Whether you’re a podcaster, voice actor, screen actor, or musician, having a soundproof recording space in your home can always come in handy. Home studios are becoming highly popular in the modern age. However, a common problem that occurs in almost every home-based studio is noise. Fortunately, there are many ways through which you can get an acoustic treatment and enable your recording room to be free of noise.
What is an acoustic treatment?
Acoustic treatment refers to soundproofing solutions that diffuse or absorb sound to enhance the quality of a space’s acoustic. Its main goal is to make the atmosphere sound more sonically pleasant and neutral through a controlled atmosphere and predictable recording qualities. This treatment can be done by mounting diffusion or absorption devices in spaces where there is a problem of noise reflection.
How does soundproofing and acoustic treatment differ?
Acoustic treatment and soundproofing are often seen to be interchangeable terms. However, they have slightly different meanings. Acoustic treatment refers to the process of echoes and reverberation control so that the sound quality of a space can be enhanced. Soundproofing, on the flip side, involves blocking the sounds from entering or leaving a space.
What are the four primary methods of acoustic room treatment?
The four major methods of acoustic room treatment are as follows.
- Absorption: In this method, you can add absorption materials like acoustic foams, thick rugs, sound-absorbing curtains, and the like to trap sound waves.
- Damping: Damping allows you to remove a structure’s vibrational energy to prevent it from building up and emitting sound waves.
- Decoupling: It separates two structures to block the sound transmission that takes place when they come into direct contact with one another.
- Filling gaps: It prevents the sound waves from passing through easily by plugging the air gaps existing in the structure.
Using acoustic panels in the treatment process can help redirect echoes and reduce reverberations to transform the space into a high-quality-quality recording studio.
Why should you use acoustic treatment?
To achieve high-quality sound recordings, having a soundproof space is essential. Here are a few reasons why you should consider enhancing the acoustics of your recording space.
- Minimizes External Noise: Without acoustic and soundproofing elements, noise from outside can disrupt the quality of your recording. To improve the sound recording quality, using these elements is crucial.
- Minimizes Internal Noise: Apart from the noise outside, a recording session can be affected by the noises inside the room too. Whether it is the air conditioner or the recording system, the lightest of sounds can ruin your recording due to which, dampening these sounds through acoustic treatment panels is recommended.
- Minimizes Echo: A confined space like a recording studio has the potential to produce echo and this can be used through acoustic elements.
- Produces High-quality Sound: You may be producing a brilliant podcast or the most melodious song but if your recording is unclear and of low quality, nobody will want to listen to it. The recording should be of professional quality for which soundproofing your room is imperative.
How to protect your home studio from noise?
Here are some tips on how you can prevent any type of noise from entering your home studio so that you can produce a high-quality recording.
Use Acoustic Materials
Acoustic materials like acoustic foams and acoustic panels can provide a wider surface area with minimum material because they are thin. They offer better wall coverage and reduce reverberation. Home studios are prone to the emergence of issues such as low frequencies, standing waves, and the like which can affect the recording quality. Hence using acoustic materials can reduce the impact of these issues. Pro-coustix offers one of the most professional sound control solutions so you can find some of the best acoustic foams in this online store.
Build Thicker Walls
To maximize the quality of your recording studio, building thicker walls is recommended. Thick drywall has the potential to absorb more sound. For an added extra layer, you can include a ‘sheet block’ or a sound isolation barrier to the drywall’s internal portion. If you have already built the wall, you can add the sheet block outside the drywall and camouflage it with thinner drywall.
Add Acoustical Glue
When you are building walls and installing drywall, use acoustical glue. This elastic sealant featuring innovative design can dampen the noise in a room and hence, is a highly effective tool in home studio acoustic treatment. It seals the materials together effectively and absorbs bass vibrations.
Final Thoughts
Ever since the origin of sound recording, unwanted noise seeping into the sound has been a major cause of obstruction and annoyance. As a result, many solutions have been created and adopted to reduce this issue in the recording industry. Earlier, to produce a high-quality recording, a person needed to visit a professional recording studio but nowadays, various technological advancements have enabled people to build a personal recording studio in their home itself. Blocking internal and external noise and ensuring that one’s home studio can be used to produce the recordings of professional quality is still a challenge. Hence, using the tips mentioned in this guide is recommended.
You should also invest in the best acoustic treatment items. You can buy the same at Pro-coustix, an online store that boasts of a wide range of high-quality sound control products.
