Makebooth a D.I.Y. for a micbooth

Always wanted to record your music more professionally, but can't afford studio time... Why not make your own micbooth?

It's easy and cheap with some regular materials from the hardwarestore. Of course you can extend and improve with professoinal materials, but then it will cost you a lot more.

All you need is some space (1m2) and the materials shown in step one. If you follow this intructable the result will look like this: see pictures

Watch the video for the results:

if you just want to hear the results watch this short video:

Step 1 Gathering the materials

CAUTION: for this instructable the sizes of the micbooth can be diffrent in your room. For this instructable I've used the measurements of my own room wich is 1m2,2,45m high and i use two existing walls in my room (a corner). It's very important to measure your own room; don't just use the sizes in my example.

Materials:

-polystrene plates 1m x 50 cm x 5cm (10 pieces)
-Isotop isolation 1m x 50 cm (20 pieces)
-beams:
*2 pieces of 2,45m x 5cm x 2,5cm (as wide as the polystrene)
*1 piece of 2,45m x 5cm x 7,5cm
*8 pieces of 1m x 5cm x 2,5cm
*2 pieces of 2m x 5cm x 2,5cm
*1 piece of 60cm x 5cm x 2,5cm
*1 piece of 10cm x 5cm x 2,5cm
-hardboard plates:(as light as possible, regarding the weight)
*2,45m x 1,05m (1 piece)
*2m x 1,05m (1 piece)
-wood screws
-concrete screws
-nails
-door articulation (3 pieces)
-doorknob/ doormagnets
-iron corner plates

Tools:

-screwdriver
-hammer
-drillmachine
-saw
-measure roll
-pencil

Comments

[michaelbak]

Are you using a MXL 990 microphone? I was thinking about buying the USB version , and it looked like you had one in the video.

[dchall8]

This room will do a great job of filtering out sounds from fans, air conditioners, electrical equipment and other common noises that we hear all day long but never notice until we record it. I have a few questions you may be able to answer. How is your room different from putting the isolation stuff on the walls in a closet you already have? How much better is the good isolation stuff than, say, shag carpeting the walls, floor, and ceiling? What about the shaped foam sold a places like Wal-Mart to cover a bed? What was the reason for styrene walls? I don't have a styrene walled room to try it but it would seem to me that closed cell styrene is just about as reflective to sound as normal walls. If you really want to deaden the wall surfaces and keep them from causing or reflecting low frequencies, make them with two sheets of luan (cheap) wall paneling that have been glued together with a glue that never quite solidifies. There are some craft and fabric glues that dry rigid but remain thick and soft enough to dent with a fingernail. You'll need larger quantities than you can get a Hobby Lobby. Could be some of the tubes of adhesives sold at the hardware stores would work. You'll need enough to coat the wood entirely. The surface of the luan is still reflective to high frequencies, but the lows would be well damped. You deal with the high frequencies with the cone foam. I used to be in the vibration damping business. Our aim was to stop aluminum aircraft parts from breaking due to vibration, but the technology was similar to what you are doing. From my experience I can suggest that getting a room quiet is a matter of trial and error. You do not need to cover every inch with the sound absorbing material. In fact you might only need a few strategically placed patches of the material. A typical cinder block movie theater is an echo chamber before they hang the heavy drapes on the walls. I have seen one cinder block theater cured of the echos by hanging specifically tuned "art" on the walls at certain locations. It worked beautifully and left most of the walls uncovered completely. For anyone who has never been inside a real "anechoic chamber," it is a very eerie sensation. Actually it is the lack of sensation. Even before you close the door you can tell you are not in Kansas anymore. The world is different inside one of those things. The one I was in had cones about 9 inches tall on floor, ceiling, and walls. There was a coarse wire suspended floor to walk on. Another room I worked in has cylindrical with concrete and steel walls and floors, heavy glass windows and a hard surface ceiling. The room was 50 feet in diameter, 20 feet high, and had a time response of 17 seconds for voice sounds to dissipate below the threshold of hearing. The only way to communicate in that room was to get up inside the other person's personal space and speak in a low volume voice.