IA Portable Vocal Booth - The Ultimate Vocal Booth Test

Imperative Audio PVB: https://bit.ly/IaPVB

https://imperativeaudio.com

Audio professionals seek a natural but controlled environment for recording vocals, which is usually achieved with a dedicated room or booth. But for those with project studios, there can be limitations around space and budget.

As a result, portable booths have become a very popular solution, but how effective can an open vocal booth perform, especially in highly reflective environments?

We put the Imperative Audio PVB to the test at St Albans Cathedral to find out!

Singer, Lucy Kane, was set up at the centre of the cathedral nave where the reflection time measured 3.03 seconds. The plan was to move the IA PVB (Portable Vocal Booth) over Lucy as she sang and then to measure the reflections while also monitoring the signal to see if it retained a natural sound.

Lucy was close mic’d using a Neumann U87 and 4 Imperative Audio Lucent condenser mics were used to record the ambient signal. “You never know quite what you’re going to get when heading into these projects. St. Albans Cathedral is a beautiful and historic building, and in a normal session I would of paid to use its natural reverb on Lucy’s voice, it sounded amazing. But we were there to do a test.” Explained IA PVB designer Dave West “And even though we knew that the PVB would perform well, even we were amazed by what we were heard.”

Signal chain

Imperative Audio Portable Vocal Booth: https://bit.ly/IaPVB
Neumann U87 Condenser Microphone: https://bit.ly/NeumannU87S
Imperative Audio Multi-Pattern Condenser Microphone (Ambient): https://bit.ly/IALucent
Audient ASP800 Microphone Preamp: https://bit.ly/ASP800
Audient ID44 Audio Interface: https://bit.ly/iD44Audient
Macbook Pro 2020 M1

0:00 Intro
1:32 PVB Vocal Booth Test
1:35 Neumann U87
1:42 Imperative Audio Lucents (Ambient Mics)
2:06 Neumann U87 w/ Portable Vocal Booth
2:26 Imperative Audio Lucents (Ambient Mics) w/ Portable Vocal Booth
3:02 Outro