As an independent content creator, the biggest problem you've probably run into is...room echo!
Yes, there are a lot of plugins for your digital editing software that claim to “fix” the acoustic problems present in your studio (or recording space) after the fact. In our experience, this method just trades one sonic deficiency for another. Typically, you remove unwanted room effects, but may add strange audio effects superimposed onto the main announcer's voice.
These tools, in our opinion, work best if you are being a perfectionist, and are removing a TINY amount of room echo from your announcer recordings.
For the absolute best results, we've found that the best approach is to minimize (if not eliminate) the problem at the source...just like the pros do!
This is the first (and most important step) to creating your signature sound.
As the room goes, so goes microphone audio
The way your room sounds ultimately determines the sound of the microphone - regardless of the type used.
The better your studio space sounds, the more freedom you will have using your microphone. You'll also have more freedom during post-production to sculpt your acoustic signature to your liking. This is because you won't also be dealing with some horrible room echo or “boominess” that made its way into your microphone at record time.
Soundproofing vs. Sound treatment - an overview.
The first thing I want to do is to explain soundproofing versus acoustic treatment. A lot of content creators conflate the two and they're definitely not the same. They’re somewhat related...but not the same!
Let’s touch a little on “Soundproofing” first.
"Soundproofing" is a method of keeping outside sounds from getting into your studio space and vice versa.
Imagine someone standing inside the recording screaming as loud as they can. If they were in a soundproofed room, you would hear hear very little of the scream outside the room. Conversely, a loud sound outside the studio will barely be heard inside.
Unless you are recording live music in your studio space, this level of “soundproofing” usually is not necessary. If it is desired, trying to make a room, say, the size of a bedroom would be costly. Some content creation (such as audio book narration) DO require a higher level of isolation from outside noises, and we’ll touch on a practical solution for that kind of application later in this article.
The most pressing acoustic issue for most of us is the acoustic characteristics of the recording space, The goal is to make the studio space as sonically neutral as possible.
In other words, you don’t want the room itself to make itself known in your recordings. This is a universal need - soundproofed or not. so let's start there.
Acoustic treatment of your recording space can be as cheap or as expensive as you make it, but there are all kinds of solutions for different budget levels. If you are clever, you can probably come up with very cheap solutions that work just as well as the more expensive options! If done right, he process of making the room acoustically “neutral” can somewhat cut back (or control) some of the outside sounds, or interference, that might make its way into your recordings. This step alone might just be good enough for your application.
What to do when you find a potential recording studio space
The first steps...Survey the space...sonically!
When I walk into a potential space for a studio, the first thing I do is to start clapping my hands. The echos and reverberations bouncing back to me after a series of claps paints a mental picture as to the kinds of echo the room creates, and what it might take to tame them.
The easiest rooms to acoustically treat are small ones. If that room has an unusual shape to it, that’s even better!
For example, the worst space for a studio is a perfectly square room….say, for example, a 10’X10’X10’ foot (3Mx3Mx3M) space. The evenly spaced parallel walls, and evenly spaced 90 degree angles that connect said walls will make this room a reverberation wonderland.
Rectangle rooms are a bit better in the sense that you might have space to alter the shape of the walls and corners of the room using acoustic treatment and paneling.
A cheap solution you may be able to take advantage of for no cost at all!
Need a quick sound treated a vocal booth? A small closet you can walk into works great! Guess what? Leaving the clothes hanging in there makes for great sound treatment! Ding! Quick, cheap, and effective!
Many national public radio announcers have been doing their news reports and programs from inside clothes closets in their homes during the pandemic, and you probably didn't even notice! They still sounded like they were in their expensive studios...unless the dog started barking.
Vocal booths work great not just for podcasts, but also for situations where vocal narration for videos, storytelling, or news reports are needed.
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How about bigger rooms?
When it comes to more complicated podcast setups, where there will be computers and sound boards and multiple microphones involved, then the closet won’t do, and you have to use an actual room. Here, formal sound treatment will be necessary to make a larger space useful as an audio content creation space.
The main issue to solve in a larger space: Room echo. Let’s take a quick look at what creates the echo in a room.
What causes echo? Any and all hard (solid) parallel surfaces , such as walls that face each other. The floor and the ceiling is another example of two parallel surfaces in a room. And one area many overlook!
Room corners (especially 90 degree ones) play a nasty role here in that sound waves collect there, and bounce back out - sometimes more amplified at certain frequencies. This might add a type of “boomy echo” to the sound of the room.
Echo...Echo...
Sound travels pretty slowly, so when recording in the middle of an empty acoustically untreated room (or recording space) your voice will not only enter the recording microphone, sound will also go past the microphone strike the wall you are facing, bounce back towards you, and strike the wall behind you, and proceed to pounce again off of the wall in front of you.
Each time a bounce occurs, the sound loses energy, and is a bit quieter than when you originally spoke. This residual energy can linger, bouncing around for a second or so...depending on the room shape. This is the essence of room echo.
This "bounce" also happens on the walls to either side of you. Sound will bounce off of those, and “ping back” at you (and your microphone)...over and over. This also happens between a hard floor surface and ceiling.
We mentioned that the 90 degree wall corner angles in a room can be particularly troublesome as they can collect sounds, and throw them into room, and also into the opposing corners of the room….which in turn will throw the sounds back into the original corners again. Wash, rince, repeat. You get the idea.
Breaking up the shape and (very importantly) the acoustic properties of these surfaces is the goal behind acoustic room treatment.
In our next article, we will address some solutions that can help you to tame the echo in your recording space!
