Isolation Booth Help!

[Grasshopper]

I'm planning on building an 8' by 8' by 8' isolation booth. I want to be able to use it for anything (that will fit!) but primarily for vocals. I would prefer not to spend more than $1500. My dad and I will be building it so no labor costs will be involved. What should I use for the outside? Inside wall? Floor? What kind of light should I use? Foam? Any suggestions are welcome.

[tINY]

If you want good isolation, concrete or cinderblock is hard to beat.

If you want a good accoustic space to record in, consider other dimensions (eight feet in all dimmensions is going to be awful at 70, 140, and 100 Hz).



-tINY

[Offender]

Yer you wanna have odd dimentions really. I dont know too much about accoustics...but walls that are parallel arent too good. Anyway, check these guys out for the foam http://www.auralex.com/

Even e-mail them. They'll prolly tell you what you need to do. Their shit is expensive tho. The cheapest foam I got for my booth was $12 a square metre...but these guys would be more prolly.

[Ziggy!!]

irregularity is the key.

You don't want any parallel surfaces. If you don't have parallel surfaces you won't be stuck with standing waves and you can leave more hard area for some nice reflections as opposed to loads of absortion

Hard floors, angled ceilings

a sealed room within a room is what you need for soundPROOFing.

check out www.johnlsayers.com

Notice how in this drawing studios 1, 2 and the booth all have weird shaped rooms with no parallel surfaces

[Offender]

The key to a John Slayer type of room, is to smoke a little crack before designing it.

[o---]

Yes, smoking crack does help with designing isolation booths.

And you can use used Masonite over plywood on the walls, then some sort of soft material (carpet would probably be the best, but could look weird if you're not careful).

AIR in between the inner and outter walls is the best sound proofing material you can get. I would build a room inside a room. The inside room with 2x4's and some insulation with nice thick birch plywood on both side, then masonite and NEW carpet on the inside walls. Then you can hang reflection panels up whenever you desire that sound, or want a different type of reflection.

[sounddevisor]

Along with the John Sayers site, another good source of info is the Alton Everest book - it's called something like "Designing Studios on a Small Budget." It can be a little dense going, but full of really useful info, particularly about different types of wall construction and how effective they are for sound isolation.

Another thing to keep in mind (especially when reading people's advice on these forums) - there are really two different aspects of "sound control" - there's 1) isolation, or keeping the inside sound in and the outside sound out; and then there's 2) acoustical treatment, or making the room sound good (or flat or neutral) once it's built.

Isolation requires mass and proper construction techniques. Treatment depends on the size/shape of the room, and what materials you used to build it - treatment is where things like foam or fiberglass panels come into play. Don't be misled into thinking that products like Auralex or any other "sound control" material will make your room sound-proof - they won't! The only thing that can do that is mass (i.e. heavy, rigid walls) and proper construction techniques.

Just as an illustration - I built a two-room studio in my basement, control room and separate floated live room. All the walls and ceilings are 3 layers of 5/8" sheetrock, and I calculated that by the time I was done, I had hung about 15,000 pounds of sheetrock. That's not a typo, and now I know why my back hurts!

Best advice - do a lot of research before you start building!

- sounddevisor

[weedmaker]

Hi,

First, 8' X 8' X 8' or any room with 1:1:1 ratio is BIG NO-NO tutt especially if you're building it from scratch and have a masonry construction! You will end up with so called mode pile at certain frequencies (which are very easy to calculate and predict given the dimensions of rectangular room).

For your 8x8x8 room you will have triple mode pile at the following frequencies (up to 300 Hz which are the most important):

Axial (most prominent modes):
71Hz, 141Hz, 212Hz

Tangential (1/2 energy, 3dB down):
100Hz, 200Hz, 300Hz

Oblique (1/4 energy, 6dB down):
122Hz, 245Hz

More, with only eight modes below 300Hz you're left with very uneven lo-freq field! Such a room would sound terrible!

If you have luxury to move walls I would strongly suggest following ratios:

1 : 1.4 : 1.9
or
1 : 1.6 : 2.3

Lot of great rooms around globe have those ratios! Ceiling height is usually fixed so start from there!

This is your first concern, so DON'T skip on this!!!

Good luck!

[karatemanjohnny]

Yeah, you can't really do enough research before you build. Plan every last minute detail.

Try and get a reflective floor and an absorptive ceiling.

The walls will be THICK if you do it right. So when you plan for an 8' x 8' booth, it will actually take up like 8'9" x 8'9" or something.

http://www.zerointernational.com/ has good door sealers.

The hardest part you will have is getting a massive enough door to block sound, and also soundproofing any windows you have. You'll need two pieces of glass back to back, of different thicknesses. Such as 1/4" and 1/2".

You're going to see a ton of people talk about OC 703. This is owens-corning 703, insulation. It's hard as hell to find, but there are market equivalents to it. Johns-manville, for example, is much easier to find.

http://www.bobgolds.com/ has a bunch of neat little links, such as http://www.bobgolds.com/PaulsDoor/home.htm with a door design.

Use acoustic caulk and go crazy with it.

By the way, that F. Alton Everest suggested is absolutely excellent.

Map it out to see if you can do it for $1500. With the price of the door, glass, materials, and TIME (the biggest cost), it might come out to be more.

Good luck!

[Grasshopper]

sounds like some great advice, thanks guys!