Kaotica Eyeball
I first learned about the Kaotica Eyeball from a video by Hip Hop Artist Ruslan. In the video he mentioned using it to record vocals that would later appear on one of his albums. While consulting for a former employer, I took the opportunity to order one for them to record in their office. I was impressed with the quality of the acoustic foam and how well it blocked out noise. I hoped that I could use it to block out some unwanted noise from our (and our neighbor's) dogs.
I was saddened to still have the barks come through in our recording. While I thought about returning the eyeball, I decided to use the recording and I'm happy to say that it improved the quality of my audio in a few ways.
I guess I'll be keeping the eyeball. If you want to hear how it sounds, check out this episode of the PIT Show.
In that episode I removed my normal RX Plugins: - Vocal De-Noise - De-Reverb - De Plosive
This retained some of the natural quality in the recording. While I don't think many people would notice a difference in quality, there is definitely a difference. But this also reduces my processing time and resources required on podcast and videos.
I am not ready to say that this is the $200 solution that every producer would need, but for those home-studio podcasters whose space is being encroached on in during the pandemic it will definitely be a help (albeit expensive) to improve audio on your track.