How to treat a room with limited budget?

[rondango]

I've been considering treating my room to get the best vocal clarity for myself. The room is 13 feet wide, 13 feet long, and 10 feet high. I want to spend under $500 if that's possible. I have considered the RealTraps PVB. Do you think I should get that and call it a day? Or should I go into some other stuff and treat it all. I'm mainly concerned about my vocals, so keep that in mind.

[Ethan Winer]

Even though I sell the PVB and earn $3.02 every time someone buys one I think you'd do better to invest your $500 in rigid fiberglass and make your own treatment. The PVB is great! But even better is to treat the entire room, which you could do with that budget. Then you'll record vocals better, and also be able to mix better.

--Ethan

________________
The Acoustic Treatment Experts

[rondango]

If I were to make some of my own treatment, is that almost a permanent fix, or would I be able to move the treatment I made to another room fairly easily?

[johndykstra]

It can be as portable or as fixed as you design it to be. Instead of wall mounting, you can do stand mounting. As elaborate and pretty as built-in wood stands, or as simple and affordable as adding a mic stand bracket.



In other news, this is just another example for my references when someone dogs on Ethan. Good man Ethan, good man.

[rondango]

To give you a further understand, I really want an up close, clear, and full sound with my voice. For some reason I feel that the PVB will give me more of that than a treated room. Please tell me if I'm thinking illogically.

[johndykstra]

room treatment on stands can do all of that. simply bring them close and create a PVB arrangement of the treatments. However, when you are finished singing/talking/rapping, what a PVB can't do is disperse itself around the room for a mixing treatment... a good mixing environment to confirm that the vocal take you just got is as close, clear, and full as you want it to be.

Same tracking result, but far more versatile.

[rondango]

Sorry to be a pain, but how would I mount them to mic stands?

[johndykstra]

There are probably more elegant ways, such as building the top lip of the frame deeper on the back, and drilling out a hole that a mic stand will slide into and rest on the daisy nut, but this seems to work for this fellow slutz:

My DIY Portable Vocal Booth is Complete!

[Glenn Kuras]

The other thing you could do is buy Ethan's unit (that sounded weird ) and the rest on rigid fiberglass. Get things as good as possible then build or start buying bass traps.
As far as building something you could also build the panels as (2" thick x 6" high) screens and when not doing recording fold them up and put in corners to use as bass traps.