Room modifications to reduce reverb in your podcast
Guest post
There is a tendency among hobbyist podcasters to focus more on their recording equipment rather than their room acoustics when trying to improve the audio quality of their podcast.
One of the biggest differentiators between an amateur and professional sounding podcast is reverb - namely the echoing of a speaker's voice that causes a recording to lose its crisp feel.
There are several ways that you can “acoustically treat” a room in order to reduce the amount of reverb that makes it onto a podcast recording. Here we will run through exactly how to do this in as effective and affordable a way as possible.
Diagnosing the cause of reduced audio quality
Acoustically treating your recording room will only eliminate reverb. As reverb is just one of many possible causes of reduced quality of audio recordings, before you put time and/or money into acoustic treatment you should first ascertain whether it is indeed reverb that is muddying your podcast recordings.
To do this, it helps to have a quick understanding of what reverb is. Reverb is caused when echoes from your recording are picked up by your microphone. The consequence of this is that the words that you speak are “aurally surrounded” by this echo, therefore losing its crispness.
A good rule of thumb to test whether your lack of audio quality is due to reverb is to ask yourself whether the unwanted ambient noise in your podcast follows the intonation of your voice. You can test this by speaking in a way where the tone of your voice gradually changes from high to low. If the unwanted noise follows this pattern, then it's likely that reverb is the cause of this.
If the unwanted ambient noise stays the does not follow the pitch and tone of your voice changes, then it likely comes from a source other than reverb and the types of treatment that we recommend here will likely not improve the audio quality of your podcast.
Reducing echoes by softening the surfaces in front of you
Much like with light, sound reflects more off harder, smoother surfaces than softer ones.
As reverb is caused by the reflection of sound waves off external objects, you want to focus on prioritising the softening of surfaces directly in front of where you speak.
The first way to do this is to make sure that you are not talking directly at a hard surface. This includes walls, windows and monitors.
Ways that you can do this include:
If you are sitting at a desk in front of a wall, try to wedge some pillows, a mattress, or a pile of clothes between your face and the wall in front of you.
If you are sitting in front of a monitor, then drape a blanket over it. The thicker the blanket the better
If you are sitting in front of a window then recording then close the curtains or blinds.
Try to avoid sitting directly in front of a window without curtains as glass is one of the most sound reflective surfaces.
Blocking corners of the room
The corners of a room are one of the areas where the most amount of reverb occurs. This is because soundwaves are able to bounce off three planes (either two adjacent walls and the floor or the ceiling) in quick succession.
You therefore want to try and place physical barriers between yourself and the corners of a room. Basic furniture such as chairs, bean bags and bins can work well here. You want to make it so you cant see the bottom corners of the room where you are sitting i
Your sitting position is important here too. Ideally you want to be sitting in the middle of your room, as far away from each corner of the room as possible.
Getting the best value out of acoustic treatment equipment
If softening the surfaces directly in front of you, and blocking out the corners of the room does not reduce reverberation to an acceptable level, you might want to consider purchasing acoustic treating equipment.
Acoustically treating a room to the level that you would find in a recording studio is both expensive and overkill for most projects. Instead you want to treat the parts of the room that contribute the most to creating reverb. Again, these are:
The area directly in front of where you speak
The corners of the room
The area directly behind where you speak
You will get diminishing returns as you treat the more adjacent the areas are to where you are speaking (corners notwithstanding).
Given this order of priorities, the most important equipment that you should buy to acoustically treat a room are:
A microphone isolation shield. This will absorb noise behind the microphone
Corner bass traps. This will eliminate the echoing in corners of the rooms. Prioritize the corners closest to where you are sitting.
Acoustic panels. These are mounted on walls and are usually sold in two foot by four foot squares. Prioritise insulating the walls directly behind your head when you record and work outwards from there.
About the Author
Volodymyr Barabakh is the Project Director of residential design and build company Fortress Home. For more information please visit: https://fortresshome.com