Sean Sorrentino won’t ever again have to sit on a borrowed hotel luggage rack converted to a comforter-covered tent to get a good audio recording. Today, Sean, a podcaster, uses the Carry-On Vocal Booth Pro when he travels for his day job and needs to record on the road. Like many podcasters, Sean creates podcasts as a hobby. But a serious one. He and his friend, Adam, are the show hosts and five friends contribute to it. They have podcasted weekly for more than 85 weeks on topics that appeal to people who are interested in firearms.

Before he bought the Carry-On Vocal Booth Pro, and when he was not on the road, Sean recorded in a 10 x 11-foot office he shared with his wife, who was often relegated to sit on the sofa to work on her computer. He was fortunate, he says, because there are lots of books lining the office walls, so there was “accidental” decent audio quality.  

None of the podcast team live near one another, yet they all submit audio to Sean, who edits it and puts it together for the show. They all provide him with varying audio quality. After all, as hobbyists, they’re not often inclined to make large investments on expensive professional equipment. In addition, some contributors were “recording in places that were just not conducive to good audio quality,” he says.

Erin, for instance, records a segment on blue collar prepping, seeking the most cost-effective way to perform essential tasks.  She’s also the current worst offender in the bad audio sweepstakes, Sean says with a hint of sarcasm. When she recorded her portions of the podcast, her house, filled with two dogs and two parents who like to watch television with the volume turned up, didn’t cut it. So she went to the office of a nearby church to record. Here, she would “build a little fort out of blankets” —clearly a widespread jerry-rig solution in the industry—to help improve the audio quality. But even with that invention, there was a terrible echo. Sean was trying to figure out how to get Erin out from under the blankets and get good audio from her, too. It was clear they didn’t have $5,000 for an audio booth. And since all the seven people on the podcast live far from one another, they wouldn’t be recording in a central location, anyway, so they’d need multiple expensive pieces of equipment to do it properly.

Sean, who’s buying a new house, stumbled upon VocalBoothToGo when searching for solutions for his new house that would allow him to soundproof the walls without having to use the space for books. He looked at several products, including the tracking booth. He sent a link to Erin and she posted it on Facebook, noting it would be a great gift for her upcoming birthday. A week later, her fans and friends had raised the money for the Pro model, which comes with the microphone stand and another stand that allows her to put her computer tablet with show notes nearby (the podcast is heavily scripted). Once Erin received the Pro, she watched a video on how it works. They’re still tinkering with where she should stand to get the best audio without getting bounce off the back wall or too much noise from the room in which she’s set up.

Once she shared the audio she’d recorded in the Pro, people said they hadn’t noticed the echo she’d had until it was gone.  Sean, however, had noticed it. He listens to every piece of audio at least four times. With the Pro, Sean jokes, it didn’t sound like Erin was recording in a cave in Tora Bora.

When Sean witnessed the audio improvements Erin experienced with the Pro, he brought himself one immediately.

Sean believes the Pro’s portability make it very useful for podcasters who travel, especially at large events where podcasters may be competing for quiet in a large media room, like he, Adam and Erin had to do while sharing a single microphone at a large show last year. He believes in it so much, in fact, the show focused its Plug of the Week on the Carry-On Vocal Booth Pro (http://vocalboothtogo.com/product/carry-on-vocal-booth-pro-6/) and Erin offered a review and a thank you to those who helped her acquire the Pro (http://lurkingrhythmically.blogspot.com/2016/03/vocal-booth-pro-to-go-thank-you-and.html).