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Filed under: Market Served •Podcasts •Studio •Sound Treatment •

Simple Soundproofing

We work at home. Our house has two levels; downstairs is half-jokingly referred to as “the studio complex.” We’ve set up one of the spare bedrooms down there as an audio room.

Most bedrooms are boxes with parallel walls, which in turn often cause problems with resonances and echoes in a room. Fortunately, the spare bedrooms in this house have some non-parallel walls, which help break up and diffuse the pattern of echoes, which makes them less annoying. Adding more hard surfaces such as computer desks and monitors can increase the amount of diffusion, but sound is still bouncing around. The result is akin to the reverberation present in what one would call a “live small room.” As we use a microphone placed about a foot away from our head instead of a headset mic (to cut down on the distraction, and also pick up sounds such as the keystrokes and mouseclicks), it picks up some of this room sound as well.

Although I personally like a little natural reverberation when I listen to a voice - completely dead rooms sound unnatural to me - a few have “commented on” the liveliness of the room sound in the voiceovers to our training videos, so I decided to see if I could tame the bouncing soundwaves a bit. I tried a cheap, low-tech approach first, then threw a little more money and work at it. I thought it would be fun to share my results:

Original Room

The above images show our audio room without any sound treatment. In addition to the walls, monitor, and computer furniture, there are also a few other hard surfaces present (keyboards and equipment racks), which add to the room’s lively, diffuse short reverberation. I use a Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro to process our voice, which includes a “downward expander” which tamps down extraneous sounds between sentences - but as you can hear from the recording below, the room’s reverberation is still audible (you might want to use headphones for the clearest results):

Low-Tech Approach

First I tried the cheap DIY approach of draping blankets over some of the hard surfaces in the room. This has the advantages of being inexpensive, easy to apply, and keeps dust out of the gear. As you can hear below, it had a small positive effect:

Slightly Higher-Tech Approach

Next I decided to try some “real” sound treatment materials. It’s important to me that our audio studio be an aesthetically pleasing place to spend time in, so I didn’t want to load up the walls with egg crates or sculpted foam squares. After a little research, I found Auralex ProPanels: fabric-covered panels of dense fiberglass. I bought a small set of 2’x2’ and 2’x4’ panels at a cost of roughly $400 to place on sections of bare wall that faced the computer desk recording position.

Mounting on the walls was easy (and let me sing the praises of WallClaw Hammer-In Drywall Anchors - much easier to use than normal plastic drywall anchors); the impaling clips Auralex includes allow the panels to be repositioned multiple times until you get it right. Mounting on the ceiling was considerably more difficult, especially since I decided to hang the heavier 2” thick 2’x4’ panel over my head. Although I did buy a set of Auralex Cloud Mounts, I wasn’t thrilled with hanging the panel some distance below the already-low ceiling; it seemed claustrophobic. I ended up going with a set of long toggle bolts and washers.

I was honestly stunned by how effective just four panels were:

To really hear the difference, listen to this side-by-side comparison of the wooden claves being struck in the differently-treated rooms (the voice is all from the final room):

My final step was going to be changing out the window treatments from the current plastic blinds to a pair of cloth roman shades, which should help absorb rather than reflect sound. However, the Auralex panels are already so effective in deadening the room that I have more freedom to rethink the window treatments, instead focusing on absorbing light (to make the room more consistent to record video in during the day and night) rather than sound.

Anyway - I thought I’d share this recent audio adventure before I settled down and got stuck into recording another set of After Effects training videos.

(FTC disclosure: I have no relationships with any of the companies mentioned above, and the only thing I received for free was my labor.)

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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