Vocal booth

When recording vocals it’s important to minimize reverberation and reduce unwanted noise, for example spill¹ in group performances. Professional recording studios offer an isolation booth to deal with that. I think that a cheap and flexible DIY² approach is to build a small room out of moving boxes and blankets. Even though there isn’t the same amount of noise reduction achieved, this solution minimizes reverberation.

Conception

Before building a DIY vocal booth, I choose a location inside my room that already has least reverberations. I prefer the center of a blank wall over a corner to avoid some room modes³ and amplification of low frequencies. Another aspect is to use a table turned towards the center of a wall to build the vocal booth upon it. By this, I can place a display, keyboard and mouse in front of the microphone stand for reading the lyrics and controlling the DAW during performance.

Building

The building process is easy. I fold the moving boxes and form walls around the table. I recommend to prick small holes into the carton and use cable tie⁴ for attachment. Don’t forget to build a ceiling with blankets and leave out an entrance to suspend a blanket as door replacement. Additionally, consider a carton floor or use a carpet and cover any gaps with more blankets.

I arrange the microphone stand and other equipment, and try to establish a cable layout carrying the connectors preferably outside of the box. I set up my computer and other noisy hardware outside of the booth, ideally in another room.

Sound check

Finally, I can set up my equipment and enter the DIY vocal booth. I place myself in front of the microphone and test the acoustic environment. If there are still reverberations, I try to locate the source, for example plane surfaces of equipment, and consider covering it with blankets. For reference, I mark the singing position inside the booth by applying tape on the floor.

Application

You can listen to the acapella version of WEAK from the Inconvenient EP to get an impression of the result.