DIY Portable Sound Booth - The easiest way to improve your YouTube videos!

Megan Weller

Mar 2, 20202 min read

Hey guys, it's Megan!

I recently decluttered my craft room/office.

The extra space is great, but getting rid of so much furniture took away some of the "cushion" and my voiceovers were sounding a bit echo-y.

I've seen people turn whole closets into recording studios, but with the amount of junk I have I knew that wasn't happening.

*Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you purchase something through my link. See my disclosure for more information.*

While browsing for solutions online, I came across this product.

I knew I had an old mattress topper lying around, so I found an empty storage bin and got to work!

For this project you'll need:

*A foam mattress topper or soundproof panels

*A 13 in. fabric storage bin or cardboard box

*scissors

*chalk pencil

Start by tracing the side of your storage bin on to the flat side of your mattress topper:

Tracing a 13 inch Fabric storage bin on to a foam mattress topper

Cut that out, and repeat this 3 more times. When you're done you should have 4 foam squares.

4 squares cut from a foam mattress topper to make a soundproof box

This mattress topper has been in storage for quite a while, so it was kind of dusty. Clearly trying to vacuum it wasn't the best choice...

You probably shouldn't try to vacuum a foam mattress topper

Once your foam is cut, just place it in your storage bin like this:

Placing the foam in a DIY Portable Sound Booth

I put foam squares on 3 of the sides, and on the bottom of the storage cube. I left one side of the cube "as-is" so I'd have a flat surface for my microphone to sit on.

Using a DIY Portable sound booth with iMovie on a 2018 MacBook Pro with a Silver YouTube Play Button.

I've used a Blue Snowball iCE usb microphone for the past 4 years, and it's held up really well. I'll eventually invest in a "better" microphone, but I really like the simplicity of the Blue Snowball.

I also use an inexpensive "Pop filter". This blocks the "pop" sound when you say words with the letters "S", "P", and "B". You can always tell when someone doesn't have one of these, it was very obvious when I first started my channel!

Here is a Tik Tok I made to show the difference between recording with and without my sound booth:

You can find my Tik Tok here! (@wellermegs)

It makes a big difference, doesn't it?!

*I edited this Tik Tok on my computer in iMovie/added text in Final Cut Pro.

It just goes to show that you don't always need to spend money to improve your videos!