Koz wrote: Design details?
The box itself is made from 3/4" plywood. The corners were sealed inside with silicone, and the back, roof and sides are lined with 2" thick acoustic foam. This was not enough to kill the internal reflections in the box, so I added a couple of 6' lengths of polyester hollow fibre from an old duvet packed in around the sides and back. That did the trick. The box floor is raised so that the capsule is just below mouth height when sitting at a hard chair in front of my desk. The inside dimensions were chosen to allow enough room around the microphone for acoustic packing and to allow a small amount of mic movement. The microphone is held in a desk stand and shockmount.
The pop filter frame is made from 16 gauge galvanised steel tensioning wire for chainlink fencing (I had some around) and a child's lycra stocking is stretched over it (the other leg was laddered). The pop filter is 8" from the mic front. The clamp for the pop filter needs improvement - it's a bit of an afterthought and uses two small G-clamps. I can do something better and neater that will allow the computer stand to properly stack on top.
I have uploaded another picture of the recording set-up.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clivecatterall/
You can see the laptop stand behind the microphone box. It is at just the right height to read from the screen when speaking into the microphne. The laptop sits on another block of pyramid foam to stop fan noise transmission into the desk, and to absorb fan noise projected down. The box cuts out direct transmission of fan noise and road noise, and the recording is done in a furnished and carpeted room, so noise has to be reflected off several soft surfaces before it finds a way past my shoulder and into the front of the mic. I did experiment with a large acoustic screen positioned behine me so that even more reflected sound could be cut out, but it didn't make any measurable difference, so I don't bother. (I was pleased, as it was a pain to put up and take down for each session)
The laptop stand is sized so that it will stack on top of the microphone box after a recording session and the whole lot can be pushed to one side on the desk when I have to get on with other paid work.
On the desk you can see a blue dog clicker that I use for marking mistakes, and a cordless mouse that I hold in my lap during recording so I can scroll the text up and down on the PDF reader. This last bit is surprisingly important - cable noise moving across the desk is readily transmitted into the mic - with this set-up I can avoid touching the desk at all during recording .
I do sit when I record, but I sit at the front of a hard chair so my knees can be lower than my hips. This allow me to still breathe from the diaphragm in the same way as I would when standing. Standing is better for voice production, but sitting makes it easier to control the mouth to microphone distance.
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Clive
