Recommendations for treating room for vocal recording

[MarcAaron]

I started voice lessons not too long ago and have been recording my singing in my small home studio. There are some problems in my recordings that are obviously due to sounds bouncing off the walls, ceiling, windows, etc. So I've ordered a set of Auralex tiles and would appreciate some advice on how to best set them up.

I'll have 32 1x1 foot tiles. The apartment is kind of small, maybe 400 sq feet or so, but still I can't afford to cover all the surfaces. So the 2 common configurations I've seen when Googling this are either:

(1) make some type of shield behind the mic stand that extends out some distance to the left and the right but is open to above, behind, etc.

or

(2) put together my own little acoustic foam "telephone booth" with 4 walls, maybe even a ceiling.

The mic itself is in a shock mount so I'm assuming the normal pitter-patter of my feet on the carpet won't be a big issue either way. Option 2 would be a bit of a tight squeeze, but sounds like it would offer the best protection from stray sounds -- or would the tight squeeze be so close it would introduce problems of its own?

[3phase]

do yourself a lottle booth but have some additional treating of the whole room.. especially in areas that can reflect into the booth..which dont needs to be really airtight..so seeling above the booth it it dont has an own one.. .. sme ornaments with the tiles on posite walls.. not too much..you dont want to make the room dead..just prevent shatter echos..

you can place the tiles diagonaly and have the connecting only at the corners so you get some kind of one tile, space..one tile, space config...

[MarcAaron]

Thank you for the reply and the nice diagram to go with it! This is interesting info and is helping me learn, as I had assumed I should try to make the room as acoustically dead as possible. I'm rethinking this now... I suppose if there are some good things going on in the room (like that nice reverb I get singing in the shower) it makes sense that I shouldn't be seeking to squash them.

I think that in this particular apartment I am fighting the results of cheap, inexpensive construction techniques. We apparently have 2" aluminum spacers at 2 foot intervals (or more) separating one drywall panel from that on the other side, with no insulation in between. The entire apartment is like a huge bass cabinet. My acoustic tile kit is supposed to arrive via UPS tomorrow so I'll finally get the chance to experiment.