Construction and characterization of a portable sound booth for onsite voice recording

Controlled acoustic environments are important in voice research. Recording environment affects the quality of voice recordings. While sound booths and anechoic chambers are examples of controlled acoustic environments widely used in research, they are both costly and not portable. The long-term goal of this project is to compare the voice usage and efficiency of trained and untrained singers onsite immediately before and after vocal performance. The specific goal of this project is the further of development a Portable Sound Booth (PSB) and standardization of onsite voice recording procedures under controlled conditions. We hypothesized that the simple and controlled acoustic environment provided by the PSB would enable consistent reliable onsite voice recordings and the immediate differences as a consequence of voice usage were measurable.

We developed a portable sound booth to measure the voice and hearing of trained and untrained musicians in the field to determine risk of hearing and vocal fatigue.

In this article, we report the design, construction, and acoustic characterization of a prototype portable sound box (PSB) to acquire high-quality voice recordings in a controlled, portable acoustical measurement. Simulations were conducted to model the intended use of the PSB by voice users, using two acoustic characterization procedures.