Voiceover Q&A #004: How did you build you booth?

This is the transcript for Voiceover Q&A with Brian Wiggins #004.

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Good morning. This morning. Let's see what's our question today? Jessie Parish Reno Nevada asks How did you build your booth? Did you get plans off the internet or did you plan? It all out yourself. I'm using moving blankets in a closet right now, but I want something better, not sure if I want to build one or buy one. When did you build yours? That was a really fun project. So when I started yeah, when I was doing my research. So first. Yes, I built my booth. I built it, man. It's see, I want to say it was 20 21. I think it was 20 21 when I build the booth. So might have been about two years ago, I can't remember. Now for some reason,

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when I started, I was actually my very first Booth. I say, booth and quotes, and let me just say that when a recording booth is a tool, it's not necessarily in my opinion, the way I Define, it is not a specific structure, it is whatever space that you have. That has been dedicated to getting the best sound possible. That is what According Booth is, so if you're recording booth is a little pillow for that, you built, if it's a closet that has a bunch of coats in it or moving blankets, or if you built it or if you paid for one, you know, you got one of an l.a. Booth. I just that just comes to - I know that's one of the companies that makes these things. It doesn't matter. It's your recording booth. That's your recording booth so and almost no one's going to start with something. Super. Expensive and that's fine. My first Booth was my desk.

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I was actually my brother's desk from when we were growing up and it had like one of those hoods, you know, across the back of it across the top. And so I just lined it with some foam with some really cheap acoustic foam. And yeah, that was my first booth and it served the purpose. It Enough to capture the reflection of my voice that I was able to record the first few audio books. I did that way. And it did a perfectly fine job. The downside of that is that it didn't do anything to keep all of the outside sound out. I'm on the second floor right across the street from a school. So there was a lot of em. I mean any car that drove by would force me to stop. So that was the first one. My second Booth I actually moved to Ooh, a closet that you can't see now because it's on the other side of the, of the actual Booth here and it's out of out of range, you can kind

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of sexually, you can kind of see the door little bit right there. That was my actually my second recording booth. And initially, I had just more of that foam in there really thin, it's like super cheap and I had that in her head, the microphone. And I had a little light and that was it. And I would record a, my computer. I was out here so that way it wouldn't pick up the sound from the fan that Mike wouldn't pick up the sound booth version 2.0. We'll say, 2.1. Was then I moved instead of using the acoustic foam, which really wasn't doing a great job of getting the best sound. It was enough. I then built rock wall panels. I just took rockwool to two and a half inches, thick bought a bale of it for like 50 bucks. I framed it out, covered it in burlap you can cover in just about anything but I discovered mine and cheaper lap that I got from Jo-Ann Fabrics.

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Mounted that in their it dramatically improved, the sound inside the booth and did a little bit to help keep The Sound Outside the booth from getting in a little bit, not a lot that was 2.1 version. 2.2 was then I moved a monitor into the booth and that's what allowed me to start doing punch and roll and actually do I have. Do I still all I do? So what I did was because I was doing all this on the cheek, I did not have a big budget for this because this is right when I was getting started. So what I did is I have a friend of mine, my friend, Yvonne Martino, who's an awesome dude. First of all, just a really, really awesome dude. And I'm really very happy that I can call that guy, my friend, but he's also kind of a genius when it comes to tinkering and building and just he's got a really good mind. These things but he also know he just knows a lot of stuff and he was like, oh, because I don't have money for a monitor. He's like, well, do you have an old laptop you can repurpose the monitor?

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So he walked me through, ripping a monitor of this is really dusty. That's ugly. Haven't used in a long time, but he had me take a monitor out of an old laptop. He showed me how to do it and he explained, all I needed was basically a connection card. So what I did here is I built this Frame. Mmmmm, I built this little frame out of just what I had down in the basement to hold it. I repurposed this was so I had a I think this was a mount for a tablet that I had in. Yeah, I had a tablet in the booth for doing the audio books and whatnot and it was cool because then I don't have to constantly print out paper and print out a paper printout scripts because that got really expensive with audiobooks. I was going through man, a couple of a reamer to of Paper a month. I was going through toner, I had to replace toner twice a month and that in and of itself was super expensive, especially when I was

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making $80 per finished our at the time. So it was really eating into my into my margin on that. So I moved a tablet I had in there, so I repurpose this just to act as the mount for it and I put these little twists bolts in here. And I mounted the monitor in there and this is a card that I bought. And I got it off of eBay. The card itself I want to save is like 20 or 30 bucks. What was funny was that when I bought this off of eBay was coming from New York, I want to say it was like MIT, I don't know. Exactly, but it was coming from New York and at the same time, my wife had mailed a package to a friend of hers that lives in Scotland. And we did it, the side ordered this and it was like the same day that she had mailed this thing and we joke because the package got to Scotland and like a few days later, like, a week later, I didn't get this for like another

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like to, until two weeks after that, it took longer to get something from. I could have walked to New York and back, but anyway. So he showed me how to do this and open that can part. All right? So, I might actually figure out a way to repurpose this and use it for something else. Maybe in my setup here, I don't know. But this was the monitor I had in there and that allowed me to do punch and roll recording, which was an immense time. Man, I didn't have to do all the editing anymore for audio books, but that was Booth version, 2.2 will call it. And then, yeah, in 2021, I built my booth and I'll take everyone on a tour on that eventually. I know there's a video on Edge Edge studios website. I was part of the first home studio Show and Tell and I took people around that, but my computer is being wonky that or Zoom is being walk. I had to use my cell phone and it wasn't great. So I'll take everyone on a tour of the booth. At another time. But yeah, I built I how did I build it? Yeah, I planned it out myself. I went on the internet.

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I did a lot of research, I wanted to make sure I was looking at the right sources that I was getting the right ideas and I was able to amalgamate kind of what, what, what needed to be there and the big things were a booth. First and for it has two purposes. First purpose, that it absolutely has to have. That is a non-negotiable is that it needs to protect the sound inside the booth. So you're getting the best possible sound into your microphone. I've said it before the only hard and fast, uh, non-negotiable rule in voiceover is you must have good sound. Everything else just about everything else is subjective. Does it matter how awesome your audition is? You can have the best audition and be the perfect voice for a project. If you have bad sound because you're picking up the cars outside that you might be hearing, it might be here in the room Echo. If you hear that, it does not matter.

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How great your audition is you just won't, you're not gonna be selected so so yes, I was trying to figure out. How to get the best sound inside and how to keep the outside sound out because that's the second purpose of a booth. If that's the once you've achieved the first, you can start working on the second and that was, what was keeping me. One of the things that was keeping me from being as effective and as and as efficient With, with my voiceover stuff, especially with audio books. So I I planned it out, I am I will admit I am, I'm handy. I know how to do things know how to build things. I've taught myself a lot learned from my dad from my grandfather's. So yeah. I planned it out and I figured out how I wanted to build the things and how, you know, and I planned out how much would I needed and drywall and all the stuff and actually have to have the plan somewhere and maybe I'll post them. So you might check the description.

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I might have a link to the plans. I don't know. But yeah. So I planned it out and then Saved up. I've once I knew what it was, I planned out and I saved up the money and I think all in all I was about fifteen hundred dollars to build the booth myself, which was Is it as good as say something? I could have gotten from l.a. booths. No, it just isn't very that's what they do. Full-time professionally. My guess is that their booths would be way better than mine, but their boots are also very expensive. And I definitely didn't have the budget for that. Maybe one day, I will get an l.a. Booth. I don't know. We'll see because this one's doing just great right now. But yeah for doing essentially essentially. In some varying degree of quality. The same thing as what a more expensive, prefabricated Booth or someone else. Built for me Booth would be for a fraction of that price. I was able to build this.

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I was able to customize it for the specific size of my room. I would probably do a few things different where I to do it again. I would Orient things a little bit differently. I think I had an idea of where things were going to be. I thought I was going to move my computer, my desktop to Tower over there in the corner and I'd still have my desk and at, but I would just keep the computer over there and I'd be running lines everywhere and at some point it just became after I built the booth that it was, it became obvious. That wasn't to be feasible. So yeah, I would probably do a few things different but yeah, my favorite thing in addition to just, they're being really nice sound in there and it does a nice job of keeping everything out is, I have a little ventilation system actually has a draw. I've a computer fan are super quiet. Computer fan in a sound maze. Draws the air out. Yeah, I'm actually really happy with the booth. Maybe I thought it turned out, but that that being said, do you need that? No,

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yeah man. Moving Gets in a closet can be great if you live in a quiet area. Hmm. You don't even need to worry. That could be that could be fine that can serve you for years. So yeah, don't worry. I'm a good question though. Yeah, it was a big project. Yeah, I'll have to post them. I'll see about finding the plans now to see if I. Yeah, we'll do a tour. I'll take everyone on a tour at some point. Yeah. But yeah, let's a booth is a tool. That's it. That's all it is and needs to serve its purpose. So

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