Imagine this: you’ve spent a small fortune on top-tier recording equipment. You’re ready to create the next big hit, but when you listen to the playback, something sounds off. It’s as if the sound is bouncing all over the place, muddying up your mix. That’s because no matter how great your gear is, it’s only as good as the room it’s in. Here’s a simple truth: a well-treated room will always sound better, even with mid-range equipment, than a poorly treated room with high-end gear.

Doing an acoustical treatment allows you to focus on your craft without the distraction of unwanted noise. By controlling reflections, reverb, and echo, you create a clean sonic environment where your recordings can shine. It’s like building a solid foundation before you start constructing a house—you need that base to support everything else.

SOUNDPROOFING VS ACOUSTIC TREATMENTS

Before we get into the specifics, let’s talk about the difference between soundproofing and acoustic treatments. Soundproofing is all about blocking and isolating sound to keep it from leaving or entering a room. Think of it as a barrier between your studio and the outside world. If you are looking for help blocking outside noise from ruining your recordings, check out our home studio soundproofing article.

An acoustical treatment, on the other hand, is about optimizing the sound within the space. It’s about making sure what you hear is as clear and accurate as possible. That’s our focus here—getting your home studio to sound its best from the inside out.

UNDERSTANDING DIRECT AND REFLECTED SOUND

To understand why an acoustical treatment is so important, it helps to know a bit about how sound behaves in a room. When you make a sound, like strumming a guitar or singing, that sound travels in two ways: directly to your ears and indirectly by bouncing off surfaces like walls, ceilings, and floors.

• Direct Sound: This is the sound that travels straight from the source (your instrument, voice, etc.) to your ears. It’s unaffected by the room, so what you hear is pure and true.
  
• Reflected Sound: This is where things get tricky. As sound waves hit surfaces, they bounce around the room, creating echoes and reverb. The shape, size, and material of your room will determine how these reflections behave. Too many reflections, and your sound becomes muddled; too few, and your room feels dead and lifeless. One of the keys to studio acoustics is controlling first reflections.

Yes, you want to have an acoustically treated room to record in. To find out what kind of an acoustic treatment you need, the first question we ask for any recording studio project is, “What kind of recording are you doing?”. Are you recording podcasts, vocals, or a full band? The type of sound you’re dealing with will affect how you treat the space. If you have amplified sound, you need to do a more extensive treatment.

Okay, back to reality. For home studios, MOST of us either don’t have the space or simply don’t have the budget to do a professional grade studio, and that’s okay! If you’re retrofitting an existing room in your home for recording with maybe an isolated closet for a vocalist, we can help you make your home studio sound pretty darned close to the real deal, so don't hesitate to reach out for a custom acoustic treatment plan.

Now that you understand the basics, let’s talk about how to acoustically treat your home studio. We’re talking about multipurpose rooms with the live music on one side of the room and mixing on the other with (maybe) a closet-turned-vocal-booth.

For a room like this, you’ll want to treat the room much like a live room with a target reverberation time (RT60) is between 0.8s-0.9s for a balanced, natural sound. There are generally three tools in your toolkit that will give you the best sound quality: absorptive panels, diffuser panels, and bass traps. There is no one size fits all, so be sure to call us for help planning out your studio! Here is the general take to get you started:

ABSORPTIVE PANELS and CLouds

Acoustic panels are the most quintessential recording studio pieces. We have tons of acoustic panel options to choose from, and if want acoustic foam, we have a full suite of fire rated foam, too! Don't buy cheap polyurethane panels if you want them to last. They yellow over time, and they're too fragile for home studios that use the space for more than just recording.

Spread your absorption out as evenly across the room on the walls and the ceiling as possible. Many professional and home studios alike will get an acoustic cloud that is at least as big as your sound board to hang over the board to help with top-level, first reflections. If your mixer is using near field monitors, make sure to get plenty of absorption on the wall behind the speakers and the side walls at first reflections to the mixer's seat. The thicker the material the better in this case. You DON’T want to hear that coming back into the live music, or you’ll get an ugly delay effect.

DIFFUSeR PANELS

One of the most common issues in home studios is that the space feels sooo small. Mixing in diffuser panels will not only make your space sound bigger, but it will dramatically improve your sound quality. These are also excellent for controlling high frequency noises like cymbal crashes. Diffusers can be used in a variety of ways, but they're commonly placed in problem spots like on the back wall of your home studio.

BASS TRAPS

Speaking of cymbals, drummers are the worst — I can say that because I am one ;). The kick drum and most of the toms are going to give you some gnarly low frequencies to quelch. Adding bass traps into the room is going to help to keep some of that under control. Start with the back corners of the room. Drum booths are always preferred (not by the drummer but for sound control), but when you can’t help it, bass traps become even more important.

ONE MORE THING: VOCAL BOOTHS

If you have a closet that you’re using as a make-shift vocal booth, you want to get that room as dead as possible to eliminate reverb entirely. Cover the walls and ceiling with as much absorptive material as possible. If you plan to have a small instrument in there from time to time, you can opt to use diffusers to give it the feel of a bigger room without the echo to go with it. But, if it's just for vocals, diffusers aren't for you.

For more on building a vocal booth out of a closet, read this!

Creating the perfect sounding home studio doesn’t have to be a daunting task. With the right acoustical treatment, you can transform any space into a professional-grade studio. Remember, it’s not all about spending a fortune on the latest gear; it’s about making sure your room is set up to let your sound shine. We’re here to help you. Whether you’re just starting or looking to fine-tune your setup, we’ve got the expertise and materials to get your studio sounding just right.

Ready to take your home studio to the next level? Reach out to us for an acoustical analysis today, and let’s make some great music together.