Recording booth advice

[Jagwah]

I am looking at getting a closed recording booth for recording vocals, guitar, and also voice acting.

I just found a second hand one near me that is a third of the price of new ones I was looking at. The thing is, it has been built to accomodate a guitar player and therefore they have made it an odd shape (that's the excuse anyway). So it's kind of square shaped, but all the walls are of different lengths. I was thinking this might be bad acoustcally, and I would be better off going for a new unit, but I was hoping for some advice as I may be wrong. Any ideas on this, or any experience with booths anyone cares to share?


Cheers!

[Olivier]

Some ideas, and a bit of experience:

A controlroom, a recording studio and a booth all have different acoustic requirements.

- Walls with uneven lengths are used in recording studio's because they help with diffusion and help diminish the effect of early reflections. It helps to have the room be alive acoustically.
- A booth on the other hand is often made acoustically dead. The idea is that this is in order to only pick up the sound source directly and not have any reflections. I prefer a booth to be acoustically neutral though. In an acoustically dead space everything feels dampened. In some of the high end studio's i've been in the booths just felt better. No reflections, but not devoid of life either.
- In a controlroom you want the room to do the same to sound coming from either speaker in respect to the listener so therefor you need the room to be left right mirrored.

Now here comes the guesswork about the booth you mention
I guess it can be true that the reason they build it like they did was to accomodate a guitar player. Uneven length walls are not bad for larger rooms. Wether they help in a booth, i don't know. It is possible that they are beneficial to a booth if the acoustic treatment isn't done correctly.

I guess there's only one way to find out.. put in a mic and listen to a recording. In the end it all depends on your needs.

TL/DR: Uneven walls are probably not detrimental to the sound of a booth.

[Jagwah]

Some ideas, and a bit of experience:

Hi Olivier, thanks for the great response. I feel easier about the odd dimensions of the booth.

Still in discussions with the owner about price. Not sure which way to go right now but I may update this thread when I work something out. Thanks again for your great input!!

[Aikmofobi]

In agreement with Olivier. Odd or irregular shapes in a room often helps in preventing acoustic problems as long as no two surfaces are parallell to each other, and/or no room axes are multiples of each other. Avoid placing the mic in a corner or up against a wall, and you might even be better off than in an ordinary recording booth-box.

[selig]

In agreement with Olivier. Odd or irregular shapes in a room often helps in preventing acoustic problems as long as no two surfaces are parallell to each other, and/or no room axes are multiples of each other. Avoid placing the mic in a corner or up against a wall, and you might even be better off than in an ordinary recording booth-box.

Interestingly, odd shaped rooms are extremely difficult to design properly, and yet a well designed rectangle is incredibly easy to deal with. By 'well designed' I mean no lengths are the same or multiples.

There are SO many great studios with parallel walls, proving that it CAN be done (and the math is dirt simple comparatively speaking).

As for booths, they are far too small to consider traditional acoustic concepts - best bet it to absorb most reflections. The "good news" is you will never put an instrument in such a booth that produces much energy below 2-300 Hz, so you don't need to worry so much about standing waves/modes/etc. and definitely don't need to worry about bass traps!

I've seen "Whisper Rooms" that are square and that are rectangular - In some respects the bigger the better is your best bet if just to avoid a 'boxy' sounding booth. For me, if it feels like a closet, it will likely sound like a closet. A 4'x8' booth would probably be ideal if I had the space for it.



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[Jagwah]

Very interesting guys thank you, I think I'll give this odd shaped one a go

[Aikmofobi]

-snip-

Indeed. Rooms with all parallell walls will have problems but always very predictable ones, and those can easily be wrestled into submission simply with ruthless application of absorbers.
As for being too small for traditional concepts, I disagree. Their small size makes them directly respond to fundamentals somewhere around 200-300 Hz. Every room has a sound. This is of course compensated for with aforementioned uncompromising method.
More is more.

[selig]

-snip-

Indeed. Rooms with all parallell walls will have problems but always very predictable ones, and those can easily be wrestled into submission simply with ruthless application of absorbers.
As for being too small for traditional concepts, I disagree. Their small size makes them directly respond to fundamentals somewhere around 200-300 Hz. Every room has a sound. This is of course compensated for with aforementioned uncompromising method.
More is more.

The fact they affect fundamentals at 1-300 Hz range is my point (not forgetting the wall construction on these booths makes them flexible and therefore more likely to absorb these frequencies than to reflect them).

No mix room or recording space shares these qualities - they are unique in this (and other ) factors! This means you must use a different approach to room treatments than what works for the spaces we're more used to treating - basically just trying to say traditional room treatments aren't designed to deal with such small spaces.


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[Aikmofobi]

-snip-

I'm not arguing against that. There are many more interesting ways to absorb sound than just padding the walls.

[selig]

-snip-

I'm not arguing against that. There are many more interesting ways to absorb sound than just padding the walls.

Sorry, then what WERE you disagreeing about? I'm trying to respond to your original comment where you disagreed with me…


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