You must prepare your room for recording in a home studio.
Unwanted sounds are often picked up by microphones while recording in a home studio. When you record in an untreated room, the sound of outside traffic or air conditioning equipment may interfere with your raw recording. Furthermore, sounds bouncing off flat surfaces and corners will generate room resonances in an untreated room. These are simple issues to address ahead of time so you don’t waste time on tedious post-production work.
Fortunately, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to avoid these negative consequences. It’s OK if you don’t want to spend any money on acoustic treatment. It’s preferable to record in a carpeted area with soft furniture and as few harsh, flat surfaces as possible; undesired echoes are caused by hard, flat surfaces. When recording voices, at the absolute least, drape a blanket over your head.
Record in a room in the middle of your house
Recording in a room as far away from windows as possible, with all fans and air conditioners turned off, is the simplest method to minimize unwanted noise. When you’ve decided on a place to record in, try clapping loudly multiple times from different parts of the room to see whether the sound generated is more of a harsh ringing or a pleasant reverb. You may repeat this clapping test as you continue to fix your space until the room resonances sound more like what you want.
Get bass traps if you’re going to purchase anything
If you’re going to buy one piece of specialist room treatment equipment, make it a porous bass trap. This will not change the structural integrity of your building or space, but it will help to absorb bass frequencies. Be wary, though: low-cost bass traps may be constructed of the same foam as your favorite family room sofa. If you don’t want to spend the money on bass traps, you may get a similar but less dramatic effect by putting soft pillows in the corners of your room.
Unwanted echoes in the mid and high frequency ranges are absorbed by wall panels
Foam placed on flat surfaces may help to minimize undesired echos in a space. Encase your microphone with a foam shield or anything made of soft material (like a blanket fort) as a cheap alternative to buying acoustic panels, or push your mattress up against the wall.
Diffusers are great, but they’re pricey
Diffusers disperse reflections off of flat surfaces of varying heights, preventing absorptive materials from draining all the vitality out of your recording. This allows for more equal sound dispersion across the space, but they aren’t required for home studio recording, particularly if your studio is tiny and your budget is limited.
