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VO Booth ceiling treatment
We are finishing up a VO booth (5ft x 6ft) and have yet to treat the ceiling. Our walls are 2 inch thick fiberglass batting covered with acoustically transparent cloth. We haven’t treated the ceiling yet. With no treatment, there is an audible slap back. As a temporary measure, we folded a 10x20ft muslin, and draped it on slats spaced about 1 foot apart, so the folds are about 8 inches from the ceiling, and the slap back is gone. The booth is very dead, and sounds great.
Now as we ponder the permanent ceiling treatment, we have split into 2 camps. 1 camp says we need a convoluted surface to break up reflections. The other camp says the 2 inch fiberglass batt, covered with acoustically transparent cloth with kill the slap.
The question is: Convoluted? or Flat fiberglass?
Any experience to share?
-Scott
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6 Replies
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Scott,
I turned the Magic Eight Ball over and it said, “BOTH.” 🙂
I turned it over again and it said, “Stop asking me silly questions. You have already fixed the problem. You’re DONE. Get Back To Work!”
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi
Regards,
Ty Ford
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I have a Vocal Booth platinum series but it is smaller than yours (4’ x 4’).
The walls are Auralex Sonomatt Foam Panels, and the ceiling is in 2 parts.
On top a thick layer of Auralex Mineral Fiber, which is jammed on top of the ceiling. The ceiling is just covered in Heavy Duty Executive
Gray Fabric Exterior. AKA sound proof carpet 🙂Anyway, on larger ones they tend to do this:
https://www.vocalbooth.com/images/phocagallery/thumbs/phoca_thumb_l_4x6goldpurpleinterior.jpg
I’m new so I’m not sure on posting pics etc so I just provided a link.
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Owen,
I’ve been here a while and I still find posting pix to be difficult.
The booth you show has one problem; too much foam.
The energy of your voice will, at some point, excite the foam and it will be audible as a spongy artifact. It’ll make you sound a little like you have a cold.
The louder the voice, the spongier. It will be more noticeable with condenser mics than with good dynamics like the Shure SM7b, EV RE20 or Sennheiser MD441.
The main problem is the size of the booth. There’s not much space for the sound to dissipate.
If you don’t put something on the walls and ceiling, you’ll get flutter echo and/or standing waves.
Think about panels of foam instead of coating entire walls. Think about angling the walls or putting shapes on them with angles of at least 10 degrees to breakup standing waves. Cover then with burlap or some other open weave fabric.
I decided to go “the other way” and instead of putting the voice booth in a small space, I put all my computers and noisemakers in closets and left the big room (which I also treated acoustically) for VO work. The room is 25 x 35. By the time my voice bounces off of everything and gets back to the mic, there’s little if anything left to hear if I work the mic at 6″ or closer.
And I’m not locked up in a tiny booth.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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The trade off having the foam walls is that I can use it for more purposes. Plus it offers more isolation as there is less DB’s leaking out (I’m mixing just outside the vocal booth)
Foam means I can put a guitar 4×12 in there and mic up a Marshall and blast away, or can record an acoustic instrument and really capture the intimacy.
It’s great for peeps like me who want the sound captured with no interaction, as I like to add room verbs etc later on.
It does suck recording in there for extended periods though. I really need to hook up the vent/fan.
It has a sound proof window in there, so it’s not 100% foam.
I didn’t know about the vocals exciting the foam/spongy artifact. I’ll probably hear it all the time now you’ve mentioned it. Ignorance is bliss etc.
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[owen gibbins] “The trade off having the foam walls is that I can use it for more purposes”
Owen, nice try.
Foam is foam. Size is size. You can ignore the laws of physics, but they won’t ignore you.
Glass a mostly 100% reflective surface is not what you want other than foam, btw. That’s exactly my point. you need some space and diffusion for a place to sound nice.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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I treated the walls of my 5×7 Whisperroom with 2″ thick acoustic panels and the ceiling with three 4″ thick acoustic panels. (Fiberglass)
It got rid of that “boxy” sound.John Weeks
http://www.johnweeksaudio.com
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