a "portable" sound booth

Or, even cheaper, a couple of heavy blankets .

Interesting idea - wrapping your celebs up in blankets to record them! I wonder what they'd say? And would it be usable for ringtones???

Haha!  I've been wrapping a singer guitar player with acoustic foam, in a bedroom,  and the results are great!  The shell of 2 inch foam has a five to six foot diameter.  Like Mork's Egg only bigger.    It reduces flutter and ring immensely, and the sound is almost totally dry, and it sets up and breaks down with a few modified boom stands.

Lots of things work well.  I just read a post on another board about a voice artist who was on vacation last week.  Needed to record a spot while Ernesto was passing over.  So he took the blankets and comforter off the beds in the condo and hung them up in the closet.  Worked like a charm for him.

I've been building something a bit more substantial than my "portable" booth:



It works well for my needs as it eliminates the standard household noises and the neighbor's lawnmower but it would not be suitable if you had a band playing outside the door.

B

I've been building something a bit more substantial than my "portable" booth:

looks nice...where can i find the plans for something like this?

looks nice...where can i find the plans for something like this?

You could do a lot worse than buy a copy of F. Alton Everest's "Sound Studio Construction ON A BUDGET" (their caps not mine!) ISBN 0-07-021382-8 and have a look at page 52. You could easily waste rather more in unneccessary materials than the $25-30 this will cost you, and there's a lot of other useful information in there as well.

A search reveals very little else in the way of ready-made plans, certainly not any that would give you the all-important construction details. It's amazingly easy to end up with two seemingly identical booths whose performance is radically different - and this is simply down to attention to detail. At present, F. Alton Everest is looking like an increasingly good bet!

I've been building something a bit more substantial than my "portable" booth:

looks nice...where can i find the plans for something like this?

Well, I built it from scratch so really I have no idea.  I read everything I could get my hands on about isolation and acoustics before I built it.  The walls work very well but the door isn't up to snuff yet.  Still working on good seals and a threshold.

I've got a sort of build diary here if you'd like to see it in more detail.

Has anyone in the UK tried anything from

http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/

It all seems remarkably cheap.

Has anyone in the UK tried anything from

http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/

It all seems remarkably cheap.

No I haven't, but I wouldn't have said it was that cheap either, considering what you are getting - the SudioSpares stuff appears to be cheaper. I do believe their absorption figures, though - they are about right for that sort of foam. In other words, you need one hell of a depth of it before you get any bass absorption at all.

Steve, the Studiospares stuff that looked vaguely comparable - vocal booth tiles - seemed to be about 6 to 10 times the price, but maybe I've misread the adverts.

I do appreciate the need for bass absorption in real studios. I just happened on these when thinking about how to treat a tiny editing area, with plain plastered walls,  that someone wants to put a mic in.

Luckily, it's not my problem this time. I was just thinking about it.

[but maybe I've misread the adverts.]

Steve, the Studiospares stuff that looked vaguely comparable - vocal booth tiles - seemed to be about 6 to 10 times the price, but maybe I've misread the adverts.

Maybe I have. But at the very least, their adverts are confusing...

20 off 425 x 425 x 75mm Acoustic Foam Profiled Wedge Tiles (AFW75)

tiles are sold in packs of 30

3.61 square metres (38.58 square feet) per pack

Sound dampening for small to medium size areas like vocal sound booths help prevent echo and improve acoustics and give a more pure sound response. This tile is also ideal for home recording studio applications, home cinemas rehearsal rooms etc.

tile size 425mm x 425 X 75mm
or 16.73 x 16.73 X 3 inches
(coverage 1.9sq ft per tile)[/list:u]
So, are they selling 20 or 30? Or is this 30 packs of 20? What it looks like is that the 'packs of 30' line should read 'packs of 20'. That would at least give 20 x 0.18 sq m = 3.61sq m.

Now, I can't find a price for this, which is the equivalent of StudioSpares Econotile (except smaller tile sizes). All I can find is the 4 special offers. I'd guess that if you asked about the others, they'd cost more. Even their special offers only appear to be at about 1/4 to 1/6 the price. Their trading style in terms of information available seems pretty poor, I'd say.

Yes, I agree the whole thing looks confusing. I was looking at the AFW45, being the cheapskate that I am. That seems to say 30 as the quantity everywhere.

Anyway, I'd still be interested if anyone has actually used these.

Their 'quoted delighted user' seems to no longer have a website (unless I've got that wrong too).

Hi

sorry to mislead anyone the 75mm tiles are 20 per box and the 45mm tiles are 30 per box. typing error on the website changed it now

we have had more extensive tests done on our tiles
the 45mm and 100mm o far plus all the bass traps

tile results can be seen here

http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/nrc.html

we are a large foam company with a turnover of over 10 million
the acoustic foam range is a small sideline we do and sell via ebay to the general public,

we do this not to involve the running of the company which will only deal with existing contract customers

to see feedback on our acoustic foam products
please see our ebay shop

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Comfortex-Foam

please dont think we use any old foam for these tiles it is an approved acoustic foam from one of the worlds biggest specialist foam manufacturers

if we seem cheap its because we sell direct as a manufacturer and dont spend anything on promotion or advertising , apart from a few grand we have just spent on testing

full test results online now
for tiles and bass traps

http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/testresults.pdf

cheers
mike

Thanks for clarifying that, Mike. I'm sending you a PM...