Acoustic Booth

[tctb]

I came across an ad for a Studiobricks accoustic booth on the Dawkes website which would allow practice in a house or flat. Has anyone any experience of using one?

https://www.dawkes.co.uk/studiobricks-o ... dium=email

[harrisonreed]

I came across an ad for a Studiobricks accoustic booth on the Dawkes website which would allow practice in a house or flat. Has anyone any experience of using one?

https://www.dawkes.co.uk/studiobricks-o ... dium=email

I've used a Wenger module, which is very similar in design and function.

The good:

If it's anything like a Wenger module, you can barely hear someone blasting away at full volume even just outside the door.

If it's possible to upgrade the booth with electronics, it's workable. The Wenger lets you record your practice sessions, and had pretty decent reverb that really helped make the room feel somewhat natural to play in.

The bad:

Practice rooms, especially tiny dead ones like these booths, train you to get really good at playing in tiny, dead spaces. In Wenger modules without the electronics, you get absolutely zero feedback, except for a very high frequency metallic ping from the panels of the room. The end result is that your sound either gets smaller and smaller, or you'll start overcompensating, and trying to create resonance and reverb that just doesn't exist.

Teachers love to say these small rooms make you better than if you just played in a good sounding hall all day, but that's just because they want to trick you into using them and keep the bigger rooms for themselves and the "real" musicians at school.

[skeletal]

You could try practicing with in-ears and a mixer with reverb on it, but that's $300-500 of gear right there. Still beats an eviction notice though.

[trombonejb]

Following.

[robcat2075]

The weight, more than half a ton(!), might be a deal-killer unless you can place it on a ground floor of a building with a slab foundation.

For a while I was looking into DIY constructing something like that. It's basically a lot of sheet rock and air gaps.

But the proper sound-sealing door is not a trivial thing and the weight was more than i thought the second floor room I wanted to put it in could take.

I've been in one of those prefabbed units once, in a music store trying out a horn. When the door closed you definitely felt like the rest of the world had disappeared. But outside of one, you could certainly hear someone inside playing.

You should bring a trombone-playing friend with you to test one out and put him inside while you listen outside and assess if it reduces the sound enough.

[StephenK]

Dawkes is the nearest wind/brass music store to me, but they didn't have one last time I was there over a year ago. It seems they have a couple for trialling now. They have recently reopened after lockdown by appointment, but unlikely I'll be going there soon.