The Pro Audio Suite – Rooms: Why Size (and Shape) Matters

This week the guys take a quick dive into one of the biggest factors that can make or break your booth sound: the room itself. From walk-in wardrobes to DIY blanket forts and even apartments in Rome, we talk about what really matters when it comes to room size, shape, reflections, and treatment.

Spoiler alert: bigger isn’t always better, but dead is definitely good.

Thanks to our sponsors TriBooth (use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off) and Austrian Audio – making passion heard.

Edited by Andrew Peters. Mixed by Robbo. Recorded via Source Connect with tech support from George “The Tech” Whittam.

Got your own audio issues? JustAskRobbo.com. Join the conversation in our Facebook group or drop us a note at theproaudiosuite.com.

voiceover booth, recording booth, room acoustics, voice acting tips, home studio setup, soundproofing, Pro Audio Suite, George the Tech, TriBooth, Austrian Audio

#ProAudioSuite #VoiceOver #HomeStudio #RecordingBooth #TriBooth #AustrianAudio #SourceConnect

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hey, and welcome to the Pro Audio Suite.
Yeah, starring Robert Marshall.
Funky dude with him.
That's ridiculous.
Like my carpeting is starting to shag out.
That's right.
That's right.

(00:22):
You're, you're tough to groove.
Exactly.
My shirt is now puffy with hair.
We need a laugh right now.
Yeah, exactly.
That'll make you smile.
And we should thank our sponsors, Austrian audio,
making passion heard and tribe booth.

(00:42):
Don't forget the code T R I P
a P 200 to get $200 off your
tribe booth.
They're talking about booths.
Um, there's a few bits and pieces of
popped up online.
One in particular I saw this morning, uh,
visually it looked absolutely awful, but according to
Robo, it sounded really good.
Um, so what is the key to a

(01:03):
booth and what makes it work?
Well, according to us, it sounds really good
because the person we're talking about has actually
been on the show, but you know, I
think it's pretty obvious really, isn't it?
Zero reflections and as little noise as you
can possibly let into a recording.
And a good spot in the house.
That's going to give you the best possibility

(01:24):
of doing that.
You know, like I think today's booth is,
is in the middle of the house.
It's in a walk-in wardrobe.
So it's away from open windows and, and
all the rest of it.
And probably the noisest noisiest spot is going
to be whatever comes in through the roof,
through the plasterboard in the ceiling.
Um, or if you may, my wife talking
in the background while I'm recording the podcast

(01:45):
as well, that will do it.
I actually built one.
It was a temporary thing I put together
when we're traveling.
And by all accounts, it should not have
worked.
It should have been awful, but it sounded
really good.
And it was like a, a cupboard in
a, an apartment in Rome.
When Rome is very noisy, but it was

(02:07):
like tucked in the middle of the apartment.
It had a bunch of shelves with a
few blankets and bits and bobs on, I
popped on the shelf, the Porter booth.
Then on to my side, there was like
a clothes rack, which I threw another blanket
over and someone was hanging some stuff off
the back of the door from memory.
Anyway, it sounded amazing.

(02:29):
It was what perfectly looked like shit, but
sounded good.
So two questions about it.
How big was the space and how parallel
were the hard surfaces?
The surfaces were parallel.
The ceiling was probably 12 foot ceiling in
there.
Uh, and then there were shelves where I
sort of put the Porter booth on the
shelf, but there were, there's all sorts of
other bits and pieces in there to my

(02:50):
left was the clothes rack that I put
a blanket over.
Then behind me was the door, which had
stuff hanging off the back of it, but
to the right, there was no treatment at
all.
It was just plasterboard.
And how far back was the door behind
you?
Was it?
Well, it was a rectangle.
So it was probably a meter wide and

(03:11):
probably depth would be two and a half
meters, I guess.
So pretty good depth.
The, the width wasn't awesome, but the depth
was pretty good because I, I think that
a lot of what makes booths, like the
first thing is it's got to be dead.
And then once it's like, you know, not,
not considering how loud or noise isolated it

(03:33):
is, but just the sound of the booth
itself.
The first thing is you got to deaden
everything and people don't realize what it takes
to do that properly.
It takes thick, like, you know, not, not
really thin absorption because a lot of the
thin absorption lets all those low frequencies through.
So it's got to have some thicker absorption.
And the smaller the booth, the thicker the
treatment you need.

(03:53):
So it's, it works against you.
So as it gets smaller, it gets smaller.
Yeah.
You lose more space basically.
But if the booth is big, the sound
becomes much more neutral because the nodes don't
get as intertwined and as amplified as well,
especially in the, in those lower frequencies that

(04:14):
really get up into the voice range.
So a booth that has a good volume
of air and is dead, I think will
sound better than any small booth.
And then if you can't have a good
volume of air, the next thing that can
help is non-parallel surfaces can kind of
fake a bigger volume, you know, it can

(04:37):
create more, what's the word oblique reflections I
think is, is that the word George?
So yeah, it's size matters.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, having angled walls and stuff,
the thing that's a difficult about the angle
wall thing is it's not predictable.
So you may end up getting really lucky

(04:57):
or really unlucky.
And then if it doesn't sound great, it
can bounce it right back in the mic
and with the wrong angle, right?
Yeah, that's right.
And sometimes they, so they create more, they're
harder to model.
Meaning like you, it's harder to take like
a pentagonal floor plan or something with more
sides and shove that into, you know, a

(05:19):
computer and say, tell me what frequencies I
have to worry about.
It's, it's much harder.
So then it just becomes a lot more,
exponentially gets more complex.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I mean, a lot of
people have a very haphazard way of treating
their booths anyway.
It's a lot of trial and error to
begin with.
That's, you know, when you see product booths,
like the one we're talking about and so

(05:40):
many other home booths is they didn't map
out the room then by blankets, mattresses, and
foam.
They just sort of eventually get to a
point where it sounds good.
It's almost never a, well, I bought all
this stuff and stuck it up.
And Oh, wow.
It sounds good.
It usually takes time and adding and tweaking.
So when you have a non-square or

(06:02):
non-rectangular floor plan, that just is harder
to do.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's not hard if
the room is larger because larger rooms.
Yeah.
As Robert was saying, they don't build up
such standing waves.
These are called room modes.
Those are the things that make you sound
like you are in a box or in
a tube.
If those big spaces don't have them, they

(06:24):
really only have reverb, which is that long
tail.
And then if you deaden all the walls
up, you don't have the reverb.
You don't have the long.
Well, not only that, but when you're bigger,
when you have a big room, the deadening
of the walls is much simpler because it's
really just covering large amounts of area with
soft material.

(06:45):
It's when the room gets smaller and smaller,
you can't just put blankets or foam on
the walls anymore because you need much thicker,
denser material or really thicker to trap low
frequencies.
So it gets trickier and trickier as a,
as it gets smaller and smaller and ends
up being the panels out to be thicker
and thicker.
One studio I went into this years ago

(07:07):
and it was, they just built a new
studio and they had like a foot in
diameter tubes that stood on their ends and
in the corners.
Yeah.
They're called tube traps.
Were they on their own stand?
They were, they were basically like on their
own mic stand and they're just like around.
Well, they were floor to ceiling basically.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
Those are interesting.
The tube traps are really great products, but

(07:29):
what's interesting about them is that they have
a reflective side and an absorbing side and
part of their trick is to diffuse and
scatter the sound or to absorb it.
And it depends on how you arrange them.
One of the chamber reverbs at Abbey Road
has columns in it for exactly the opposite
reason.
It's got like sort of concrete pillars and

(07:51):
stuff.
So you can mic around them and get
all sorts of different sort of room verby
sounds.
Create bounces.
Yeah.
Create different bounces and stuff.
Create reflections.
For exactly the opposite reason.
But yeah, it's very cool.
Yeah.
I've seen and been in some rooms with
tube traps.
Well, I mean, an interesting type of diffuser
is the curved.
Yeah.
I mean, they work really well too.

(08:13):
Like one diffuser that everyone's really used to
is the one that's like different depths of
squares that are at different depths.
And those are usually referred to basically usually
as quadratic diffusers.
But the other one is just a curved
surface and that has a bunch of different
levels that the sound can bounce off of
and go into different directions and cheap, easy
way to make diffusion.

(08:34):
Yeah.
I've been some great.
It's curved convex, not concave.
Curves have to be convex.
Yeah, that's really important.
So the curves have to be protruding outward
toward you, not inward away from you.
That's those those are much more of a
problem.
So you don't want those curves to focus
sound in a parabolic way, like a dish

(08:55):
antenna for a satellite.
You know, those are designed to focus.
George, have you ever been to the the
museum here in Chicago?
There's the Museum of Science and Industry, and
there's a display that has.
I mean, you're like 50 feet away from
each other, but you're standing in the perfect
focal point of two 50 feet away to
like parabolic disks.

(09:17):
And you can whisper to each other and
there can be 50 people in between you
and you can talk to each other.
It's crazy.
Yeah, it's really cool.
Up the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, you'll
get the same thing.
You got the whispering sort of wall up
there, the whispering dome.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah, yeah, that's really neat.
Even in a I don't know if you've
been to many planetariums.

(09:39):
It's really cool in a planetarium.
Well, maybe not cool, but sometimes you'll be
able to eavesdrop in on a conversation on
the other side of the planetarium.
I mean, you just hear.
Because it just bounces around the curve of
the outside wall.
Yeah.
And then you'll be you'll hear a voice.
It's the more close to the edge you're
sitting, the better.
So like your way towards the back or
the edge.
It's like crazy.

(10:00):
You'll hear a conversation like almost like they're
sitting next to you and they're all the
way on the other side.
It's pretty trippy.
It's really interesting.
Because like what what the diffuser, what the
convex part diffuses, the concave part focuses.
So make sure your current diffusers, if you're
going that way, are convex.

(10:20):
You guys want to troubleshoot Austin Keyes's studio
on the show?
Sure, we can continue from today.
Let's let's dive in.
Well, he says I can't record as I
want.
I can't record his 416, right?
He's texting me right now.
He can't use his 416, so he doesn't
know what to do.
Oh, my God.
But I left him working.

(10:43):
So Robert graciously took an emergency call for
this client of mine this morning.
Paul was in a meeting and he just
doesn't know the topology of the studio and
has no idea what's there.
And he tried his best, but the client
didn't didn't tell Robert I have a Mackie
mixer in my booth also.
So so to wrap up that conversation, I

(11:05):
would say the best way to wrap that
up would be.
It's not how it looks and how it
sounds, and we are we all know what
it's supposed to sound like.
And if you don't know, let us know,
because we spend our days day in, day
out listening to all of your studios.
And, you know, as long as you're not
appearing on camera for like an animation gig,
because here in the States, definitely like in

(11:27):
a lot of people are doing remotely directed
animation and they're on Zoom calls all the
time.
And you may not want it to look
too bad.
But remember, it only has to look good
in the frame of your Zoom, of your
webcam.
So if the whole place is a mess,
but you have a really pretty, you know,
tapestry on the wall behind you, then you're

(11:48):
good.
Yeah.
Yeah, true.
The illusion, the illusion.
And if not for the for the lowest
fee possible, George, the tech will send you
a background that you can use as a
fake background for a studio in your Zoom
meeting.
Right.
With GTT on it.
Yes.
And the walls.

(12:09):
Every GTT room looks the same, but they
sound different.
And that'd be fun.
Yes, that's right.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
The Pro Audio Suite.
With thanks to Triboo and Austrian Audio.
Recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Peters.
And Mixed by Robbo.
Got your own audio issues?

(12:30):
Just ask Robbo dot com.
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
To leave a comment, suggest a topic or
just say g'day, drop us a note at
our website, theproaudiosuite.com