DIY Hanging Vocal Booth In Progress

 'My partner in musical crime did a huge overhaul in his recording set up and now I am playing catch up. Given his champagne tastes - and my skim milk budget -  this has NOT been easy!  First I upgraded the microphone. It's no Neumann but it is a Rode and it's fabulous!  However that has created it's own problems because now the room in the new place is actually evident in any recording I send him!  The new place doesn't have the same set up as the old place; it lacks broadloom and also the cantilevered stippled stupidly LOW ceiling which was an audio blessing in disguise.  Mr. newly minted sound engineer then requested I get a ​reflexion filter to fix the room sound problems that he detected in the backing tracks I sent him.  


Alas ,my room has more problems than a simple reverb off the opposing wall to fix. After an immense amount of due diligence reading reviews (plus all my years of audio experience at CKCU-FM & my childhood love or physics :) I determined this was not going to fix the ALL of the new room's 'noise' problems. For one thing there is a mirrored closet. Terrible for acoustic - I leave it open when recording to minimize glass surfaces and I sing beside it to minimize it was well.  

You see, when you speak, sing - or whatever! :) - the sound travels out of your mouth in a sort of cone shape and proceeds to strike whatever surfaces are in front of you and then reflect back in a series of waves which then ricochet around the room. So room surfaces and treatments change the pattern of reflections.  With a more sensitive mic much more ambient would was being picked up despite the mic being a cardioid pick up pattern (see the side graphic =>>) 
All of my mics are cardioid from a ​Shure to a Rode). And the sound does come back into the pickup pattern area.

That's one problem but not the only one! The other is sound coming in from outside. Acoustical Surfaces suggested Green Glue might help depending on if the sound was coming through the glass or the space between the glass and the wall, i.e. around the windows. So after a humongous load of research into what would solve the problem I settled on what i could afford and now it is time to set the thing up.  Sadly I cannot do this alone and am waiting on my hyper talented but often ill brother to help me get the hardware attached to the ceiling.  I didn't get the track from the company below because of the amount of time it would take to make its way from Maryland here but I would still recommend the guys who make it. I'm doing a home made version of same. Then I will suspend some thick curtains and I have a mattress behind where I will sing plus I need to get a thick rubber mat, which Lowe's has, which should work fine to isolate the mic from the floor.  That can't hurt.  

The enactment of the plan is dependent on my friend with wheels helping me haul the quite heavy rubber mat over so I don't give myself a migraine (I get way too many of those!)  and my mechanical genius brother to help me install the hardware.   Wish me luck!   This is all way overdue.

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