Renegade A to Z: B is for…

…booth, as in recording booth. Actually, if I'm honest, that isn't one of the B words on my mind right now. They're all expletives, as the PC I use for my audio work died a horrible death yesterday evening and I have wasted hours and hours buying a new one and trying to get it all set up as a replacement. Not a happy bunny.

But I need to be positive here, and have faith that once my external drive has copied over the files I can troubleshoot the sound level differences I've detected with my test recording and get going again. So today, I'm going to show you my marvellous audio book recording booth, made out of recycled materials by my very clever Step-dad.

When I decided to go pro with the audio book recording, I knew that I needed to get a pro mic, and there would probably be egg-box foam involved somewhere. The mic was easy enough to source and get, but it picked up every tiny sound I was unaware of using the rubbish USB mic I had previously. I needed a booth.

I salivated over various set-ups online (including that funky foam), but all were way out of my budget, so I went and spoke to my Stepdad about what I needed and he designed and made this:

Naked recording booth

Yes, those are two old wardrobe doors, made into a booth shape with two detachable frames (my office doubles as guest bedroom, so it needed to be able to cope with occasional dismantling). Recycling at its best.

Of course, it would be an absolutely appalling recording booth in this state (all those sound waves bouncing around like billy-oh), so here it is modestly dressed in velvet:

Dressed in its beautiful velvet garb

Not only does velvet soak up those sound waves beautifully, it also looks lovely, was free as I have had it lying around for years (I must make a dress out of it all one day) and has the added benefit of making me feel like I am stepping into a fortune teller's booth every time I record.

Mic and e-reader goodness

Inside, I have my mic and music stand for my e-reader, which I use for all my recording work now, and here's a little picture of them too. Not shown is the desk lamp that is now tied to the music stand with ribbon.

So there you have it, my little recording booth. Hopefully I'll be recording in it later on, the memories of recent tech hell fading rapidly… fingers crossed!

Oh! B is also for back-up, thank goodness I was pretty obsessive about that and actually have the files on an external hard drive.