Warning… all the information in this series could save you time and money.  These are the basic ‘secrets’ to having a home studio.  This information is fairly common knowledge, but some people will charge you for it.  Not me.. take it!  The ‘secrets’ I reveal in this series may not apply to your situation exactly, but will get you started on your own studio journey.

About the author:  Chris Wagner is a voice actor with 23 years of experience.  He has voiced many hundreds of commercials, and more than 600 narrations.  He started off as a production manager at a San Diego radio station for 5 years, then branched out while still Voice Acting – into selling, building and repairing computers, installing servers and software across the United States and Canada. 

Let’s get this thing started!

So, you want to record audio, most likely your voice from you home.  There has been no better time to do this, the audio equipment has come down in price, the software to actually record and edit has become easier to use and less expensive (or even free), and computers have gone down in price and up in capacity and speed.

I used to teach a class in Denver at the Denver Center Theatre Academy on setting up home studios.  This class was geared towards the new or working Voice Actor, but the information hasn’t changed and can be applied to recording Pod casts or music from a live performance as well, or recording narrations for your home videos… And here I will present you with a distilled version of that class.

The first thing you need to remember is that if you aren’t somewhat computer savvy, or have problems hooking up stereo equipment then you might look at hiring someone to come in and help you; don’t do it alone, you will just spend way more money than you need to, and you will get frustrated.  But if you have some computer experience and can hook up a stereo system with little problem then you’ll do just fine.

In this first installment of  ‘Geek Alert: Secrets to having a home studio’  I will cover the location of your studio, then in future installments; audio equipment, what you need computer wise, software, and recording when you’re out of your home, say on vacation. (But you’re on vacation aren’t you?  Why record?)

Finding a place to put your studio:

When you record, you want to get the cleanest sound you can.   You don’t want to have your recording of your voice, or musical instrument peppered with traffic noises, kids playing, the washer or dryer running in the background, etc.  You need it to sound professional, clean and crisp.

Locating where you will set up your home studio is sometimes more important than the equipment you have.  You could buy the very best microphone and audio gear and wind up having recordings that SOUND like you are recording from home, or a stadium, or a train car.  I won’t cover recording while on vacation in this segment, I’ll touch on that later.

Your location could be a spare bedroom, closet, really any space that you and your equipment can fit in… hopefully a place that has decent ventilation.  Spending hours in a closed closet recording generates lots of heat, from you as well as the equipment.

Small or large it doesn’t matter.  The room I use for my studio is about 500 sq feet.   And it is a decent ‘dead space’ for sound.

What exactly is ‘dead space’? 

‘Dead space’ means that your studio is quiet, and has little or no audio reflection.  Aside from being quiet, audio reflection is a major issue when recording.  It can make you sound like you are recording in a large cave, with lots of echo… The recording becomes thin and weak.  The good news is that reducing audio reflection (or echo) is a pretty inexpensive thing to do.

In the best case scenario, you would have a sound booth like the one pictured here. Now just because I’m using that company as an example in no way means I suggest you use them, or not use them.  They were one of the first ones that popped up in my search.  I haven’t worked with them before…  But again, something like that is best case scenario, if you’ve got the money and space.

For most everyone else, you could find a quite area in your home.  Now you need to deaden the space a bit. 

Reducing audio reflection and getting that dead space:

Stand in the middle of the room and let’s do an experiment.  Talk, do you hear an tiny echo?  Now talk louder… give it a shout!  You most likely heard some kind of echo, or maybe the room has that ‘big empty’ sound…  Even if your room doesn’t sound that way to you, most likely it will be noticeable when heard through a microphone.

Audio is just a set of sonic waves.  When you talk, yell, or make any kind of noise, you are making sound waves in the air.   Sound waves in the air are very similar to the ripples and waves in water.  Have you ever dropped a pebble into a pond?  Remember how the first ripple or wave was perfect, until it got to the edge of the pond and was reflected back into the pond and started crossing back over the original wave?  Sound works just the same way.   Now I’m being very generic here and I am not going to go into  frequencies  and how to remove every single type of reflection from your home studio.  What I am going to tell you about is; how to use the least amount of sound proofing to get the biggest gain in the quality of your recording.

The reflections come from corners and flat walls.  To reduce the reflections you can put up some audio foam sheets from Auralex.  I’ve always had good luck purchasing 2′ x 4′ sheets from Guitar Center.  If you place them on the wall starting from the corners, spacing them about 3 feet apart, on all the walls of your room you should notice a big change in the acoustic quality of the room.  You can also put a couple of sheets on your ceiling if you don’t have acoustic treatment on it.

You’re never going to get it completely silent, so don’t go wall papering your home studio with acoustic foam like I did my first time around… it’s a waste of money and time. (it took forever to take the stuff down when I moved, and I put it up with glue… I suggest push pins, keeps the stuff up without the worry of not being able to get it off easily.) If you are in a small space, use as much as makes a difference in the sound, pretty much the same as in a larger space, and yes, you can hear the difference when you talk.

The whole idea of acoustic foam is to stop the waves from bouncing all over the room.  That’s an echo, the bane of a clean recording.  And you really don’t need much acoustic foam to stop the bouncing audio waves.  You just need to put enough on the flat surfaces and corner areas to be able to break the waves up.

One thing that isn’t great at killing sound is glass from windows.  If you have double paned windows, you are already ahead of the game.  To ensure you have a good acoustic block for your windows a good choice is heavy fabric drapes.  You’ll have to experiment with it, but heavy window coverings will do a great job to deaden the room further.

Another thing you need to take into consideration is the noise that your computer makes.  Having a noisy fan in the background is a killer of a professional recording as well.  There are fans that you can purchase and put in your computer, replacing the ones that came with it, to make it silent.  There are also some computers on the market, such as the Mac-mini that have no fan at all… sweet.

There are other options that some people use temporarily, such as a thick blanket around your recording area, or the egg crate foam that you would put on your bed.  But that foam is designed to support your body, not to capture acoustic waves.  And the blankets, well, unless they are fashionable, they wind up being an eye sore and a dust collector, which is not so good for your voice.

As with anything you do, designing, or choosing a space for your home studio takes time and research.  I know a Voice Actor who turned a spare room into a studio, and put in very expensive acoustic panels all through the room.  He even covered his windows.  The room is like a bomb shelter, and the ‘booth’ he has was the bathroom that adjoined the room.  Quite creative, and the sound quality is very good.

Stay tuned for the next installation…