Advice on treating my rental room for tracking vocals

[trav_9222]

Hey there, loving this forum and the huge amount of collective knowledge that you guys are giving out.
Was looking to get some advice on how to best treat my room/space for tracking vocals.

So basically I rent a place with two other people and I have the master bedroom, which gives me a decent amount of space to work with. I'm looking to add any kind of acoustic treatment I can to make recording vocals in here usable for "professional" release. I'm not concerned about sound escaping the room as I record mostly during the day when housemates are away and the neighbours are non existent, I also don't require the room to be set up for mixing as most of our tracks we mix in proper spaces or have engineers work on them in their treated spaces. My primary concern is having a set up that allows me to track vocals the best way that I possibly can in this space, keeping in mind that I'm renting so I can't be making permanent alterations .

The room specs are:
4.1metres x 3.1 metres and 2.4 metres tall (Australian so metric it is for me).

Important notes (will try to attach pictures):
- One of the walls has long mirrors (4) as sliding doors to two closets.
- There is a queen sized bed in the centre of the room, but can be shifted either way.
- Rather large window section on an adjacent wall.
- Not a busy part of Melbourne so traffic and outside noise is pretty low, mostly air and the occasional bird chirping bleeding in.

My original idea was to use one of the bedroom cupboards as a sort of vocal booth by adding a bunch of rock wool and acoustic foam, but I did a bit of research and it seems I'd be better off treating the actual room seeing as I would likely get a very 'boxy' sound.
Budget is fairly flexible, I aim to hopefully spend no more than $1000 on it but I can go up if there is a real way to make this work, the rental thing is a bit of a drag but ya gotta use what ya got.

Any recommendations would be super appreciated, thanks!

[trav_9222]

Pictures for reference.

[nicklear]

I'm sure you've seen these, but this would be one option at the low end of the budget. Haven't personally used these, but it would be a lot easier than treating the whole room.

auray_rf_5p_b_reflection_filter_888808.jpg

A step up from that would be moveable gobos.

Acoustic-screen2.jpg

Both designed to absorb the vocal sound as it goes past the mic so that the room doesn't add its reflections. The idea being that if you bring the treatment closer, you need less of it.

Hopefully Stuart will put you right if I'm talking nonsense.

[trav_9222]

Thanks for the suggestion!

I've had a look at these but the problem with the first design is that quite a bit of sound still escapes into the room. The second one is a bit better but has a similar problem. I'm trying to avoid having it sound like it was recorded in too small a space too; otherwise the proofing of the cupboard would be an option. I'm happy to spend the money on making a design like these work, I'm just looking for the best possible way to do it in the space that I have, whether that means treating the room or a more targeted area.

[Soundman2020]

The problem with those so-called "reflection filters" or "portable vocal booths", is simply that they don't work. Sound On Sound magazine did an in-depth review of several leading brands, testing them all carefully in a proper acoustic lab, and the results show that they all accomplish roughly nothing at all! Yes, there's a slight reduction in some high frequencies, perhaps a couple of dB, and a slight reduction in perceived reverberation times for the same reason, and possibly even a slight reduction in bleed from other instruments in the room, but the overall effect is negligible, just a few dB at best. Search for the article on their website. The only one that made a somewhat significant difference, was Ethan Winers version, which is way more than a piece of foam on a stick! And even then, the effect was not huge, even though it strecthes the meaning of the word "portable" to extremes...

The basic issue with all of those gadgets, is that they are on the wrong side of the mic! Most vocal mics are cardiod or super cardiod, so they pick up very little from the rear direction anyway (the rear of the mic)! So those devices are not actually doing anything to the sound field that the mic sees. If you take a look at professional vocal booths, you'll see that the vocal artist is usually facing an extremely reflective glass window! Which immediately kills the claim of those manufacturers that you absolutely must stop reflections coming back at you from that direction... Whooops!

What's in front is not that important. It's what is BEHIND the vocalist that matters: that's what the mic "sees" mostly, so that's where most of your treatment should be. Usually, that's a combination of thick absorption with some reflection, or even diffusion if the booth is big enough. It's those reflections and the sound of that rear wall that you need to deal with most. A carefully designed slat wall behind a singer usually sounds pretty good.

Of course, it's not ONLY what is behind the vocalist that matters: The entire room matters! But that's the direction that requierse most attention to detail... and that's the reason why those cute little expensive foam-pads-in-a-colander-on-a-stick don't work. Personally, I'd love to see a lab test done with one of those set up behind the vocalist's head... it might actually do something vaguely useful there!


- Stuart -

[trav_9222]

Yeah, I did a little bit of looking at them and it became pretty apparent that they weren't going to be helpful.

Any suggestion on what I can do to the space that I have to make it viable for tracking vocals? I know you mentioned a carefully designed slat wall, but I'm not entirely sure of how to design such a wall haha, much less how to treat the space that I have.

Like I said; I'm happy to be flexible on the budget if there's a legitimate way to make it work, I just need some direction on where to start (materials etc.), keeping in mind it's a rental

Thanks.

[nicklear]

This thread is quite useful - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5457

It has a small studio design in Sketchup (download it for free) that John shared. You can see how he treated the live room - wooden frame to hold the absorbtion, one wall contains a very deep trap to deal with bass, and wooden slats covering two of the walls. That could be done in a way that was removable so as to work in a rental. If you haven't already, ideally you would build your room in Sketchup so you can get exact sizes for wooden beams and slats etc.

Watch out for the fibreglass dust on the day you install - not going to be ideal to sleep in there for a few days after that.

Edit: Stuart, do you know if John would normally fill that deep trap with say pink fluffy, or is it rather that in the depth from the wall being variable over the length, that it therefore absorbs different wavelengths across the wall?

EDIT: this page has the theory behind the design http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/Pages/ ... encies.htm

[nicklear]

Also I found Bigsby's thread very good on how to do slats and he did a nice live room

https://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/view ... 0&start=90