I seem to have this continual need to engineer as I go... anyway now that the sheetrocking of the entire studio is complete, and I've started the mudding process, I'm thinking about proper treatments for the vocal booth.
Yes, the walls are somewhat parallel. While I drew the top view square, all the angles are actually a hair off. The front wall, facing the console room, actually leans into the booth at a 4 degree angle. I'll provide explainations as the pictures really make it look simpler than it is
Diagram 1 - Top view:
This essentially is the layout... the window at the bottom of the diagram is to the control room, and right now its a top-quality anderson window, double pane, with the glass suspended in butyl rubber filled with argon. Because the glass is closer to the front of the window frame (control room side) there is room in the back on the inside, and a friend of mine who makes custom windows for a living out of similar materials, is making me another double pane, argon filled window to fit at an angle inside the frame, extending the frame into the room slightly. This will hopefully reduce/prevent acoustical transmission through the window. This new window will be epoxied into the window frame, so its all one structure. We undersized it by 1/4" so another one is being made. Ooops.
The top right window in the diagram is an outside, 1941 window, I had intended to remove it by this point however a lot of things prevented me from doing so, but it will be cut out next summer and made into a solid wall.
The door on the right is the entrance to the vocal booth, however the door is not there as of yet. I haven't figured out the framing, hinging aspect of the door, because the door frame overhangs a flip-floor which is approximately the upper two-thirds of the diagram - because the vocal booth is over a stair well. Diagram two illustrates the flip floor.
Diagram 2 - Side view:
The window on the left of the diagram is the control room window. The walls and ceiling of the vocal booth are sheetrocked, ready to be mudded. I forgot the back window (which would be on the right of the diagram), my apologies.
The walls that extend down past the floor are the stairwell walls, and the red rectangle is a constructed floor that flips up, hinged on the left of the diagram. The blue rectangle is a 2x8 thats screwed to the stairwell frame using long lag bolts, with that frame being the original construction of the house as 2x8's also. This floor is very solid. There is a butyl rubber gasket around the three sides - one on the 2x8 sill the floor lands on, one on the short side against the left most wall (first diagram), and one under the hinges about two inches down the side, so when the floor is in the down position, its sealed all the way around. The side where the door is of course does not have a sealing strip as its open, so there is nothing to seal to yet.
Diagram 3 - Top view, possible treatments:
I attempted to designate the sitting/standing position of someone in the vocal booth, so they can see out the window while performing. This angle also helps a bit reduce the effects of nearly parallel walls, which I was going to initially treat with auralex foam. I can go the foam route, but I was thinking maybe angled panels inside the booth to help give the walls an occasional splayed surface to prevent such standing waves.
The door is really perplexing me... the original door when I had the booth built the first time was two bi-fold doors hinged together for a quad-fold door, which I routed and put gaskets between each door, gaskets underneath, and it folded up nicely into the part of the booth that doesn't flip. It did leak acoustically rather bad, so I'm thinking going that route isn't a good solution. But I can, I still have the doors and the overhead tracks.
I was thinking of hanging a curtain rod, and two sets of really heavy drapes. I visited a local fabric store and they have heavy, heavy wool, heavy cotton, denim, almost any fabric I could think of, I could use that.
If I have to record with headphones, I can do that because I tend to record everything dry anyway, so what the vocal booth really needs to do is keep machine noise out...
On the front vocal booth wall (on the console room side) I built a producer's desk with four 19" racks underneath, and because I was concerned about machine noise, I've built it in such a way that its gasketed at the attachment point to the booth wall. The wood that attaches to the booth was overdrilled, and a rubber collett installed, then the deck screw was screwed through into the outside of the booth wall. Also, a piece of neoprene was glued at the end of the wooden desk supports. This way the screws that hold it to the booth wall are part of the booth wall, but the producer desk supports are not physically attached to the wall, except through a piece of neoprene and the rubber colletts.
The outside window thats in the vocal booth is recessed 1" from the inside wall, so making a flush door, panel, or plug shouldn't be difficult at all. I illustrated this in blue in the third diagram above. Then I could treat it like the rest of the wall, or specially if necessary because its a loose panel.
While I have enough new, boxed auralex foam in the attic to fill the entire cubic volume of this vocal booth, I'm not 100% convinced its the answer to the acoustical needs of this booth. Especially, with the door engineering totally not done yet...
So what do you guys thing about the door, and about the treatments?
What would you do if this was your space?
Thanks in advance for any comments, thoughts, and hysterical laughter