Setting up your first "Voice Booth"

what's happening booth junkies Mike delgadio here back with another video today we're going to talk about creating your very first voiceover setup and what I would now using my experience and having done this a bunch of different ways a bunch of different times what I would consider a really good first time setup if you really want to be serious about voiceover but you're just getting started you don't have a huge budget but you want to have something that will grow with you I'm going to show you what I think would make a great first setup so we'll just go through and we're actually going to put it together right here the first thing that you're going to need is you're going to need a microphone stand this is one that I bought off Amazon it's made by onstage and I think it was like 25 dollars maybe it's it's perfect for what you're going to need I think it might have come with a boom arm in the beginning and a boom arm that comes out like this I don't remember but it was very inexpensive I think was about 25 dollars nice thing about this it folds up so you can stash it in a closet doesn't take up a lot of space and as you can see it's very lightweight the next thing that you're going to need is of course the microphone and I'm going to always recommend going with an XLR microphone if at all possible I'm going to show you the microphone that I would think would make a really ideal beginners setup and actually it could be your forever mic if you can if you can be willing to part with about three hundred and fifty dollars for a microphone I think this would make a great for ever mic but either way at this price point it's is very affordable the one that I recommend for a lot of people is the Caddy 100's and one of the reasons I like this microphone is it's very affordable built in the United States sounds great gets great reviews and I think I got mine on mass drop and I think it was about three hundred and fifty dollars if I recall correctly I even keep the tags on I love this microphone I've got three of them I've got two original caddy one hundreds and I've got this II one hundred s I love this microphone one of the reasons I love this microphone especially for someone starting out and who doesn't have a booth is its pattern this one is a super cardioid pattern microphone which means that it's area of sensitivity is very narrow in the front so it's much less sensitive to the sides and to the rear so if you've got sources of noise around you this is going to be a little bit more forgiving in this pattern by being a super cardioid pattern microphone there are also hyper-cardioid I've never used one I don't have a lot of experience with hyper-cardioid and as you know in my regular booth I also use a shotgun which is a very very narrow almost like a beam of sensitivity but if you're looking for a beginners mic your first mic the Caddy 100 definitely deserves some attention it's but it's going to be pricing pricey if you if you can't afford this it's no worries there are there are good large diaphragm condenser --zz that are a lot less expensive than this but this is this really could be your forever microphone so let's just mount this on to our microphone stand so this will be the first part of our vocal setup and we'll get it up to about mouth height and I usually like to angle the mic a little bit so any closest bounce off the mic a little bit and so we will have that in place the next thing of course the next thing that you'll need of course is a pop filter anytime you have a large diaphragm condenser mic you're going to need to have a pop filter something to manage the plosives that come off your mouth this one again off Amazon is the Navy M pf6 very inexpensive I think it was maybe ten dollars on Amazon perfect for what you need especially if you're just starting out you just need something to help block that air from getting into the microphone so this one's made of fabric but it's great a great first option I've used this one this pretty much the only pop filter I've I've used since I've gotten my own boots at home there are also metal ones that uh but they're a lot more expensive the metal ones they do it a they do air deflection a little bit differently than the fabric the fabric is a diffuser whereas the metal ones there they're angled and they'll deflect the air down but they can be more expensive so then we'll just position this pop filter right in front of the microphone so far so good the next thing that of course you'll need any time you have an XL a large diaphragm condenser that's XLR based is you'll need an XLR cable so we'll connect that to the microphone just clicks right into place and now we're going to get really into the meat of it and this is where the recommendations really where I really want to attract your attention to to these particular set of recommendations if you don't have an interface yet the interface that I would suggest if you're just starting out is a portable recorder and the reason for that is the portable ones one they run on battery two they record to an SD card three there's no moving parts so they're absolutely silent very common scenario with people who are just starting out is they'll have their microphone at their desk next to their computer and their computer fan essentially just blows noise into their mic the whole time it ruins their takes and everybody says why is it so loud what do I do do I need to do a special microphone to get rid of the noise you don't you need to get away from the noise so something like a zoom h5 is a great one and they're very reasonable and if you watched my other videos you know that I've recorded television commercials on this device so this will work all the way up to professional strength professional-grade but it's very affordable easy to come easy to come by on your own it's got two mic XLR mic inputs on the top this microphone array this just pops right off on the h5 so this is really the brains of the device and a nice thing about this is that runs on double-a batteries so you just pop some rechargeables in there and it also has a tripod adapter so this is really used for a lot of field recording for movies and videos so you can mount this onto a tripod adapter and we're going to use this to make it attach to our stand so let's see how we do that the next thing you'll need is a seat clamp and this is a photographer C clamp and this one I'll link to it the one I got off Amazon the reason we want a photographer C clamp is because it's got pre-drilled holes to accept the tripod screws which is a quarter inch twenty thread count nut so we're just going to take a small screw and attach it to this L bracket so these L brackets are something that you get at Home Depot for like two dollars and that's just going to make turn this C clamp into a mount for our zoom so we'll just take the nut and we're going to screw it into one of the tripod mounts I think on a normal circumstances a photographer would be putting a flash or an additional ball head on one of these so they could turn like a railing into a into a into a tripod stand someplace to mount the flash or a camera now but for us we're going to use it to mount the zoom so I'm just going to take a screwdriver tighten this nut in place of this bolt in place sorry and I'm going to keep it at an angle like that just see why in a second now we're going to take another longer bolt in this one it's probably too long but something something a little bit longer and you're going to put a wing nut on it that is mounted backwards on the bolt so what we do now is we take the H five and we line up the hole from the bracket onto the tripod adapter and we're just going to put that screw in there you see that and we're just screw it in until it's all the way in whatever size you have and then the reason we have the wing nut mount that on backwards is we use that to tighten it up so you don't have to worry about getting the right size or one that's short enough because a lot of tripod mounts are pretty shallow so you just use the wing nut to tighten it up and that makes it easy to get off later so now we have a try amount let's see I probably did that upside down let's do it like I did that one upside down I want to have it go this way because I'm lefty so we'll mount it like that so now we've got our C clamp with our zoom attached to it and it's I chose the zoom because it's the one that I had it's got the tripod mount it's got two two XLR inputs it's good for field recording because gets good battery life and it can just record to SD alright so now we have attached to our pole that's C clamp with the zoom and now we'll just take the other half of our XLR cable and we'll plug it into input one of the zoom and there you have it really good beginner setup totally self-contained you can carry it around and put it wherever in your house that you need it the last thing that you'll need is a pair of headphones and if you're just starting out whatever headphones you have is going to be fine if it's iPod earbuds if it's a pair of over ears you just want something that doesn't let sound out so either earbuds even if you have like skull candies with a little of the rubber tips that go right into your ears those are going to be fine you're just not going to be able to do like any equalization on it that you can trust but if you just need to listen back to yourself you can just use any old earphones you're going to plug the ear for the headphone jack into the headphone out of the of the zoom you can just hang your headphones right on there and now you've got your complete setup that you can take to whatever part of your house you're going to record in and I'll show you where that is next okay so here we are we've moved from the living room into the foyer so why would we move into the foyer well it's because that's where our first go booth is going to be and this can be any room in your house so long as it has a closet a lot of people use a walk-in closet for their vocal booth and that's a great idea if you've got a walk-in closet that's the very first place I would use I would make my vocal booth I don't have one this house doesn't have any walk-in closets but I do have a coat closet so what I will do is I will take this set up this portable set up with our zoom microphone pop filter and all that and I'm just going to slide it into the closet and I'm going to get it as far into the closet as I can and just snuggle it right into the coats the reason we're using the closet is because it's got great absorptive material in it all of these coats are going to do a great job of absorbing all of the reflections all of our voice and since we've got walls on either side it's going to keep our voice in the in the box here in the booth and not get out behind us so once your once you're here you grab your headphones put your headphones on turn on the zoom and there's a knob on there that's the gain knob so the gain you just adjust the gain until you just barely hear the background noise of your room so if you're very quiet I'll adjust it until I just barely hear the background and as I talk I watch the meter on the zoom and as long as it's going up to about minus 12 on the meter you're fine that's perfect so let's record something and see how this booth sounds the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog he whistled while he worked this is a great way to put together a vocal booth using nothing more than a coat closet a mic stand a microphone and a portable recorder and that actually sounds pretty good considering we spent only a month as much as we needed on a microphone and on the portable recorder and that's a great way to set up your first booth great way to do auditions great way to do background voiceovers for any videos you might be creating at home until you could get a permanent location in your apartment or in your house using a closet like this and a portable setup is a great way to create a booth so I hope this helps now get in your closet and record something amazing

Channel: Booth Junkie

Views: 311,316

Keywords: voiceover, voiceacting, voicework

Id: K7NI6RvSK-Q

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Limro]

"Oldie but Goldie"?