Room Acoustics

Room acoustics play an important role in how your sounds behave in your studio. The acoustics of your tracking room paint a picture of the spatial landscape of your recordings. The problems you may encounter with a room are copious, but all can be treated to a satisfactory level. Flutter echo, low-frequency build-up, and standing waves are just a few of the problems you may encounter while attempting to optimize the sound of your tracking room and, therefore, some areas you may look at to correct.

There are two ways of approaching room treatment: (1) you can embrace the reflective properties of your room, or (2) you can attempt to limit most non-source sound waves. The home engineer will most likely not have a good-sounding live room thanks to the parallel walls and low ceilings common architecture, so they may seek to eliminate the bad acoustic properties of what they have to work with. The simplest way to do this is to purchase a room treatment kit from any professional audio retailer. However, this can become very expensive, and not everyone has the money to spend or the time to wait for these kits. Here are some other easy and cost-effective ways the project engineer can optimize his or her home studio.

• Aim directional microphones away from reflective surfaces.
• Hang comforters on the walls.
• Isolate areas with hanging drapes or other barriers (gobos).
• Carpet (or place a rug over) a hardwood or tiled floor.
• Minimize parallel surfaces and sharp corners.
• Use diffusers to break up sound waves.