879 – Up your sound game: Tom talks DIY Sound Booth

Episode 879 – DIY Sound Booth
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 879 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to help you sound better than you've ever sounded before. How about that? We're going to talk about do it yourself sound booths. And I've talked about speaking into your microphone, into a closet and putting a box on your desk and everything. But this time I'm going to talk about my big sound booth I built and what you got to do to do it. And so this is episode 879. Hope you didn't miss episode 878 that was on live streaming tips. Live streaming can really make a great connection with your audience and get engagement, and you can still repurpose and play the videos, the records forever. So that was episode 878. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, the episode number. That was 878 for live streaming tips. And let's see, make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:25] All right. Let's talk about, um, a do it yourself sound booth. This is what I'm talking about. And and and I don't want you to get the clap over this. All right. But I'm going to tell you about the clap test. And if you were in my living room right now, this podcast sounds pretty good.

[00:01:44] You know, it's got a good microphone. I, you know, clean up the noise reduction and all that stuff. But but right next to me, when I'm doing an audio book or have to do something really high quality. If you were in my living room and you clapped your hands like this. And then you went inside my little portable sound booth and you did it. You would be like, oh my God, there's what a difference. Just in the clapping. See? So it really deadens the sound in there. So I'm going to tell you how to build one of those, give you tips on it. And of course there's lots of videos like if you put do it Yourself sound booth into YouTube, they'll show you more of the details and options that you can put in a sound booth. But I'm going to give you from my perspective and let you get started with this. So I built mine out of PVC pipe. I think I used inch and a half because I wanted it to be strong. And I remember I think it was like Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve or something. I was doing it in my front foyer, and I was building this thing, and I was trying to glue it together like you glue PVC. And not only was it messy and it stinks, I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to get this thing where it's going to be its final resting place if I glue this thing together? Right? So I got the bright idea to make it totally portable in that I can take it apart, because what I did was I drilled with a tiny drill bit into each joint, like elbows and couplings, and into the pipe through the coupling or through the elbow into the pipe.

[00:03:31] And I put a little tiny stainless steel screw in there. So it's really strong. It's not coming apart, but it can come apart just by unscrewing these tiny screws. Because I would have built, I would have had to have my sound booth right in my front door, right, because dummy wasn't thinking ahead. See? So I'm suggesting that you screw it together, get a little drill. And I mean, it doesn't have to be a fancy DeWalt. I mean, it can be just a little, you know, one of those little battery operated things because it's easy to drill into this stuff and then screw in a little tiny screw. Okay. So, uh, then that's just a framework. Say now over top. Now, if you're on a super budget, you could just go to Harbor Freight or something and get some of their cheapo moving blankets for $4 a piece. All right.

[00:04:22] However, you know, if you if you've got a decent budget, you can Google sound blankets. And so these are kind of they look like moving blankets, but they're specifically designed to absorb sound. And you drape them over your, your booth. Now however big you make it, you know, you figure out how many you need and you also put one on the top. You don't have to put one on the bottom. Uh, I mean, if you have carpet, that's great. If you don't have carpet, you could put some throw rugs down in there. Anything to keep the sound from bouncing around. So you want a dead sound, is what they call it inside. Now, I suggest that you put this booth, if you can, over an air conditioning or heating duct if you have them in the floor, because. That way. I mean, it can get hot in there in the summer and cold in the winter, but you don't want the noise of the air blowing through the duct. So you could, in the summer, turn the air conditioning on, get it nice and cool in there, and then turn the air conditioning off so that sound of the air blowing through the duct doesn't get on your your good quality recording. And of course, you want a good quality microphone, a mic stand. And then what I do is I put a music stand in there to hold my script.

[00:05:42] I don't want to touch the script if possible, because then you'll hear the papers flopping around. Now some people use an iPad or a computer monitor for the script, but if you if you use a computer monitor that's not touch screen, then you have to have a mouse and you've got to jump through a whole bunch of more hoops. So an iPad is great, something like that, or at least something with a touch screen. You want your computer if you're going to use a computer out of the booth because it's got fans in it and noises that you don't want on, I mean, you're defeating the purpose. In other words, now my music stand happens to be metal, so I drape a bath towel over it. Anything to not have hard surfaces. There is what you do. And then I have cables that reach out into the where my computer is. But I also have a digital recorder in there. So if I don't want to use the computer at all or even have it on, I can do everything into a high quality digital recorder that's just sitting right there on the the music stand next to the iPad. Okay, let's see what else we need here. Um, I suggest that you stand up in these things.

[00:07:00] Make it big enough for you to stand up. I mean, you actually need to make it a little bigger if you're going to sit down, because you're going to be wider with a chair in there. And if you have a chair in there, make sure the chair does not squeak. A lot of people use a bar stool, but whatever you use, make sure it doesn't make any noise. I mean, there's there's chairs that if you sit on them, the air comes out of the cushion and it makes noise. All right. Now, you could sit there and wait till the air went out before you started talking. But you have to pay attention to all of these things because they're going to get on the recording. And some of them are fixable and some of them aren't. But the thing is, is the less fixing you have to do, the faster this is going to go. And I also, you know, this isn't on how to, you know, how to speak and how to do stuff, but but you should plan on doing several sessions to make sure your energy is up. And be careful what you eat before you get in there and all that stuff. So. So make sure I gave you all the stuff I planned on for this. Um. Oh, and you have a power strip handle handy in case you need to power your digital recorder.

[00:08:12] If you don't want to run on batteries the whole time, uh, have a power strip that's run to the wall somewhere and in accessible to you. None of that's going to make any noise. But I got to tell you, you will sound better than you ever dreamed. Now, when you go listen to it, you're going to hear things that maybe you're not happy with, all right. That you didn't hear on your normal recordings because of how quiet it is in there. And also, another thing, you know, uh, this is, again, this is getting off topic of building the sound booth. You want to use a dynamic microphone. Now, if you're in a totally sound booth controlled, you know, thing in a studio, well, they might use a condenser microphone because it's more sensitive. But you want to do whatever you can to not have extraneous noises. Get on this and this. This thing that I'm talking about is not soundproof. So if somebody is outside your window with a lawn mower, it's still going to get in there. You have to still pick and choose when you're going to record. But when you when you get quiet in the outside environment and you record in that booth, it's going to make you sound better than you ever did.

[00:09:25] And you can still learn how to do edit and noise reduction and, you know, reverb and, you know, all the kinds of things that we do to doctor stuff up. But the sound booth will really make it, and it's not going to cost a lot of money if you're on a budget. Those things over at Harbor Freight are only 4 or 5 bucks for the blankets. I think I paid 70 or 80 for these super duper ones and the PVC pipe. A lot of times you can find it used pipe on, um, on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or something, and people were just left over from jobs. So you can do this on a really cheap budget, but don't glue it, I'm telling you. All right? That's my story. I'm sticking to it. If you'd like a training like this, uh, on the million Things You need to know to be successful online, check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. And I usually triple dog dare anybody to put their program up against mine. And they won't do it because they would be embarrassed. You get super, super high level, uh, attention in my program. All right. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.