Location, design, location

Working within the bounds of the fire code meant that the iso booth couldn't be placed anywhere that obstructs egress. This is not just a formality but also important, given the severity of the consequences driven home by the deadly "Ghost Ship" fire in San Francisco where fire inspectors described the makeshift homes inside the warehouse as an accident waiting to happen.

Luckily, I have one such nook in the back room although it's a bit smaller than I would like. But since I was aiming for a modular design, has the advantage of having sound isolation batt above the ceiling tiles.

A small, 7 X 5-1/2 nook not blocking egress seems an okay location for the booth.

The small size means that while free-standing, the structure would gain stability from the snug confines of the building walls. Not touching, but enough to prevent the walls bowing outward enough to allow the ceiling perched on top fall in.

The plan was to build four 3-3/4 feet wide sections which could be bolted together to form the two side walls. A back wall would double as a bass trap modelled after this DIY project. And then the front would have the obligatory door. The ceiling would be a panel of isolation glued to panels and just sit on top of the walls, allowing for disassembly, maybe not easy, but within the realm of possible.

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Finishing touches

The sound was a little dead, so I added perforated MDF at ear-level to help restore some high frequencies. If I'm honest, it could probably use more. Finished interior Finished door. The headphone amp I mainly added because I was no longer sitting directly in front of my audio interface and this helps to span the gap. Since StudioOne allows for remote control by app (via WiFi), the plan is to control session via an Amazon Fire tablet that can double as a lyric sheet. I'm a little disappointed by the sound isolation achieve (definitely muffled, but by no means absolute), but maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. If I had to do it again, I would probably use more seals. The next time I take it apart I will probably add a layer of isolation on top of the walls to help with the ceiling, and use seals on all joints. I finally got around to testing it by placing a mic outside the booth and playing the same (strummy) groove on acoustic guitar with the ...

Building the ceiling.

The basic idea for the ceiling was simple. Two interlocking tongue-in-groove slabs of Oriented Strong Board (OSB) with abutting sections of PSA-backed soundproofing composite attached to the underside. However, the PSA was a pain to work with, sticking to everything but the OSB (now the sheepish owner of a pair of inconveniently ass-less jeans). PSA is messy to work with. The finished ceiling.

Building the front

The front was fairly challenging, in that to keep things semi-airtight, my usual slapdash construction wouldn't do. But what the hell, it had gotten me this far. The main pickle was the fact that I needed a solid core door, and I couldn't find one less than 80” high and all the space I had to play with was 76". However, I did find one that could have two inches trimmed from there top, and two from the bottom without damaging the core. This was cutting it close, but I figured I could make up the difference, by cutting out a door-shaped hole in the bottom of the frame. As it was thoroughly summer by this time, I wasn't worried about disturbing any groundhogs, their shadow should've been vanquished by now. I opted for a variation of the superdoor design mentioned in Rod's book , but using a soundproofing composite instead of the lead sheet since this is mostly for vocals/acoustic guitar, and shouldn't have that many low frequencies to worry about. ...

DIY isobooth

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