Welcome to the fifth and final installment of Building a Home Recording Studio. We had a budget of $1,000 in the beginning to spend of the various home recording equipment. If you want to see what we’ve spent our money on, check out the past editions of the series.
With a budget of only $1,000 we’ve had to cram as much stuff into the budget as possible. We’ve got ourselves a microphone, a USB interface as well as a pair of monitors for listening back. Assuming that we bought the AT2020 from last week’s post, we now have $370 remaining in our budget.
It’s time to spend the rest of the money on acoustic treatment and a few accessories.
Why do you need Acoustic Treatment?
Simply put, a room designed as a bedroom is not designed for audio production. It has low ceilings, parallel walls and reflective surfaces. Not the most ideal room for accurate monitoring and music mixing.
With acoustic treatment on your walls you manage to reduce the reflections bouncing off the walls, creating a more accurate listening experience.
Sound waves bounce off the walls and into your ears, so acoustic treatment helps you minimize the reflections and enabling you to hear what’s actually coming out of your monitors.
You don’t need a lot of acoustic treatment to make your room sound better. A little can go a long way. If you just reduce the primary reflections around your listening position you will hear a noticeable difference from your monitors. They will suddenly sound cleaner, and the stereo spectrum suddenly becomes clearer.
So what can we get for $370?
Ideally we want both broadband absorption, bass traps and some sort of diffusion. Luckily, we can get all that for less than $370.
Broadband Absorption - Auralex’s Roominator kits are a great option for the home studio. Their cheapest kit includes 36 acoustic panels that you can spread over your studio. Price tag: $139
Bass Traps – You can get 4 LENRD corner bass traps to add a little low-end absorption to your room. If you’re constantly dealing with muddiness in your mixes then bass traps will definitely help. They absorb the lower frequencies, allowing you to hear how much bass is actually in your mix. Price tag: $89.41
Monitors – I love the Auralex MoPads. They decouple your monitors from your stands or desk. Normally, your desk will act as an undesirable amplifier. By using the MoPads you separate the monitors from the desk, giving you a more accurate monitoring experience. Price tag: $38.99
Diffusion – Diffusion doesn’t absorb sound waves. Rather, it reduces their energy by scattering them in all directions. With diffusion, the sound waves that would normally reflect directly off the wall in their regular geometrical direction will scatter all over the place. This creates a live but controlled space. For our budget, the Auralex T’Fusor can create some diffusion in your studio. Price tag: $59
Total price tag for the beginner’s home recording studio? $326.40
Perfect. We’re still within our budget and we even have some money to spare. What you should do with the rest of the money is buy all the cables and microphone stands you need. These crucial ingredients are often overlooked when buying home recording equipment so it’s a good thing we have some money left over.
Where to place your acoustic treatment
Now that you’ve got all this acoustic treatment, where do you put it?
Bass Traps – Corner traps, not surprisingly, go in the corners of the room. Put the bass traps where all three corners of your room meet, either in the top or bottom corners. This is where bass builds up the most so this where they are most effective.
Broadband absorption – Use the mirror trick to place your absorption correctly around your monitors. Make someone run a mirror along the walls beside your monitors while you sit in the mixing position. Wherever you can see your monitors in the mirror you should place some foam panels.
This kills the primary reflections coming from the monitors and bouncing off the walls. The primary reflections are the most problematic, so by reducing them you will have instantly made your studio sound better.
Also, place the absorption panels behind your monitors as well as on the ceiling above the listening position. Placing panels behind your monitors creates a tighter stereo image and reduces reflections coming from the front wall.
Even though the sound is coming towards you when you’re listening, sound also travels behind the monitors. People tend to forget that, so it’s important to treat all the walls around them. Scatter the rest of your panels, if you have any, evenly around the room.
Diffusion – Place your diffuser at the back wall directly behind the listening position. This will scatter the sound waves that reflect off the rear wall. Now the sound waves will scatter and diffuse around the room instead of directly bouncing back towards the mixing position.
Acoustic treatment is one of the MOST important aspects of your home studio. You won’t get great recordings without it. All the gear in the world won’t make your room suck less. Understanding Your Room is a series of webinars created to teach you the ins and outs of acoustic treatment.
Conclusion
I hope you’ve enjoyed the series on building a home recording studio. For anyone starting out, the series hoped to capture everything you need to get started with making music at your house.
Buy the basics and familiarize yourself with what you’ve got; you can always upgrade your gear later down the road.
Image by: Camknows
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One Comment on "Building a Home Recording Studio Part 5 – Acoustic Treatment"
Thanks for sharing it.