I just discovered these. Are these any good for music? I see mostly VO people using them, i'm not sure if thats any different but I assume music requires you to be louder. these seem like a good solution if you live in an apartment and dont want to disturb your neighbors. definitely far out of my budget right now, but in the future I will probably want to buy one if it can get me studio quality vocals from my apartment.

Sorry for posting so many threads

We have 2 booths at the studio where I work. The only time I will put a singer in the booth is if they have to sing live while a loud band with drums and guitars is playing in the main room. It's a last resort to get some isolation on the voice. All our vocal overdubs are done with the singers out in the main room.

That's because a booth sounds "boothy". People generally do not use a booth to "sound good" - they use it for isolation. As you said, to not disturb the neighbors or to keep the neighbors (or loud guitars) from disturbing the recording. Even so, the isolation will never be total. A small booth won't have much greater volume in cubic feet than your car. Will it sound better than your car? Maybe you will want to try it out first and see - before spending the money. A cheaper solution would be to overcome your shyness. What happens when your album goes viral and you book a tour and you have to sing on stage?

That is the one area where it seems that tight, closed in, (boxy) sound is considered desirable. I once had a sample rejected by an audiobook company because my recording was not 'boothy' enough.

Soundproofing and sound treatment are two different things. Often they are at cross purposes.

Boothy!!! This is a real thing people that people (especially those who’ve never worked inside a real studio) end up learning the hard way.

Treat your recording space as necessary…. Because chances are, that recording space (in a home) will absolutely need it. But building a booth at home is a waste of time/money & the end result will (at best) sound dead AF and uninspiring. At worst, it will have real sonic issues if the space is untreated.

Fix the dead stuff with short reverbs, etc. I particularly love the “studio” reverbs from UA and IK Multimedia have released. Makes that dry vox sound like you recorded it on the floor of Sound City, Sunset Sound etc

Well having too "dead" of a signal isnt 1/10th the problem the having too noisy a signal if you can just add life in post. The only recording options I have available to me that dont cost me money (and im comically broke at the moment) are either my car, or a booth, so im hoping the booth will do a good job. They are sound treated aswell not just soundproofed so I think the result should be good enough

Honestly? The car is an excellent choice….

but he has been recording in his car and is very disappointed with the results

I think my car is exceptionally bad. It’s a hatchback (more glass) and all leather or faux leather. Compared to a car that’s more fabric type materials it’d probably way more reflective.

The reason I tried this is because I heard that some people got pretty good results, so I think my space is just extra bad

I never heard of anybody getting good recordings done in a car.
I did at some point imagine that recording in a large open field might work really well. No reflections.
There are some problems as well. Finding a large open field. Sounds from the environmentf, animals, traffic, other people.
For the latter you could set up 4 extra microphones around you. Record everything at the same time. Then mix the sound of the extra 4 microphones with your actual recording but flip the phase.

I heard about this band where the father of one of the members worked at Bell Labs. He got permission to record in their large anechoic chamber. They said it turned out horrible.

I recorded some reverb tracks in a forest clearing once. The treeline actually provides a reflection, but I think the irregularity of the leaves and branches kind of acts like diffusion.

Because I was at a remote location and not ready to mix, I got the idea of printing a separate reverb for each instrument so I could mix the reverb percentages later.

There were two crickets in the field, and since I was going for the "outdoor vibe" that was OK with me. Two crickets was the perfect amount. But every overdub was 2 more crickets. It very quickly got to the point where it was distracting.

I had to go back and print my entire aux track in one pass and what I did to cover myself was to print various 'guesses' as to what the reverb balances between instruments should be. One with a little extra vocal. One with more guitar. One that favored the snare.

Funny story. How did it turn out in the end?
I wonder how you are so sure there were only two crickets. Maybe there were more hiding behind a blade of grass, holding their breath.

The outdoor reverb? It turned out great. I think you would have to be in a very large, very flat field to get "no" reverb.

It seemed to be only two at any given time. One on the left and one in the middle.

If there were more, they must have been taking turns.

Well to quote the profoundly wise words of Fletcher…
“YMMV”


I knew a guy who made unbelievably fantastic recordings in his car!

Unfortunately, he was also addicted to drinking Brake Fluid (gasp!)

When confronted with this seriously life threatening bad habit, he immediately retorted…

“But I can STOP any time!!
Chris
P.S. My Worship Band is properly treated BTW.
With “Cross Purposes”

U Turns Joe.

We just used the natural Reverb, back in College.
Of a Garage Band. We were “Underground” too.
My stage name?

Frank Valet.
Chris

We spent thousands on a vocal booth at Purdue. I never use it unless I have to isolate a horn player from the room. And it's not awful for a close mic guitar amp. It's a super high-quality soundproof booth, but sounds exactly like the constricted space that it is for vocals.

My buddy built a "drum room" in his home studio. It's about 12 x 10, but low ceiling. Man, can you hear that low ceiling! It's a signature sound of every drum recording made from that room. We moving the drums out of there, and into the large open part of his basement. Sooooooooo much better!

The drum room is now where his guitars hang, and all amps are set up, ready for mining.

Did you ever try boundary mics on the ceiling as overheads, or just gaff taping SDC's to the ceiling to get the boundary effect? (That is, no separate reflection from the ceiling because the direct sound and the reflected sound hit the mic at almost the same time.)

I know some people put a pair of mics on the floor for similar reasons... get as close to one surface as possible, and as far from the other as possible.

That was exactly what the guy had attached to the ceiling… two boundary mics. Audio Technicas. Nice sounding mics. But drums sounded constricted with them, SDCs on stands, Glyn Johns, Recorderman, everything. I’ve never worked in a worse drum room. It was exceptional. Never tried the floor. Mmm… might have worked.

Close mics sounded ok, but so much of my drum sound is the overheads.

This was recorded up at a cottage in England, guitars and vocals fed to speakers firing across a small bay with U87s down by the shore.