Part 3 - Making the Room Sound Better   

Once you've chosen your space and accepted that the room itself is part of your recording system, the next question is obvious:

What can you actually do to make it sound better?

This is where home-studio advice can get complicated quickly.

Bass traps.

Absorption.

Diffusion.

Reflection points.

Ceiling clouds.

Room modes.

Before long, treating a spare bedroom or rehearsal room starts sounding like an acoustical engineering project.

It doesn't have to begin that way.

My approach is much simpler:

Listen to the room. Identify a problem. Change something. Listen again.

You're not trying to create an acoustically perfect room.

You're trying to create a room where musicians can hear one another clearly, microphones capture useful sounds, and recordings aren't dominated by the space they're being made in.

That's a much more achievable goal.

Start by Listening

Before buying anything, spend some time listening to your room.

And I mean actually listening.

Don't turn on the monitors.

Don't play the drums.

Don't start hanging acoustic panels.

Stand in the room and clap your hands.

Listen to what comes back.

Do you hear a short metallic or fluttering sound?

Does the clap seem unusually bright?

Does the room have a noticeable ring?

Now speak while walking around.

Stand near the walls.

Move into the corners.

Walk through the center of the room.

If you have monitors or speakers set up, play familiar music at a moderate volume and move around again.

Pay particular attention to the bass.

You may discover that the low end sounds enormous in one part of the room and surprisingly weak somewhere else.

That's useful information.

The room is already telling you what it does.

Empty Rooms Usually Sound Terrible

There's a reason an empty bedroom, basement or garage often sounds unpleasant.

Hard surfaces reflect sound.

Drywall reflects it.

Glass reflects it.

Concrete reflects it.

Wood reflects it.

The floor reflects it.

And one of the largest reflective surfaces in the room is directly over your head.

The ceiling.

Put several musicians into that environment and things get complicated very quickly.

A snare drum produces a sharp transient.

Cymbals produce enormous amounts of high-frequency energy.

Guitar amplifiers project sound into nearby walls.

Bass interacts with the dimensions of the room.

Vocals come through PA speakers and reflect back toward the microphone.

All of those sounds are interacting with the room and with one another.

The objective of acoustic treatment is to bring some of that behavior under control.

Absorption Controls Reflections

Most people begin acoustic treatment with absorption.

That makes sense.

Absorptive materials reduce reflected acoustic energy. Instead of sound striking a hard surface and bouncing strongly back into the room, some of that energy is absorbed.

The result can be immediately noticeable.

A harsh room becomes less aggressive.

Claps don't ring as much.

Vocals become clearer.

Cymbals don't seem to bounce around quite as violently.

Microphones capture more of the instrument and less unwanted room reflection.

But there's an important catch.

Not all absorption works equally at all frequencies.

This is where a lot of home studios get into trouble.

Foam Doesn't Fix Everything

Thin acoustic material tends to be much more effective at absorbing higher frequencies than lower frequencies.

That's important because the change can initially sound impressive.

Put enough thin foam around a reflective room and suddenly the room isn't as bright.

It sounds less echoey.

It sounds "dead."

So you assume the problem has been solved.

But the low-frequency problems may still be there.

Now you have a room with heavily reduced high-frequency reflections while bass frequencies continue accumulating unevenly.

That isn't necessarily a balanced room.

It's just a different room.

This is why I wouldn't recommend buying a huge package of inexpensive acoustic material and covering every available wall simply because it looks like what you've seen in photographs of studios.

Treatment should have a purpose.

Bass Is a Different Problem

Low frequencies are among the hardest things to control in a small room.

They're also among the easiest problems to hear once you know what you're listening for.

Play music containing consistent bass and walk around.

You may hear the bass increase dramatically near certain walls or corners.

Move somewhere else and the same frequencies may seem to disappear.

This is happening because low frequencies are interacting with the dimensions and boundaries of the room.

Your speakers didn't suddenly change.

The room did.

This can cause problems when recording, rehearsing and especially mixing.

Imagine sitting at your workstation in a location where a certain bass frequency is exaggerated.

You hear too much bass.

So you reduce it in the mix.

Then you listen to that mix somewhere else.

Now there's not enough bass.

You weren't necessarily making a bad mixing decision.

You were making a decision based on misleading information from the room.

That's one reason low-frequency control deserves special attention.

Why Bass Traps Are Different

My studio uses bass traps in the corners.

There's a reason they're considerably more substantial than some of the other treatment in the room.

Lower frequencies generally require thicker absorptive treatment to control effectively.

A thin piece of material attached to the wall can affect high-frequency reflections without doing very much to the frequencies produced by a kick drum or bass guitar.

Bass traps are intended to work lower in the frequency range.

Corners are common locations because low-frequency energy tends to accumulate strongly around room boundaries.

This doesn't mean you need to turn every corner into a giant acoustic structure.

It means that if your problem is bass, use treatment intended to address bass.

Don't try to solve every frequency with the same material.

Don't Forget the Ceiling

Home-studio treatment tends to focus on walls because they're directly in front of us.

The ceiling is easy to overlook.

Sound doesn't care.

The ceiling is another boundary.

And if you're recording acoustic drums, it's an important one.

I learned this particularly well in my original shed studio.

The loft left me with a ceiling slightly under seven feet high, with 2×4 beams spanning the width of the room.

Now put cymbals underneath it.

Cymbals are elevated, extremely loud sources producing a great deal of high-frequency energy.

There wasn't much distance between the cymbals and the ceiling.

My current studio has a conventional eight-foot ceiling. That's still modest compared with a purpose-built commercial drum room, but the difference is noticeable.

I also use acoustic treatment overhead in critical areas.

Above my workstation, for example, I have treatment arranged on the ceiling to help control reflections around the listening position.

If you're working in a basement or another room with a relatively low ceiling, don't automatically assume all of your treatment belongs on the walls.

Look up.

Treatment Doesn't Have to Be Ugly

Acoustic treatment is functional, but the studio is also somewhere I spend a lot of time.

I wanted both considerations reflected in the room.

Some of my wall treatment consists of groups of smaller 12×12-inch panels arranged together into larger diamond patterns.

There are bass traps in the corners.

I also use thinner decorative absorptive panels on the wall facing the computer and mixing position.

Part of those decisions is acoustic.

Part is visual.

I'm fine with that.

A home studio doesn't have to look like an acoustics laboratory.

If you're going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours in the room, you should like being there.

Just don't confuse appearance with performance.

Something isn't acoustically effective simply because it looks like studio treatment.

Choose treatment for what it does.

Then figure out how to make it work visually in your space.

Don't Kill the Room

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make once acoustic treatment starts working.

You add some absorption.

The room improves.

So you add more.

That changes the room.

So you add more.

Eventually you've covered nearly every surface.

Now you've solved your reflection problem by removing almost all of the acoustic life from the room.

That's not necessarily desirable.

Especially in a rehearsal space.

My room isn't just used for mixing.

It's where musicians play together.

I want the room controlled, but I don't want it to feel like we're rehearsing inside a winter coat.

A completely reflective room can be harsh and chaotic.

A completely dead room can feel unnatural.

The useful place is somewhere between those extremes.

Control the room. Don't eliminate it.

Acoustic Treatment Can Help the Band Hear Better

Room treatment isn't only about improving recordings.

It can improve rehearsals.

Consider the typical volume battle.

The drummer plays.

The guitarist can't hear clearly, so the amplifier gets louder.

Now the bass player wants more volume.

The vocalist can't hear the PA.

The PA gets louder.

The drummer responds to the increased energy and starts playing harder.

Soon everyone is louder, but nobody is necessarily hearing more clearly.

An overly reflective room contributes to that problem.

There is so much acoustic energy moving around that clarity begins disappearing.

Treatment won't make acoustic drums quiet.

It won't turn down a guitar amplifier.

And it won't prevent musicians from turning their equipment up unnecessarily.

But reducing excessive reflected energy can make the room easier to hear in.

Sometimes musicians don't need something louder.

They need it clearer.

Move Things Before Buying Things

Acoustic treatment isn't the only way to change what you're hearing.

Move the sound source.

A bass cabinet sitting in a corner may produce considerably more low-frequency energy than the same cabinet positioned somewhere else.

A guitar amplifier pointed directly across the room may interact differently when it's turned slightly.

A drum kit may sound noticeably different when moved relative to walls and corners.

Even microphone positions can change dramatically with relatively small movements.

This is free acoustic treatment.

Before buying something, experiment.

Move the amplifier.

Listen.

Move it again.

Listen.

Move the microphone.

Record.

Compare.

There are situations where twelve inches can make more difference than another plugin.

Your Microphones Hear the Room Too

One of the biggest benefits of controlling the room is that you gain more control over what gets recorded.

Imagine recording a vocal in a small reflective room.

The microphone captures the singer.

But it also captures sound reflecting from the walls and ceiling.

Those reflections become part of the recording.

You can always add reverb to a relatively dry vocal later.

Removing unpleasant room reflections that have already been recorded is considerably harder.

The same principle applies to acoustic guitar.

Drums.

Guitar amplifiers.

Percussion.

Any microphone placed in the room captures some combination of the direct source and the environment around it.

Treatment helps make that environment more predictable.

You aren't necessarily trying to remove the room from the recording.

You're trying to stop the room from making the decision for you.

Rehearsal Is a Great Acoustic Test

One advantage of using the same room every week is that you don't need to solve everything in one afternoon.

Record rehearsals.

Listen afterward.

Maybe you move the bass cabinet this week.

Next week you notice the rehearsal recording has better low-frequency definition.

That's useful.

Perhaps you change something above or behind the drum kit.

Later you notice the cymbals sound less aggressive.

Useful again.

Move a guitar amplifier and discover there's less guitar entering the drum microphones.

Another lesson.

Over time, these observations accumulate.

You begin building a mental map of the room.

That's much more useful than copying somebody else's acoustic-treatment layout.

Their room isn't your room.

Change One Thing at a Time

This is a simple rule, but it's important.

If you move the speakers, add four acoustic panels, reposition the bass cabinet, change the drum overheads and install bass traps all at once, then the room sounds better, what fixed it?

You don't really know.

Change one thing.

Listen.

Record if possible.

Compare.

Then make another change.

This takes longer, but you're doing more than improving the room.

You're learning why it improved.

That knowledge becomes useful later when something changes.

Maybe a different band rehearses there.

Maybe you add another amplifier.

Maybe you change your drum kit.

Maybe the workstation moves.

A room isn't a static object.

The things inside it affect the acoustics too.

Don't Tune the Room Forever

There is another side to all of this.

You can become obsessed with acoustics.

Move something six inches.

Listen.

Move it another six inches.

Listen.

Add a panel.

Remove a panel.

Measure.

Move.

Listen.

Measure again.

Eventually you've spent an entire Saturday improving a room that nobody has played music in.

At some point, good enough is good enough.

My studio isn't acoustically perfect.

I don't expect it to be.

It needs to work for rehearsal.

It needs to work for recording.

It needs to work for mixing.

And it needs to be somewhere musicians enjoy spending time.

Those requirements involve compromises.

That's okay.

Let the Room Teach You

The biggest advantage you have in a home studio isn't necessarily equipment.

It's familiarity.

You can work in the same room for years.

You can record the same drum kit repeatedly.

You can hear what happens when you move an amplifier.

You can compare recordings made before and after adding treatment.

You can learn which corners exaggerate the bass.

You can discover where microphones tend to work.

Eventually, the room stops being an unknown variable.

It becomes something you understand.

That's the real objective of acoustic treatment.

Not covering every wall.

Not making your home studio resemble a photograph of a commercial facility.

Not achieving some theoretical definition of perfect acoustics.

You're trying to create a predictable, controlled environment where musicians can hear one another and microphones can capture useful sound.

Listen first.

Identify the problem.

Change something.

Listen again.

And when the room starts helping the music instead of fighting it, stop treating the room and start playing in it.