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Taking the portable booth to the extreme - damping a blimp


Jesper Magnusson

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Hello!

I've posted a few times before on questions regarding booming, and damping a set, and recently had another thought that I would like to discuss with more experienced people. I recently looked up some portable booths popularly used for song in less than ideal locations, such as the ones in the pictures, and started to think about if you couldn't make something similar for location sound.

post-3457-0-49050400-1325092427.pngpost-3457-0-83573700-1325092437.jpg

So, my question is if it wouldn't be possible to take damping material and for instance make a sort of blimp of it - or maybe just put it around an actual blimp - open at the front. This would of course increase the weight quite a lot, but it would probably still be ok for short close takes, or of course for putting on a stand.

If I could I would test it myself just to find out, but I don't have the possibility at the moment. So, does anyone see an obvious flaw of something like this, other than weight? Maybe it wouldn't make much difference, or maybe interfere with how certain mics cancel out sound from the sides and rear?

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I bet an interference tube mice like a shotgun would sound pretty horrible in such an enclosure. It is my opinion, that devices like that just plain sound bad to begin with. I've used things like the Se Reflextion filter with pretty poor results. I'm not sure that it improves the sound, or at least is a tradeoff for rejection of off-axis sounds versus odd sounding artifacts. Properly positioned gobos and real room treatments will always trump these little poorly designed devices, but like anything, a little bit of experimentation could prove useful.

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I agree with Tom that the results and "benefit" would be minimal and certainly unpredictable at best. There is one procedure we routinely use that resembles in part what you are presenting here. That is, when using a plant mic that is unfortunately up against a hard, reflective surface (like the dashboard of a car where a plant mic may be placed), we will put a piece of cloth, a piece of foam or something to "soften" the reflected sound coming in to the back of the mic. This allows the normal front to back attenuation (directionality) of the microphone to perform better. The acoustic box that you have pictured here seems like it would drastically alter the sound entering the back of the mic (maybe this IS the goal) which would certainly disrupt the directional characteristics of the mic in use. For voice over work (which it appears this sort of box is designed for) and close speaking into a large diaphragm mic, the directional characteristics of the mic are not so important. Typically in our work, the directional capabilities of the mic that we rely on would be seriously compromised.

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These products are intended for people doing VO work at home that are too lazy/cheap/lacking the ability to properly treat a room acoustically. Yes, they are cheap, easy to make yourself, etc...but the reality is that this type of a product will only help a little with reverb issues, and will not do much of anything for blocking background sound/noise.

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" the only way to really know how it would work [ for your purposes ] would be to test it. "

It doesn't usually work for most of our normal purposes...

if doing field VO's, I'd really prefer to have sound blocking behind my speaker, to reduce noises and reverb getting in the front of the mic, thus a full booth...

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Reflection filter - thanks for the proper name Vin.

It seems enough of you think it's not worth it, so I'll probably not be going to any great lengths in my testing. I'm still qurious though as to what effects it would have, so if I'm left with the time I'll make a quick comparison (always good to have one more trick up your sleve).

Thanks everyone for your input.

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