HELP - Building a small vocal booth

Hi everybody, So I'm planning to build a small vocal booth, just large enough to stand in (on account of not having very much space). But I have no idea whatsoever what materials to use, which measurements and all that. So I've got a couple of questions if you don't mind. - Is 4x4 ft. large enough for a vocal booth? - Can I use wood instead of drywall? - Can I build in a plexiglass window? - Should I make a double wall with rockwool in between? For insulation/absorption purposes. - What kind of material should I put up on the walls so I don't have that nasty hollow-room-effect that I have now. - Should I put a carpet on the floor? I think that's all for now and please bear in mind that I'm a total noob at this, so I don't really understand any studio/audio jargon. Thanks in advance!

Huh so apparently I had a case of TL;DR. But I read the "READ THIS" post know so I added my location ;) Also, I read that stating my budget would come in handy. My budget is around €300 (or $380). Edit: I already have rockwool laying around from when I moved my bedroom to the attic and needed to rebuild the whole thing.

There are a couple of threads her on the forum about small vocal booths. You can us the "search" button to find them, and see if one of them fits your situation. You didn't say much about how loud you are, how much isolation you need, what is going to be around the booth, etc. etc. If you live in the middle of the desert, one piece of cardboard to keep the sun off your head is all you need for a booth. If you live in the middle of a subway station, you need a massive floated de-coupled booth. Very different scenarios. We can't know about your situation unless you tell us, so you won't see much advise from folks here unless you first describe with as much detail as possible what it is you have, and what it is you want to achieve.

Yeah I used the search function already, didn't really find anything that fits my needs. I'll try to be as specific as possible with my description. - I'm not loud at all, but I do live next to a handyman who is always busy building stuff so I don't want those sounds interfering. He is also the only noise-making source here, because I live in a pretty secluded area, very far from the nearest city. - My walls are made of drywall. - I have carpet on my floors, I think it's cotton and it's very thin. - My walls go like this: / \, because I'm on an attic (only on 2 sides obviously, the other 2 walls are straight). - There's not going to be much stuff around the booth, only a desk (with a recordplayer and a computer monitor on it) and a sofa. What I want to achieve is nice, clear vocals with no hollow/echo sound and no background sounds.

I'm not much of an expert on vocal booths, but seeing no-one else answered I'kll give you my thoughts, for what it's worth:

- Is 4x4 ft. large enough for a vocal booth?

Bigger is always better, but if that's all you have available, then it will have to do.

- Can I use wood instead of drywall?

You can, but drywall is usually cheaper, more massive, and easier to work with.

- Can I build in a plexiglass window?

You can, but plexiglass is not a very good isolator: It is not very dense, so you need to make it at least twice as thick as normal glass to get the same amount of isolation.

- Should I make a double wall with rockwool in between? For insulation/absorption purposes.

If you need isolation, then yes! If you don't need isolation and all you need is treatment, then maybe you could save money and just hang the treatment on the walls of your room! The big question is: do you need isolation? Only you can answer that. You mentioned a noisy handyman next door, so my guess is that yes, you do need isolation. HOWEVER! Do NOT build something that will give you a three-leaf wall. A three leaf wall is BAD for isolation, not good (contrary to what you might think). Since your existing room wall probably already has two leaves (the roof on the outside, and drywall on the inside, you have a problem. Anything that you do is going to add another leaf. So if you do need isolation, your best option is probably to remove the existing drywall from the walls of the room. This will leave you with two options: 1) Leave it like that (no drywall on the studs) and build your vocal booth as a single leaf inside the room. 2) Don't build an actual vocal booth, and just use the entire room! In this case, you will use something called "resilient channel" (or alternatively you could use RSIC clips and hat channel) across the existing studs, then attach two or three layers of drywall on top of that. The resilient channel "decouples" your inner leaf from the rest of the wall, which greatly improves isolation. (You might also need to beef up the roof side of the studs in some way, depending on how much isolation you need.) And you will need to put lots of insulation in that cavity between the new drywall and the roof. either of these will give you much better isolation than you have at present. The second option will give you a much larger space, of course, since the entire room becomes your vocal booth. But it is much more work, too

- What kind of material should I put up on the walls so I don't have that nasty hollow-room-effect that I have now.

Take a look at Ethan Winer's web site to get an idea about that. www.realtraps.com

- Should I put a carpet on the floor?

Probably not a good idea! Make the ceiling dead if you want, and treat the walls with absorption, but leave the floor bare. That's my non-expert opinion. Others may have different ideas for you. - Stuart -

4 x 4 is not a good idea either. You will end up with bad model responses. maybe try 3x4x5 lil

Did you look at this thread? "Help me treat a square vocal/iso booth"