ISOVOX Mobile Vocal Booth

You might think as most people do that the Isovox 2 is way too expensive gor just a bunch of foam…but I believe it is way less expensive than any other professional sounding booths or sound treatment and has the advantage of mobility and flexability. The manual says to only keep your head in the isovox for no more than 2 minutes at a time. At first I thought this was an issue with C02 build up, but after using this now, I'm pretty sure it's because the interior of the Isovox gets very hot very quickly when your head is in there… there is bsdically no ventilation which is why I think that warning is in the manual. Would I buy it again? Absolutely!!! It may be a tight, small hot space and is not particularly fun… but the recording results are exacyly what I was looking for. The sound of silence is an effect, just like reverb is. But there are no plugins or effects racks that can create that dry super clean silent space sound. The only way to get "that sound" is by using a professionaly treated room. The Isovox 2 is that professionally treated room… it just happens to be a very small hot room. But if you can handle doing 2 minutes at a time then the end results are awesome. Guitar Center shipping and purchasing experience was excellent.

I bought this to do voice over work with when the studios all closed because of the pandemic. I recorded one audiobook in it, and a few article narrations for AppleNews+. Now that studios have started opening again, the clients are all requiring that level of sound, no longer accepting what passed for ok in a desperate situation--eg, the sound I could get out of this IsoVox. So I'm back to narrating in studios. I also auditioned for hundreds of VO gigs--cartoons and games and such--and did not book a single one, because the quality was not good enough. I can't take this back, and I don't know how to secondary sell it, since I can't especially recommend it. I guess I'll keep it and use it for auditions, knowing that the pros know that they'll get the sound they want when they send me to a pro studio.

This isn't a sound booth. It is a very acoustically dead treated space for your head, a microphone, and a script. It reduces all of the reverberations, chair squeaks, and outdoor noise pollution. Your results will be very consistent because there isn't much that can change in there other than your head and your microphone. It is pricey for something that small, but it can remove so many intangibles that can ruin book narration, and it is relatively compact.

Demoed at the Sony booth during an AES convention and was impressed. Need speaker stand not included. If you don't have a whisper room, convenient dry sounding closet, etc this works great (for vox). Can use shockmount (e.g. U87) and windscreen inside. It may get a little hot/smelly if using a mic that generates lots of heat (e.g. tube mic). No visual cues for performance, but you can put a camera outside with a video monitor inside.

It's getting hot and humid inside pretty fast. It is hard to breathe normally after a minute unless you open a side. With the side open sound is obviously far from being studio quality. Even with all the sides closed it's not worth 1k, returned. The second star is for being well put together, however at the end of the day it's all about the sound.