floor on 2x3's and plywood. Keep the clothes on one wall (stops flutter?) SOME fiberglass on the ceiling and back wall. Building a thick isolation door. A tube trap for bass.
We'll be doing rock (some real singing, some yelling) and rap vocals.
Thanks in advance!