Draw a floor plan. Plot a suitable location for the microphone, mixing console and playback area. The microphone booth must be in the quietest part of the room, away from air conditioning fans, windows and creaky floorboards. Place your speakers approximately 2 meters apart on the work desk shelf and place the mixing console in the center on the main part of the desk. This enables you to accurately assess the stereo playback without moving from your position at the desk.
Treat the walls to minimize sound reflection. Tiled or papered walls can be reflective, especially if the room is perfectly rectangular. Cut egg boxes in half with a pair of scissors so that the lid and base are separated. Glue or Blu-Tack the egg box parts to your wall. The uneven surface of the egg boxes absorbs and reduces sound reflection. If you don’t have enough egg boxes to cover the walls, use foam squares. Cut them so that they are uneven sizes and fasten them to the wall.
Build an isolation booth. Place two clothing rails at right angles to each other, facing the wall to create an isosceles triangle-shaped “den.” Adjust the clothing rails so that they are as high as possible and drape old sheets over them to cover the top and sides. Fasten the sheets on with clothes pegs. While this improvised booth won’t be completely isolated, it will partially protect the microphone from outside noise and isolate the sound that is made inside.
Connect your mixer, amplifier and microphone. Place a microphone stand in the corner of the “den” where the clothing rails meet. Fasten the microphone to the microphone stand cable and connect an XLR cable to the base of the microphone. Feed the cable under the clothes rail and run it along the floor to connect it to the XLR input on your audio interface.
Connect your audio interface data port to your computer. The type of cable required is determined by the make and model of your computer. Older machines typically use USB cables, new machines typically use Firewire cables. Connect your audio interface audio sockets to the amplifier with a pair of 1/4-inch instrument cables. Plug the speaker cables into the RCA sockets in the back of the amplifier.