After years of trials and research we present a new and updated range of components for vocal booths and modular sound booths.
Design the vocal booth of your choice.
Over the past thirty years we have built a variety of legendary sound booths for different users. Now these vocal booths are in daily use by the ABC, Army, Airforce, Universities, Podcasters, Schools, Musicians, Content Creators and Agencies and so -why not you?
Wall customisation
No need to spend a fortune on an idea that might not last. Our booths are easily packed down and are designed to be relocated as circumstances change, and on rare occasions re-sold after years of use for close to the original price.
Soundproof booth?
Newcomers to recording and acoustics frequently imagine a lightweight booth will offer complete sonic isolation from the surroundings.
Many people search online for ‘soundproof booths’. They are like pink horses. Complete isolation is only achievable in the vacuum of space. You’ve heard the saying ‘In space, nobody can hear you scream’ ? Well thats accurate. In recording we often need sufficient isolation to avoid cross-talk, so one instrument or voice can be mixed up or down without compromise. This is quantifiable in decibels (db). 10 db is 10 times less energy, so 10 times quieter (or louder). 20db is 100 times, and 30 db is 1000 times. Separation of about 35db and over is quite sufficient for many purposes.
Decibels
A Decibel is a logarithmic scale unit allowing concise description of large numbers. Hearing roughly equates to the decibel scale. One db is about the minimum difference a human can detect.
10db difference is usually considered ‘twice as loud’ although that is subjective.
A quite room for sleeping should be about 20db or less.
A conversation might be 60 db
A loud rock concert might be 100db.
The threshold of pain is about 130 db.
All users need a great live natural acoustic sound – so the instrument or voice sounds nice and balanced. The engineer also needs sufficient separation so the production can be mixed as needed.
Thirdly the recording space needs enough isolation to avoid possibly annoying others in the vicinity and recording of unwanted sounds. That is achievable with an broadband isolation of between 35 – 55db in most cases.
Professional studio
In a professional studio, everyone focuses on completing the recordings in the best possible way. There is only one thing happening – the creation of the recording. In such a pro set up, a small amount of crosstalk or bleed is expected and easily manageable, as long as the intruding sound is also in the mix.
Home studio sound and vocal booths
The requirements for home studio isolation are sometimes more exacting than a professional one. Around home sound and vocal booths there may be people doing unrelated work or play and making noise that is unrelated to the recording (i.e. interference) , and others who just want a quiet environment. If you imagine you’ll be playing metal drums in your lounge-room booth while relatives soak up a delicate movie in the same room, or want to indulge in a whispered conversation, dream on!
Its always much easier to place wildly different acoustic needs in different rooms. That way we take advantage of the structure of the house and everyone is happy. The separation increases, because most rooms with a well fitting door have an isolation of about 30db for stud wall and 40db for brick. If you place our standard booth in a brick room you will achieve about 75db isolation outside the room.
Have a look and careful listen to the example below, of a booth in a basement garage.
Booth in a basement garage.
So how does that sound to you? Bear in mind the drum sound is just from the video mic on the camera. The Video shows a Heavy Duty (HD) booth in a massive concrete garage, shared with about 30 other apartments. There are thin pressed metal doors between adjacent garages, thats all. Because the massive basement has a reasonable sound isolation to the building above, this user has had NO complaints from his many neighbors in several years of daily use. Below is a photo of the space before the booth was installed.
This example is to show that thoughtful assignment of space for a studio leads to a very successful result.
Complete soundproofing?
‘Complete soundproofing’ is an ambiguous term. It is more useful to know how much attenuation is required in order to achieve the desired result. In practice an attenuation of 45db broadband is sufficient for many professional purposes.
Many of our clients opt for lighter and cheaper Standard booths at 35 db which are perfect for applications where the room containing the booth is also part of the studio. Then loud noises, aircraft taking off etc are not heard during recording.
Sound and vocal booths isolation in the real world
In the real world complete sound isolation often requires three completely isolated floating rooms each suspended within the other. We have built such technical isolation systems with this sort of specification and so managed to reduce a 100 db source to about 12 db in the surrounding space.
Thats 88 db reduction, about 30db per layer. We engineered this to allow an exposed industrial vacuum motor to run in a disk cutting room in our record factory, reducing its 95db roar to a whisper.
Simply choosing the correct design and weight provides a workable solution. Our booths do sound great and come in ‘three flavours’ of isolation and so cater for a variety of needs. You can choose Standard, Heavy or Extreme.
Sound and vocal booth internal dimensions
Booths are specified in Internal Size in Meters. Thus ‘2 x 1.5’ means 2M x 1.5M internal, Nominal.
Why Nominal? The exact dimensions vary across the booth and as a result the staggered walls improve the acoustic performance. All booths are 2,3M high inside – higher than the competition, to suit Tall Australians.
Sound Booth Plans
External Dimensions
Sound Booths are approximately 0,3M ( 300mm) larger OUTSIDE than they are INSIDE. For example, a 2 x 1.5 will be about 2,3M x 1,8M OUTSIDE. The dimensions are nominal because, unlike other manufacturers, our walls are not straight, but stepped, to avoid nasty internal peaks and troughs. We are repeating ourselves but its important to know this detail.
External Height=2,4M and Minimum Room*H=2,5M.
The ceiling adds about 0,1M (or 100mm) to the booth height. We require a further clearance of 0,1M to enable air circulation and assembly.
* some special circumstance may allow a bit less – e.g. installing private booth in an old house.
There are several floor options, so if you do not have a good solid flat floor, please contact us to discuss.
Remember we offer three different types of isolation, Standard, Heavy and Extreme!
Sound and vocal booths suggested uses:
- a private space within an open plan office
- a quiet moment in a staff room for that important phone call
- a private place to communicate well
- a perfect environment to Skype in the midst of a modern busy workspace
- a space to perform a highly treated narrative in a live theatre
- many other useful sound isolation and control functions.
Warning – Use limited only by your imagination!