Build a Guerrilla Sound Booth (page 2)

The Portable Sound Booth

You can buy a professional, three-sided, 3.5-by-3.5-by-6.5-foot collapsible sound booth from Markertek Video Supply (www.markertek.com) for about $600. Or, you can just buy two-inch thick acoustical honeycomb foam panels in gray or blue for $20 to $30 per 54-by-54-inch sheet and build your own. Sonex (www.silentsource.com) is another manufacturer of foam panels. Its 2-by-2-foot panels cost $75 to $100 for four.

You could also create something yourself. Consider gluing egg cartons to 1/4-inch plywood, asking your local grocer for the discarded foam liners from his apple or orange crates or covering plywood with plush carpeting. If you ripple the carpeting into 2-inch bends, it will further reduce reverberation.

A small, simple, portable sound booth that you can put on a desk or table, could consist of two 2-by-2-foot panels joined along one side (like a book). Stand it up, opened halfway, and set your microphone on a stand (or prop your camcorder on a whipped cream tub) inside the enclosure. Try to have the quiet, non-reverberating part of the room to your back as you face the "open book." The little booth will repress sounds and cancel echoes from in front of you, while your body and the quiet wall behind you limit the noise from the opposite direction.

For added quietude, you could lay another panel over the top of the "open book" to create a roof, and throw some carpet or foam on the table to reduce sound reflections from below.

After all is said and done, you should end up with clear, crisp voiceovers without interference from household noises and room reverberations. Now, just spend a few minutes to make sure that your narration is worthy of all your sound-booth sanctuary efforts.