DIY Vocal Booth

None of these block outside noise. That takes mass and sealed construction. For noise, record when it’s quiet.

Artists often ask us how to record vocals at home, and whether a home recording can be good enough to compete with studio vocals. It can, as long as the room isn’t on the recording. That’s what a DIY vocal booth is for.

Below are the options, how to build each one, and which works best. If you’re still choosing gear, start with our guide to recording vocals at home.

Popular questions about recording at home

Recording at home isn’t just for beginners. Plenty of well-known singers record their vocals at home.

Can I record my vocals in any room?

The voice should reach the microphone once. It shouldn’t bounce off a wall and come back into it a few milliseconds later.

Empty rooms with hard walls, stone or tile are the worst. Reflections there are strongest, which is why singing in the shower sounds so big.

Rooms with carpets, soft furniture and lots of objects sound less reverberant, but they still send plenty of reflections into the microphone.

To fix that, you need thick, soft material: mineral wool panels, mattresses, heavy blankets, carpets.

Why record a vocal without any room reverb?

A good room can flatter a voice in person. On a recording, a mix engineer needs the vocal dry: no reverb and no room sound.

What a microphone picks up in an ordinary room isn’t a nice reverb. It’s a cluster of early reflections that makes the vocal boxy and muddy, and it’s almost impossible to remove later.

It gets worse in the mix. Compression and EQ bring those reflections up, so the vocal sounds even muddier.

In the mix, the engineer adds exactly the space the song needs with plugins, on top of a dry vocal. You can always add space later. You can’t take it away.

Do you need a booth to record vocals?

If you’re recording vocals at home, yes: a booth, a treated room, or both. Without one, it’s very hard to get a vocal that holds up next to commercial releases.

There are exceptions where the room sound is part of the idea, but most released vocals are recorded in a studio, a treated room or a booth.

How much would it cost to build a DIY vocal booth?

Very little compared to other gear. With mattresses or a wardrobe you already have, it can cost nothing. A set of mineral wool panels on legs costs more, but in general $200 is enough to build a good booth.

Do DIY vocal booths work?

Yes. With some money and an afternoon of work, you can have a booth that’s good enough for professional recordings.

Step 1 . Choosing the room for vocal recordings

Pick the room first. Ideally it’s a larger room, with the booth set up in the middle. A portable booth lets you move it around until you find the best spot.

Choosing a closet as a DIY recording booth

This is where most people go wrong. They picture a vocal booth as a tiny room and pick the smallest space they have, an empty closet or cupboard.

An empty small space is the hardest to fix. The smaller the room, the stronger its resonances, and the boxier the vocal sounds.

A closet full of clothes is a different case. The clothes are good broadband absorption, so singing into a packed wardrobe from outside it, with some space between you and the clothes, can work well. Standing inside an empty closet doesn’t.

Placing a DIY vocal booth in a spacious room

In a larger room, the walls are further away. Reflections arrive later and weaker, because they lose energy on the way.

A large room or a garage is ideal. You’ll still need absorption around the singer, but you’ll get a better recording space for the same effort.

Best materials to trap sound waves

What you want are materials that soak up sound instead of bouncing it back. Thickness matters most: the thicker the absorber, the lower it reaches.

Blankets

The cheapest option is what you already have at home. Choose the thickest blankets you can find, and fold or layer them.

Acoustic blankets

You can also buy acoustic blankets. Make sure they’re sound-absorbing, not soundproofing.

Soundproofing blankets have an airtight layer of vinyl or foil and are meant to act as a barrier. On the side facing your mic, that layer reflects sound.

Sound-absorbing blankets let the sound into the material and turn it into heat there.

Mattresses

Mattresses are among the best absorbers you can find at home. Memory foam mattresses work especially well. They’re thick, so they absorb well through the vocal range. Nothing a few centimetres thick traps deep bass, but a vocal booth doesn’t need to.

Mineral wool and fiberglass

Mineral wool (also called stone wool, or Rockwool after the brand) is what most acoustic panels are made of. Panels 5–10 cm (2–4 in) thick absorb well across most of the vocal range. Thicker panels, or an air gap behind them, reach lower.

Rigid fiberglass board works about as well. Either way, wrap it in fabric so fibres don’t get into the room.

Acoustic foam

Isn’t acoustic foam better? Not for this. Thin foam tiles mostly absorb frequencies above about 1 kHz. The low mids, where boxiness in a vocal comes from, keep bouncing around. The room ends up dull rather than dry. Thick blankets often do better.

To sum up: for a DIY vocal booth, we recommend mattresses or mineral wool panels.

Step 2. Building a booth for vocal sound recordings

A vocal booth is absorption set up around the singer. It can be permanent if you record often in the same place and have the space.

It can also be portable, so you set it up for a session and put it away afterwards.

Option 1. Frame and blankets.

The cheapest booth is thick blankets hung on a frame or on ropes around the singer. Acoustic blankets work too.

A blanket booth is easy to make, cheap and portable. It isn’t the most effective option, but it’s a real first step.

Option 2. A mattress fort

If you can get a few mattresses, that’s the best solution.

Set them up as three walls, or as four for a closed booth. You’ll need some kind of frame or support to keep them standing.

With three mattresses, the singer can face into the booth, with mattresses in front and on both sides. The booth catches the voice before it travels into the room. This is what we usually recommend to artists.

Others turn it around: the mic faces the opening, and the mattresses are behind and beside the singer. A cardioid mic picks up mostly from the front, so this setup absorbs exactly what the mic is facing. Whichever way you build it, put something soft on the open side too, or keep the open side well away from any hard wall.

With four mattresses, the singer is surrounded, and reflections are absorbed from every side.

From our experience, a mattress fort is the best booth you can build at home, and it’s good enough for a vocal that competes in a commercial release.

Option 3. DIY mobile recording booth from mineral wool

The smart option is to build large panels from mineral wool and wood. Make a wooden frame like a wide, shallow box, 5 to 12 cm (2 to 5 inches) deep. The back can be fabric, thin wood or cardboard. Fill the frame with mineral wool and cover the front with breathable fabric so the fibres stay inside.

Any decorative fabric can go on top, as long as air passes through it. Airtight fabric reflects sound instead of letting it into the wool.

Build three or four panels about 2 metres high and 1.5 metres wide, give them legs so they stand on their own, and you have a portable vocal booth. Add small wheels, and you can set up a recording spot anywhere in the room.

Mobility is only half the advantage. These panels are genuinely effective acoustic treatment, made from cheap materials, and they last for 10 years or more.

What about a reflection filter?

Reflection filters are small curved shields that mount on the mic stand behind the microphone. They look professional, but they only cover the area right behind the mic. The wall behind the singer, which the mic is facing, stays untreated. A reflection filter helps in a treated room. It doesn’t replace one.

Should I treat the room for sound if I have a vocal booth?

With a good booth, room treatment isn’t essential. But the goal is to stop as many reflections as possible reaching the mic, so more treatment always helps.

If you have the time and budget, treat the room as well. It makes the booth’s job easier, and if you also mix in that room, you’ll need the treatment anyway.

Step 3. How to eliminate room sound reflections

Use the same materials: blankets, mattresses, mineral wool panels.

Focus on the walls at the height of the singer’s head, and include windows and doors.

Treat all four walls, or at least the wall behind the singer and the two side walls.

A rug on the floor helps too, and so does something above the mic, so the floor and ceiling don’t bounce sound between them.

Blankets on the walls

Hang blankets along the walls, on ropes or rails. The more, the better, but the area at head height comes first.

Use the thickest blankets you can find, and leave a gap between the blanket and the wall. The air gap helps the blanket absorb lower frequencies.

Mattresses or acoustic panels on the walls

Mattresses and mineral wool panels work on the walls too. Lean them against the wall or hang them, again at head height first.

Recorded the vocal and want it to sit like a release? Our mixing and mastering starts at $133 per song, 2–3 days per song, 6 revision rounds included. If the takes need tuning or timing work, manual vocal editing starts at $57 per song.