VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[ACF Guy]

Hi, everybody.

As you can see, I'm a first time poster here. I lurked the site for a solid five hours yesterday looking up old posts, but that's reached the end of its (considerable) usefulness, so it's time for me to post.

I'm a voiceover artist working at a company that does books-on-tape for law students, and we've just relocated to Boston. The new office is *atrociously* loud, with HVAC, bathroom, stairwell, footstep, phone, and street/air noise, and so our traditional approach of "do-it-yourself shipping blanket sound booth" just isn't cutting it anymore. We need an isolation booth, and since we may move our office again in the future, we can't do a permanent install. So we've decided to go for one of the consumer ones.

I've basically narrowed my choices down to Vocalbooth or Gretch-Ken. Now, I've seen testimonials here and on their sites, and I know that some people have had trouble dealing with each company (BBB had to get involved with one, as I recall) ... so my intention is not to pollute the board with more regurgitated material. What I really would like is for anyone who has owned (or used) isolation booths from either one of these companies to reply to this thread and let me know how the sound came out. I'm most specifically concerned with:

- "deadness" of the sound (and tips for livening it up, like windows, mirrors, etc)

-isolation ability

I'm pretty apprehensive about making this purchase recommendation, because I'm about to spend 6-10 grand of someone else's money on a product that has no return/refund policy. Any suggestions or recommendations would be extremely helpful.

Thanks!

[TC]

Maybe this would be slightly unorthodox, but could you contact these manufacturers and have them put you in touch with some satisfied customers in your area who would allow you to visit them and try out their booths? Nothing like hands-on experience to answer your toughest questions.

[BenWils]

I sent a PM to you with my negative experiences. Just posting this add some thoughts and be helpful to others looking.

The GK booth is nice and live for my taste already....but not too live The foam they use is good and dense so it doesn't soak the life out of the voice stuff. I noticed more life in my recordings when switching to it. I love the booth construction over the Whisper Room...but like the quietness of the double-wall Whisper Room more. I had an extra layer of heavy load vinyl added to my GK booth and it cuts down on the incoming noise nicely. But if you are in an extra noisy area...a double walled Whisper Room and building your own caster plate to get it off the ground may best for you. Those square booths acts like resonant boxes when sitting on the floor. You will hear the AC I bet. I build my caster plate and used the extra carpet they sent along with my booth to cover it. I spent about $100 to build it instead of the $500-$600 for the one they sell.

The double walled Whisper Rooms...from the ones I have been in have been good and quiet. The 4x4 had more of an artificial boom to the booth...so bass traps are in order to de-square the booth some. And they do not cover the entire booth with foam. You just have to move the pieces around to get what you want.

Windows will give more bounce than you may want. I just opted for the small door window and have been happy with it since it looks out to my recording area.
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Ben


"To be really good at voiceover, you need to improve your footwork and hip snap."

[ACF Guy]

[ACF Guy]

Ben:

PMed you back. A few things here, too:

I find the GK website feedback (testimonials from customers) very alluring, as well as feedback I've gotten directly from an owner of a GK booth in Florida. GK's prices are also considerably lower than most of the competition, from what I can see (Whisper Room and Vocalbooth, specifically). The thing that makes Vocalbooth more attractive to me is that their Platinum Series incorporates a decoupling layer in the floor for better isolation from vibrations. GK doesn't seem to include that. Considering the HVAC and plumbing noise I'm getting, that seems to me to be a pretty important element.

That said, I'm not terribly well-versed in vibration isolation -- can anyone tell me how effective a decoupling floor tends to be in real-world situations?

[Philip Banks]

If the Platinum series is 10x as good as the Gold Series it'll be awful. I've been in aircraft hangers with less reverb and sat in Corn Flake boxes with better sound absorption properties.

[ACF Guy]

[louzucaro]

Dang, Philip, how big are your Corn Flake boxes over there?! I thought we did things big in the U.S. of A.!!
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Lou Zucaro
http://www.voicehero.com

"Well, yeah, there's my favorite leaf!"

[Philip Banks]

I bought a second hand Gold booth and it was used on its own while my old voice over booth was being repaired/modified. It doesn't take long to assemble and when the job's done for voice over purposes I found it useless. I spent a few hours adding things to take the ring off the room and trying to keep the sound asthmatic Seagulls out. It was ok after, not good, just ok.

Rob my joiner managed to create a space where my old voice booth used to be and we rebuilt the Gold booth into a space he created and then boxed it in. Look at my "Huttie" thread to see how things look now.

The booth was and is used for live ISDN sessions, recording long form narration and just about any other kind of VO work. I would estimate that to get the Gold Booth up to a good standard you'll need to spend another $2,000 in terms of labour and materials. Example audio is on the Huttie thread.

[steveanthony]

Booths can be heavy beasts. Will your building/office be able to take the weight on the floor?

Instead of the booth, have you checked the rates of local studios? $10,000 might get you a bunch of time. It might be a quick fix especially if you're considering moving?

Also, consider calling Bob Alac at Alactronics right off Rt 9 in Wellesley (781.239.0000). He builds studios and might be able to offer some guideance.

Steve

[Rob Ellis]

I purchased a Whisper Room 4x4 SE (Enhanced aka double wall) about a month ago, and am quite pleased with the improvement over my previous set-up.

It wasn't cheap, but it has already started to pay for itself!

Oh yeah, I had to add bass traps, casters, and the Ventilation Silencing System.

[ACF Guy]

[ACF Guy]

Phillip:

Thanks for going into more detail. That sounds like a real nightmare. Although, I did look at your Huttie thread (and listened to the sample track) and you seem to have made lemonade from lemons there, so kudos to you.

Keep 'em coming, please, everyone -- these opinions are gold to me at this moment.

[SkinnyJohnny]

I have the 5 by 7 Whisperroom. It sounded really boxy, so I had to get traps to tone down the bass resonance. I have the single wall unit and don't have problems with much noise anyway. These booths are not soundproof, they specify that in the literature. They do help somewhat and I know the double walled units are much better for that problem. I got one to keep noise from outside the house from coming in and to tone down the room sound. We live on 8 acres so the noise outside is mainly a few moos and bahs from the cows and goats. I also helps with aircraft noise.
I also got the ventilation silencers on this one and although it helps, I can still hear a faint noise from the system. So I cut those off when recording since most of what I do is training voice overs.
Good Luck!
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John Weeks Voice Overs
www.johnweeksvoiceovers.com

[Lance Blair]

Get a dynamic mic, and a quality clean preamp that can deliver the gain:

RE 20
SM7b
Heil Pr40 (bright) or Pr30 (mellow)
Beyer M99

With my Heil or other dynamics I can record where no condenser can go. Especially for books on tape for law students, you don't need a condenser.

Just get a John Hardy M1 and an SM7b. Done.
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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!