Q: I have my studio in a largish room, that’s rectangular shaped. I’ve been thinking about partitioning off a section to use as a vocal booth/guitar amp booth. From an acoustics standpoint, would this be a good idea?
A: Without knowing more about the room, we can only offer generalities:
- A large room tends to be better acoustically than a small room (assuming the room is well treated).
- Be careful of making either the room or the booth square; this will excacerbate any low-frequency problems.
- In contrast to the last point, adding a booth make allow you to optimize the room dimensions for the control room and booth to actually improve the sound of the space(s).
- A booth is nice from an isolation standpoint. But consider how often you will really use it versus the advantages of the larger space. If it will be used a lot, great! If only rarely, it may not make as much sense.
- Opinions differ on tracking in an isolated space versus in the control room. Some like the isolation from a pure recording quality standpoint. Others like the “vibe” of everyone in one room.
- If you do add the booth, consider where it is positioned and its shape to ensure that both it and the control room end up with good acoustics.