92: Good Sound Part 4: Your Room

Last episode I talked about mic technique and how to set gain levels. This week I'm going to talk about how the room you're recording in might affect the quality of your sound. The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound in your room. The room you're recording in is probably only going to cause problems if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying. If you hear an echo in your recording that bothers you, figure out how to address it. Example: When I started recording podcasts back in 2013, I was recording in my “office”, which was just a small dining room with a standing desk in it. It was a small room with almost no furniture in it, so there was a fair amount of echo in my recordings. I tried to compensate for this by bringing in some big couch cushions. That helped a little, but I ended up moving my desk and recording set up to my bedroom and building some sound absorbing panels to help reduce the echo more. The ideal room for recording will be a room with quite a bit of soft stuff in it. Furniture like chairs, couches and bookshelves can all help absorb and break apart sound waves so you don't hear as much echo. This is why bedrooms can actually be ideal rooms for recordings. You've got a bed and a closet, and probably a carpet; all things that can help absorb sound. Important Things to Remember: The room you're recording in is only a problem if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying. The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound. If you hear an echo that bothers you, figure out how to address it. The solution to this is to add more soft surfaces or things to absorb some of that sound: Blankets, pillows, couch cushions, clothes from your closet, foam sound absorbing panels, carpets, etc. Just a reminder: Eliminate potential distracting background noises before you hit record. Turn off fans, AC, or heaters, and set your phone to airplane mode, put your pets in a different room, etc. It’s possible to improve sound quality a little bit with post production, but it's pretty hard to remove echo from a recording in a way that sounds natural. It’s better to fix the problems before you start recording. Finally, don't stress too much about your room. If you follow the tips I shared last week about mic technique and setting gain levels correctly for your recording, you probably sound good. Recommend Reading: How podcasts powered through the pandemic—and what comes next - Chartable Room Echo and Background Noise: Sound Proofing and Absorption for Podcasters Thanks for watching or listening to this week's episode. If you have questions, please leave a comment on my YouTube channel or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com If you like this episode, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube or leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes for free and as soon as they come out. You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com. Next week I'll be talking about why you should record an audio track for each person that's going to be on your podcast, and some easy ways to do that. Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting. Aaron