VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[osmithy]

Hello VO-BB community! I've been lurking as a guest for almost a year now, and I've loved all the great information and generous people. I have a question specific to my setup, so I'm making my first post!

I have the same 4x4 WhisperRoom as Rob Ellis, and he has been very kind to send me a few pictures of his setup, specifically the acoustic treatment. Like many, I discovered once my company bought it that the acoustics in the booth aren't great, and even though I have 12 panels of OC 703 on the walls, it still sounds a little weird, especially when the artist is more than 3 inches from the mic. I have nothing on the door or ceiling, but that's changing soon. Rob's setup has OC 703 wall-to-wall on the upper 80% of the booth walls and the ceiling, and OC 705 across the corners. I saw, though, that he seems to record standing up, whereas my booth is designed for artists to record sitting down. The mic is placed a little more than halfway up between the floor and the ceiling. My question is: can I use his same setup, or do I need to rearrange things because I'm recording near the middle instead of the top?

I have a picture of the booth, and I also have a waterfall and frequency response graph I made using FuzzMeasure. I would love someone knowledgeable to determine if my readings look normal, and if so, what it indicates I should do to improve the acoustics of the booth. In the booth picture, you can see where I placed the speaker and mic to use with FuzzMeasure. Note that the speaker is only rated for 56 Hz, so there's a pretty sharp drop below that. The orange music stand is made of metal with cotton fabric over it. I've also recorded a sample in case there's something really obvious in the sound that suggests what I need to improve.







http://bars-tone.com/images/vo/voicetest.mp3

Thanks so much for any help you can provide.

Cheers,
Owen

[BALKY]

Hey!

I think the sound is quite fine

I do not hear any excessive bass or anything like that. Sounds good to me

Let's wait for others to analyze this recording, curious myself

Good luck!
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[Dayo]

This booth sounds very good to my ears at your normal distance. By all means use the close mic technique but only when you want that huge proximity effect for special effect.

The chart looks good too. I think you will struggle to do better in such a small room, but honestly I don't hear any nasty artifacts.

Monitoring here on Spiral Groove Sonic Animas.

I'd be well pleased if I were you....
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[Rob Ellis]

Sounds good to me.

My only suggestion is get some fire-rated burlap
from ATS Acoustics to cover up the OC 703 (oh and a can of Scotch adhesive also to secure the burlap)

IMO a booth that is properly treated can sound quite good.

[Lance Blair]

Yeah, to me at 6" the lows are tubby (but not deep) and the mids are all smeared and phasey. It doesn't sound reverberant with an obvious slapback, it just sounds not defined. I had the same issues trying to record in a smaller space. My guess is you could be better off in a more open space that is treated and use a nice noise reduction/slight compander.
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[osmithy]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! I very much appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Lance, you have said what I've been wanting to say but didn't know the right words for. I've been trying to cut down on the phasey-ness, but it's been difficult to get a clearly-defined sound consistently without eating the mic. I agree that I would definitely be better off in a larger space, but unfortunately there's nowhere that has adequate sound isolation other than the booth.

I'm most likely going to order 6 more panels each of OC 703 and 705 in the near future. I'll try a few configurations to see how they sound.

Thanks,
Owen

[georgethetech]

You DON'T want to have all that fiberglass open inside that tiny booth, that's all going in your lungs, man! OC703 has formaldehyde in it, very nasty stuff. Wrap it in cloth ASAP, even just some jersy knit bed sheets.

I think it sounds fine, no need to keep chasing the acoustical unicorn.
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