Do you record audio in a room in your home that you use as your studio?
Most home studio recordings are problematic because of the incredibly bad acoustics of of the room, but there are things you can do to improve it.
Since getting a nice natural room sound (reverb) requires you to design the room dimensions, proportions, angles etc. that means it is out of the question unless you are building a real studio.
So your goal instead will be to reduce the echo (reverb) of your home studio, so that your recordings will be more “dry” in sound, and you can later add virtual reverb effects in your DAW.
7 ways to Reduce the Reverb of a Home Studio
- Use carpets on the floor (preferably heavy “long-haired” carpets)
- Put up heavy curtains in the window (with heavy fabric)
- Store things on book shelves (shelves disperse standing sound waves)
- More furniture means less echo
- Big plants are great both for decoration and reducing reverb
- Set up acoustic panels on the walls
- Use bass traps in the corners
As you can see I have chosen to put the “professional” expensive acoustic treatment last on this list, and I did that on purpose.
Because it is simply not enough, and all the other things put together in my experience can have even more impact on the total acoustic of your home studio.
Finally, if you want to record vocals and acoustic instruments as dry as possible (minimal room sound), you should have the microphone close to the sound source. Because the closer the microphone is, the higher the ratio will be of the direct sound vs the room sound.