If you need to record dry‑sounding vocals in a less than ideal room, GIK’s generously sized portable booth could be just the ticket.

As a studio owner with intermediate DIY skills, I’ve built dozens of acoustic panels, and have reached the point where they look quite good, if I do say so myself. To get to that stage, however, has required a fair bit of trial and error and, most importantly, many hours of my precious time. For those who don’t have the time or inclination, off‑the‑shelf products may be a better fit, and GIK Acoustics have established themselves as arguably the most prominent alternative source of acoustic treatment to studio professionals and home recordists. As well as taking away the hassle and providing a better‑looking result, their products have been objectively tested to measure their performance, so you can ensure you’re using the right tools for the job.

This review focuses on the latest addition to GIK’s range of portable vocal booths, which is intended as a complete solution for recordists wanting a professional‑sounding recording environment that can be moved or repurposed with ease. The PIB Pack is essentially two of GIK’s Portable Isolation Booths, supplied with sturdy clips and fixings to enable them to be clipped together to form a small rectangular booth, plus a panel that sits on top. Altogether, this forms a fairly solid freestanding structure, the interior of which provides a controlled acoustic space.

Who would benefit from such a product? For a studio owner like myself, the PIB offers the ability to create a controlled area within a larger live room for dry‑sounding vocal or instrument recording, which can easily be packed away or transported to a different space. For home recordists, voiceover artists, podcasters and others not working in a studio environment, the potential is more dramatic. Whilst the PIB Pack won’t eliminate extraneous noise such as traffic or housemates, you should benefit from a substantially more controlled sound entering your microphone, thanks to the elimination of unwanted room reflections.

Putting It All Together

The PIB Pack comes in three large, well‑packaged boxes that, whilst cumbersome, ensure your panels will survive the worst that courier services can throw at them. The two bifold screens that make up the booth are a breeze to move if you have a willing assistant, but they are quite weighty if you’re on your own, and I think a sturdy carry handle on each section might have been a good addition. Once you have them in the right vicinity, it’s just a case of unfolding the panels, moving them into position and clicking the fastener in place on the top of the two screens. Once you’ve fine‑tuned the placement of the booth, the roof panel adds the last bit of stability and creates a more enclosed acoustic space. My only minor niggle here was that due to the positioning of the clips on the side of the panels, you can’t completely butt the two screens together for a flush connection. This isn’t going to affect the performance, but it felt a little frustrating from an aesthetic perspective. Once unpacked, I was able to assemble the booth for the first time in a little under two minutes.

The acoustic panels that make up the PIB Pack are wrapped in crisp and professional fashion, but the element that really elevates it beyond the DIY sphere is the addition of the decorative scatter panels on the rear of the booth. My review model had the ‘Gatsby’‑style panels, which gave it the air of a kind of Gothic‑looking wardrobe — it looks really nice — and with plenty of aesthetic options to choose from, you should be able to achieve that blend of art and function that good acoustic treatment can deliver. Another thing I like is that the booth is nice and tall. I’m six foot five, and I can stand in the booth without feeling the urge to stoop. Once assembled, the booth is 112cm wide, 54cm deep and 200cm tall, which is plenty for vocal and voice recording and would also allow an acoustic guitar or similar to be recorded.

It’s a very dry, dead‑sounding space, but impressively, it still feels tonally balanced and not suffocating.

Dry Goods

Even in my treated live room at my studio, the PIB booth presented a noticeably different acoustic. It’s a very dry, dead‑sounding space, but impressively, it still feels tonally balanced and not suffocating. I used it on a few sung vocal sessions where it worked very well indeed, helping me capture a ‘blank canvas’ vocal recording ready to be mixed into the track to taste. I also used the PIB Pack for a spoken‑word recording session, for which it delivered that dry voiceover sound with ease, whilst also adding a more professional aesthetic to proceedings. The two parts that make up the full booth can also be used individually, and I think this could be especially useful for instrumental recording, or for podcast producers who need to work with two speakers in an untreated space. They could also be placed either side of your speakers, to reduce first reflections in a makeshift control room.

In my studio’s treated live room, the PIB proved effective as a means of creating a dry acoustic sub‑space that can be moved or packed away with ease. In a standard home setting where there is no acoustic treatment, I think it would offer a more obvious improvement to vocal recordings, and would make more of a difference than upgrading other parts of the recording chain. You would want to bear in mind the considerable space it takes up if you’re thinking about having it in your home, but the range of decorative options means you can make an aesthetic statement as well as a practical one. For more serious home recordists, content creators, or podcasters looking to up their game, this could be a sound investment.