Vocal Booths Suck. Why I am ripping out my vocal booth.

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First off, the NAMM show is coming to Southern California this week. This is usually a great time to connect with a lot of you. Unfortunately I am out of town for a family emergency and will not be attending this year. I hope we can catch up soon.

In this new video I explain why vocal booths suck and why I am tearing mine out of the studio. If you dig it, please share it with your friends.

Thanks

Ronan

If you want to hear how the vocals in this photo turned out, check Rick Reed out >>>>

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18 Comments

  2. I totally agree, vocal booth’s suck the life out of a recording!
    Last year when i had you come out to my studio we talked about the length and depth of the room (mine was a square with a deep closet) i didnt really notice or understand what exactly i was hearing even after massive treatments to the walls, now that i’ve moved to a new location and my room is a rectangle with an “L” at one end. I tried the tone generator at 75-90 hrz and could really pick out the bass build up in the room. ironically enough all the sound treatment i purchased for the square room wasn’t necessary for the rectangle room.

    Thank you so much for putting things in a way that i can really understand what is going on. – your a great teacher!

  3. Hi Ronan,

    I agree, for the most part. Much of my experience has been with spoken voice vs. singing. I like open spaces for singing, but like the dry sound of a booth so I can add ambiance later. Thanks!

    • Rick, I actually like dry vocals for singing to. But when I want that sound I prefer to use a big space and surround the singer with absobtion so I can get the tight sound and minimize phase problem.

  4. Hi Ronan,

    You mentioned your getting rid of your board. Are you going itb, getting a new board?

    I’ve been recording vox in my live room for the past year and it is soo much better than the vox booth I had used before.

    Thank you for sharing all your knowledge!

    Tom Rastikis

    • Tom, I am switching to a hybrid system with ITB summing. I am going to do a full video on the change when I have some free time next month.

  5. Nice video Ronan! I like to have an isolation booth in the studio – but if a singer is having problems my first cure is to have them sing in the control room without headphones – works 95% of the time. Much of my work now is dubbing and voice over – where I need dry vocal sound – my iso booth was rather small – so in my one room music studio, I have built an isolated recording room which was large as I wanted to have a dry but natural sounding room (my other small iso booth’s sound is dry but there is a bump in the lower mids).

    I’m curious about your ITB hybrid summing setup, looking forward to it.

    More power to Recording Boot Camp.

  7. Good to “see” ya Ronan. Another reason vocal booths are not such a good idea is that the singer may feel confined, un-natural.

    I recommend experimenting in various places in the studio/control room for the best takes. Maybe it’s because my studio is only about 12′ x 14′ but I have found the change of a few feet makes a difference.

  8. I agree. I built a vocal booth into the closet of my recording space, put up some padding to tighten up, dry out the sound. Although I have overdubbed live highhat in there and occasionally recorded heavy guitar, I don’t think I ever ended up using a vocal track from the booth. It is now basically storage space.

  9. Regarding: Longer and deeper control rooms
    A ha! Taht’s why my garage in Beachwood sounded so good!

    Nice piece here Ronan!

    Robert McCormick
    Analoguetube Ltd.
    Fairchild 660 & 670 Recreations

  10. Your no-nonsense, common sense advice always serves as either a great lesson or a great reminder. Thanks for being awesome!

  11. Ronan, thanks for this video. Very interested to watch your vid about your new hybrid system. I, myself, just got a Dangerous 2 Bus and Pro Tools and no am going hybrid too. Would love to compare notes.

    • “Big vocal booths are OK” – So what are we defining as a “big” vocal booth? What’s the min dimension?

      If a room is about 2 by 3 meters I get less concerned.

  14. got to hang with phil ramone for a couple hours once at Ocean Way here in nashville. he’s the man credited with ‘inventing’ the vocal booth. turns out it was a mistake and he wasn’t so hot on them either.

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