t.akustik Vocal Head Booth review

t.akustik Vocal Head Booth: What is it?

Acoustic treatment can seriously improve the reliability of both your recording and listening spaces. But what if permanent changes aren’t an option or you simply need to improve things quickly? 

That’s where a portable vocal booth comes into play. We’ve seen various efforts at this over the years, including some very similar to this one (Isovox 2 Vocal Booth for example). It’s clearly an attractive concept, and the latest design we have on trial, Vocal Head Booth, comes from Thomann’s t.akustik brand.

Vocal Head Booth is made primarily from 40mm PET polyester fibre. This is a reasonably dense but still springy fibrous material that once manufactured forms pretty rigid panels with a clean, stable finish. 

For the Vocal Head Booth, these are self-supporting and joined together on the edges. So, along with a black lacquered MDF baseboard you have a reasonably sturdy, large hood (roughly 75 x 53 x 54cm) with shaped sections on either side to accommodate your shoulders. 

It’s bulky though not unrealistically heavy (7.8kg). It’s designed to go on a standard 35mm equipment tripod, and one of these is included if you buy the bundle deal.

t.akustik Vocal Head Booth: Performance and verdict

The hood has a number of rather cool features. Firstly, it includes a slide-in mic holder with 50mm of height adjustment. Then on the underside of the baseboard is a pop filter mounting bar and a large headphone hook.

The baseboard has a 30mm wide slot, which helps neatly accommodate not only your popshield arm and mic cable but allows you to introduce a regular mic stand into the space if desired.

Inside the hood, you’ve got a magnetic clip high up behind the mic for your lyric sheet, and there’s also a magnet to mount the included battery-powered LED spotlight. Finally, there’s a slot-in piece of PET that goes behind your head and can be adjusted up or down, or removed.

So how does it deliver sonically? The first thing to notice once you get your head inside the space is how dead it is. Just listening without headphones, it really does take away the ambience in the room.

How does this translate to the mic sound? Firstly, there is an obvious difference when you add the rear slotted section behind your head, meaning you essentially have two degrees of reduction.

Next up, aside from the reduced room sound, the mic does sound different inside the hood, with a boost in the low mid frequencies. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, and it should come as no surprise that the booth has its own acoustic response.

Nevertheless, this as well as the slightly claustrophobic environment inside the hood are worth mentioning. However, there’s no denying the Vocal Head Booth considerably reduces the room ambience that gets on the mic, quite an achievement. We guess the only other thing is it’s quite large, so you need somewhere to store it.

The Vocal Head Booth reduces mic ambience, delivering a tight sound, and is a fraction of the cost of more permanent room treatment or an isolation booth. Overall it’s a solid effort that we're very impressed by. 

MusicRadar verdict: It may not be the most portable room acoustic device we’ve tried, but it is by far one of the most effective. If you truly want to reduce room ambience on speech and vocals, it’s an excellent option.

t.akustik Vocal Head Booth: Hands-on demos

t.akustik

t.akustik Vocal Head Booth: Specifications

• KEY FEATURES Adjustable mic holder, Aluminium tube to mount regular pop filter, Headphone hook, Magnetic lyric holder, Magnetic battery power LED light, Adjustable slide up back panel, Integrated 35mm mounting plate for use with a large tripod, Constructed from 40 mm PET polyester with black lacquered MDF board base 
• DIMENSIONS: 75 x 53 x 54cm
• WEIGHT: 7.8kg
• CONTACT: t.aksutik