Advice on Isolation Booth for out of tune crooner

Hello, Without telling you my life story, these past few years I've been trying to bring up my singing voice. Unfortunately, I'm living in a situation where for various reasons I'm consigned to hiding this shame. Singing in the car has helped tremendously, but the time has come for me to watch the road more carefully. No accidents, but a couple of close calls :oops: So, I'm looking to build a vocal isolation booth. I say isolation because the primary goal is for the out-of-tune drawl to be sufficiently attenuated. Whilst I have a fair bit of recording gear, I'd probably only use the recordings for scratch vocals, rather than finished product. Unfortunately, my realistic budget is all of about $800. It has to be able to be taken down if I move (as in, not completely static, I'm not moving any time soon). It can have zero aesthetics. Things like in booth treatment, air intake, and such could be added at a later date. The booth will be located in my "bedroom" which is a carpeted (very thin, hard wearing) concrete slab. My walls are brick. My concern is both sound bleeding upstairs and to a lesser extent, outside to next door. The level of volume we're talking about here is absolutely as loud as a human can go at times. I'm located in Australia, so my port of call would probably be bunnings. I know that green glue is more readily available now, fortunately. My guess is that with my budget I could be pushing it for two double gyrock/green glue mated walls, though. I have seen the thread in the reference links but the design seems a bit out of my price range/expertise. Whilst I'm sure you'll loathe this type of cavalier commentary, I really just need to get something that works as soon as possible and start hollering. I'm not going to kick myself down the path if it sounds awful recording wise. It's just about liberation. So with this in mind, could anybody direct me to a "work in progress" / "plan thread" which would possibly guide me through. Any general commentary on what sort of attentuation expected/design I'd have to use for that type of budget would also be very appreciated. My experience in woodwork is super high. I have built a subwoofer box. So you know, I'm basically an acoustics/building expert :roll: Thanks for any help.

On a budget of US$ 800, you won't have any room for Green Glue, I think. And I'm not sure you will need it anyway: GG is great at the low end of the spectrum, and you have not mentioned anything about there being a lot of low-end noise that you need to isolate. If all you want is to keep the sound of your voice down outside of the booth, then the low end isn't an issue, since the human voice does not have much energy at all in low frequencies. So I think you might be able to skip the GG. Unless, of course, you have noisy trucks driving past all the time, or helicopters overhead, and you want to keep that noise OUT of your booth... OK, so basically you only need something to kill loud male-voice singing, on a very low budget? I reckon a couple of layers of 5/8 sheetrock on each side of a 2x4 staggered stud (24" OC) timber frame with 2x8 top and bottom plates (or equivalent metal frame, if you prefer metal), and maybe with RC between the studs and sheetrock if you sing REALLY loud, would be enough to do the trick. Everything caulked and sealed tight, lots of rock wool between the studs filling the entire air gap, etc. Same construction for the ceiling. It's a very basic two-leaf system. The sheetrock on the inside of the walls only ever touches the inside of the studs and the sheetrock on the inside of the ceiling. Likewise, the sheetrock on the outside of the walls only ever touches the outside of the studs and also the sheetrock on the "roof". All joints caulked and sealed, no flanking paths between leaves, except for the top and bottom plates. Etc. It won't be pretty, and will sound ghastly inside with no treatment, but I think it is probably do-able on your budget, or close to it. Maybe there will be a few dollars left over for some decent acoustic absorption on the inside walls and ceiling, otherwise there isn't much point in building it!! (If you don't treat it, or vent it, then a 2.5m length of really large concrete sewer pipe stood on end, with a lid on top, would give you the same isolation and sound about the same inside.... :) ) Your weak point is going to be the door (and the window too, if there is one, but on $ 800??? I just don't see any $ space for a window any bigger than a postage stamp, if that!!!), so "door(s)" is where I'd concentrate most of my money: Heavy solid core door(s), good seals, etc. Two back-to-back doors as an "air-lock" would be great, but budget might limit you to just one, in which case it will have to be some door! Think "mass". No, that's not enough!!! Think harder!! You need to think MORE mass than that! But ventilation IS an issue that you need to look at now, not later. You can't hang around in a small air-tight box for very long, doing serious physical exertion (singing loud and animatedly), and expect to remain conscious! So another chunk of your 800 bucks needs to go into some kind of ventilation: a small fan, bent ducting, a silencer box, etc. More $. I'm not sure about "mobile" though. It's a tough enough call to even build something usable on 800 bucks. Making it mobile without having to tear it apart would require lots more than that budget, I think. Sounds like a challenge, for sure. Good luck! - Stuart -

Thanks for your reply. No real problems with noise coming in. Some airplane noise but as I say, not really an issue of sound quality of recording. As you guess, it is correct that I am simply after killing the volume of the singing. When I say mobile, I simply do mean that it is possible to take it apart and reassemble somewhere else. I'm told that metal siding on the panels would be the way to achieve that. Point on ventilation taken, I will incorporate this. My main problem with having ventilation at the initial stage was the potential leakage of sound. There will be no window, atleast, for the initial design. I'll just take a lighter in. It's a foolproof plan! I definitely think the doors are going to be a bit of a problem, I'm not keen to put a heap of work into a good design and then stuff it up with a crummy door. The wall design you mention was basically what I thought it would have to be with the budget we're talking about. Basic green glue calculations come out to about 55 sq m for the two two layer setup and that exceeds even a case of glue at recommended application, so in that respect I think I'm sunk. I'll check out prices today, see if I can get a handle on what sort of total this is going to run up

Some room dimensions to help with this project: Small vocal booth in project studio !Help! with layout for 13'x26' open space

I simply do mean that it is possible to take it apart and reassemble somewhere else. I'm told that metal siding on the panels would be the way to achieve that.

Metal siding on the panels? What do you mean by that? To make it possible to disassemble / re-assemble, you'd need some way of breaking the air-tight seals between walls/wall, walls/ceiling, wall/floor and putting them back together again, so good old cheap caulk is out the window. I'm not sure how you'd do that. I can't see any way of doing a low-cost "caulking" job that can be separated and put back together without wrecking the sheetrock. You'd also have to bolt the individual wall / floor / ceiling "segments" to each other, instead of nailing, and screw the sheetrock in such a way that you can find each screw and unscrew it. Cost goes up. Nails, caulk and glue are cheap, bolts, screws and rubber seals are not so cheap. And not so good, either. It's probably do-able, but not on an $800 budget. To be honest, on this budget construction, I think that all you might be able to save would be some of the framing and the door. Is it really worth spending an extra $800 to make it movable? Would it not be better to just envision tearing it down, trashing most of it, and spend that other $800 to build another one in the new location? Regarding your ventilation: I'm no expert on that area, but I suspect that you might be able to build a "duct" that incorporates a silencer box, using MDF, OSB, plywood or some such. Whatever is cheaper. You could probably build it as a unit that runs the full height of the booth. I'm thinking maybe a boxy thing, 2.5m high, with several staggered baffles inside every few dozen cm, lined with rock wool. Maybe build a pair of them, one on each side of the booth: One inlet, one outlet. Figure out how much air you need to move, and get a very quite fan that will accomplish that, attached on the outlet end of the outlet duct. I'm not sure if just 2.5 m of staggered baffle silencer is going to be enough, and I haven't yet though through how to isolate it and avoid flanking, but those are things you can do! I'm just thinking out loud. In any event, I'd suggest that you download SketchUp (its free!) learn it for a few days, then design your booth in 3D and post the model here, so folks here can take a look at it and offer suggestions. Design is paramount. Don't start building until you have a solid, sane, workable design. Especially given your limited budget! A mistake in your design could cause you to blow your entire budget for nothing. Spend LOTS of time to design it right first, and only when it makes total perfect sense, start building. - Stuart -

Not much design to one of these, just get the ratios right and figure out how to build a "knock down" structure. Should be relatively pain free :)

Metal siding. As in, pieces of metal lining the edges of the walls so that where the panels intersect, two pieces of metal are intersecting and thus can be sealed without fear of ruining the sheetrock below. I was probably a little less informative than I could be regarding the living situation. I live in a rental house. I will sign another 12 month lease in February but that is as far down the line I can guarantee I will be in the same place. Consequently, I wouldn't build it if I could not rebuild in another location. I'd wait and spend more to get it right :) I will get to sketchup shortly. Thanks for the help.