- Hello, I'm Mike.
- I'm Izabela.
- From musicradiocreative.com.
In this video, we'll talk to you about
how to create a vocal booth at home.
(electronic transition music)
Okay. Let's face it.
There are many options out there, from the very cheap
to the very expensive, and those in-between.
Those that take a lot of time,
those that are very easy to implement,
and we wanna find the sweet spot.
Right up front, it's very important to let you know
that this video is sponsored by ISOVOX.
They make great isolation booths,
and we'll be talking a little bit more
about that solution later on.
But just so you know, the sponsorship
does not taint the comment we're about to have
on how to build your own vocal booth.
So let's get into it, Izabela,
with a very cheap and easy solution.
What is that?
- This one involves buying cheap tiles
and gluing them onto your walls.
- When you say cheap tiles, you mean those foam tiles
that you can buy from many retailers.
They come in a big, sort of,
vacuum pack box. - [Izabela] Yeah.
- [Mike] And then, how do you get them on the walls?
- The way we've done it is we've simply glued them right on.
- Ooh, but that was the first mistake.
What happened when we glued?
Well, not when we glued, after we glued.
- (chuckles) So once, it kind of worked when we glued them,
the problem really was very transparent
when we tried to take it off.
And it took a lot of time.
- [Mike] Yes. - It was two or three days
of hard work of stripping the walls.
- It was.
Take a look at these walls.
Look at these walls.
Describe the process, Izabela.
- [Izabela] So, it was just very painful.
- [Mike] Yeah. - [Izabela] As you can see,
there were lots of bits with glue residue.
And the problem with glue is it's not flat.
So obviously, it raised the surface of the wall,
made it uneven. - [Mike] Bubbly.
- And it was impossible to very easily clean it off.
So I ended up having to use a sander.
It was one of those electric sanding machines.
And it just took ages to try to smooth the surfaces out
and get rid of the glue residue.
- Absolutely.
So putting those tiles on your wall, they will do the job.
They will isolate your vocals and make you sound better.
But it's a bit of a process.
I did occasionally have a tile falling on my head as well.
But there are other problems, such as dust on the tiles.
- [Izabela] Yes. Dirt. - Mold, condensation.
All forming behind there, and the odd spider
diving in behind the tiles. (both chuckling)
But for those who are watching this video and thinking,
well, I wanna start at the low end,
or the basic end, at the entry level.
I just want a better sound.
I don't care about the, you know,
the cleanliness so much, or the glue.
Maybe you have another solution on
how to get these tiles up, Izabela,
without leaving sticky glue residue,
which we learned pretty fast.
- (chuckles) We certainly did.
So the way you would need to do it is you need to,
in a way, construct a fake wall,
and glue them on to some sort of board,
and then drill in the board
(Mike chuckling) into the actual wall,
so that you are introducing,
And I can't believe we have not thought about this.
- [Mike] Yeah. - It would have saved
so much time.
But on the other hand,
this does require you to be quite technical.
You may need to hire somebody to help you, especially with
cutting things to size. - [Mike] Yeah.
- Making it look.
And, you know. - You could get a
room divider, right.
And glue them onto the room divider.
Just put them up. - Yeah, you can kind of get
a plasterboard and, you know- - [Mike] Yeah.
- just glue it into the plasterboard,
and then just attach the plasterboard to the wall.
I mean, you know- - [Mike] Yes.
- it's not a rocket science kind of thing.
- Needless to say, if you're renting,
check with your landlord before you do anything like this.
- And I will also add, it's not the prettiest solution
as well, so. - No, it's not.
Although you can get something that's default for,
you know, different from the default stock gray.
- Well, you can.
- [Mike] You could get blue. - And I think that the options
are coming up now.
There's quite a few that are interesting.
But I think that, you know,
you just kind of have to weigh all the pros and cons,
decide whether that is for you,
or if you may want to just take it step up and.
- Let's talk about a step up.
Let's go a step up, Izabela. - [Izabela] Whoo.
Bringing the heat up. - Let's talk about the, yeah,
(Izabela laughing) let's talk about the high-end,
kind of, tiles that you might put in your room.
Now, when we moved from our foam room
to our new high-end studio,
we did actually get our studio specced out, didn't we.
We went to a pro company that designs these tiles.
Now, just sad to say it, the high-end some of the tiles,
a single tile alone costs around $500.
So this is not a cheap solution.
I think we spent nearly $3,000 on these sound tiles.
- [Izabela] No, we. - So it's a high end solution.
- [Izabela] Yeah. - Whereas you can spend
about 10 times less than that.
You can spend about $300 on those entry-level foam tiles.
Izabela, tell us a bit more.
- That's right. So this is the next level.
So what we've done is we went to a pro company
that is effectively making sure that your room
is perfectly acoustically treated.
So those companies tend to work with
big production studios, or with musicians,
who really want to up their game.
Now, the way they work,
they ask you first for pictures of your room,
where, you know, where are you recording,
which way you are facing.
And then based on that, they are going to
come up with a recommendation of what materials to use
and where to place them.
- Absolutely.
And with those designs that come out
on placement of tiles and how many you need,
I do get a concern that as these companies
are in the business of selling tiles,
there may be the temptation to recommend a few more tiles
than you actually need in a room,
going back to the foam tile solution of
not covering the whole wall in foam,
or the whole ceiling in foam.
So you have to use your own judgment there, really.
- And it looks great. - [Mike] And they look great.
They're premium. Of course. - Just as you can see
behind both of us, that those are still
the little elements that we bought before.
They look great.
If you are a visual creator, if you record a video,
you definitely want to invest a little bit more,
and have something that you can
showcase as part of your set.
- [Mike] Yeah. - And this definitely is it.
- But maybe you don't wanna go to town.
Maybe you don't wanna spend mega-bucks,
but also, you're not interested
in the really cheap solution.
You certainly don't wanna go around
and treat your entire room.
And maybe you move around.
Maybe your portable with your recordings.
Is there a third way, Izabela? (Izabela chuckling)
- Now this is where ISOVOX
comes into place. - [Mike] Yes.
- And it's such a nifty solution
for those who do not have room,
or cannot physically put things on the walls,
which there are plenty of you out there.
Now you get pro-recording quality with a
super-nifty portable booth. - [Mike] Yes.
Absolutely.
It reduces the sound coming into the ISOVOX booth,
but it also reduces the noise going outside.
So if you happen to be in a neighborhood
where you're kind of, like, on top of each other,
or paper thin walls, you won't annoy your neighbors
by doing voiceovers at three in the morning,
or wailing out your lungs
recording your latest hit single, right?
- Correct.
But it also blocks things such as computer fans,
ventilation, outside noise, such as, you know,
cars going past.
So if you have really, you know,
single-glazed windows, and you hear
every single vehicle- - [Mike] Mm.
- that comes past your house,
that all is going to be eliminated.
- What I also like about ISOVOX, as you'll see here,
is the ease of setting the booth up.
I mean, when it all arrived in a very neat package
via our local courier driver, I pulled all the parts out,
and I literally had it assembled
within about 15 to 20 minutes, Izabela.
- [Izabela] That's right.
And the important thing to mention about it as well,
is it isolates both
you and the microphone. - [Mike] Yes.
Other shields don't. - [Izabela] Which none of the,
when none of the shields will ever be able to do.
- [Mike] Yeah. - [Izabela] And that is
the unique part of that specific solution,
because in a way you are creating this
miniature room above your head
and your microphone. - [Mike] Yes.
- Which is, you know, it's quite cool.
- It's quite cozy.
And as you'll see from this GoPro situation going on here,
you know, I am right there up next to the microphone,
isolated by these lovely walls.
It's a way to get studio quality recordings
in the comfort of your own home.
If you travel around, if you move,
if you need to move your recording location,
it's good for that.
I'd say if you're a musician, if you're a producer,
if you're a voiceover artist, if you're a singer,
ISOVOX is gonna be a great solution for you.
If you don't wanna spend the mega-bucks,
or if you're slightly above, you know,
just getting a bunch of gray tiles
and spray-gluing them to the wall, please don't
spray-glue tiles to the wall. - [Izabela] (chuckling) No.
- That's the big take home from this video.
- No.
The one thing to mention
about ISOVOX- - [Mike] Yeah.
- it is not designed for a long speech or a podcast,
because obviously you are
isolated in a tiny booth. - You get quite hot in there.
- So you are not going to be sitting there,
able to sit there for, like,
50 minutes or 60 minutes. - Well, you could do it.
Just take breaks. - You could do, but you
will need to take breaks. - And have water.
Yeah. - But if you have
shorter voiceovers, if you are a musician,
singer and record sessions, that is easy.
Perfect for it.
- Absolutely.
To check out the ISOVOX 2 booth,
click the link in the description now.
And thank you, ISOVOX, for sponsoring this video,
this debate, this discussion,
on building your own home vocal booth.
And I wonder what you're doing
to protect your voice bouncing around
and getting that terrible echo and background noise.
How are you sound treating your recording space?
Let us know in the comments to this video.
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