tips to Upgrade your home music studio

When setting up a home recording studio, one of the key factors to consider is the acoustic design. Efficient acoustics can help to minimize unwanted noise, reverberation, and echoes, and create a clean and clear sound that is essential for producing high-quality recordings. In this post, we will discuss the key considerations for acoustic design when setting up a home recording studio.

Let's start with the basics first, since we all have neighbors...

Soundproofing aka Noise Isolation

an essential component of a home recording studio design. The goal of soundproofing is to prevent external sounds from entering the recording space and to avoid disturbing others in the house or apartment.

High and mid Frequency range Soundproofing can be achieved by using high quality rubber sealant strips for all doors or fenestrations in the room. Double flush openings are more complicated to treat with seal strips and hence single flush doors/windows are much more preferable.

Low frequency isolation is generally harder to achieve, specially catering to structurally transmitted vibrations such as the sound of hammering on the floor above or in an adjacent room. This can be mitigated by creating floating shell (room inside a room) using elastomeric rubber and solid plasterboard layers for buffering from the main structure. Such treatments are cost intensive and eat up volume of the room causing reduced dimensions of the final usable space. It's important to note that floating shell needs to be uniformly created for all walls, ceiling and floor. A weaker buffer in any part of such a shell, or a missing floating wall can lead to noise leakages from that particular surface.

Tracking and Monitoring Spaces

When it comes to tracking and monitoring, they'd ideally be in two separate spaces since monitoring speakers can't be used during the tracking sessions. A common solution around this is the use of headphones which can be limiting in terms of having a good mix with all the attention to detailing played on a loud enough SPL. The kind of tracking, if it's drums, guitar, vocals, etc. requires different kind of acoustic tonality of the space. For example drums require a large room or rather decent liveness and brightness from the space, achievable through the use of diffusers while maintaining a balance Reverberation time for the space overall. On the other hand, mostly vocals require a dead sounding space with a very low Reverberation time.

Room Size and Shape

The size and shape of the room are important considerations when designing the acoustics of a home recording studio. A room that is too small may cause a build-up of low-frequency sound waves, while a room that is too large may result in excessive echoes and reverberation. A rectangular room is generally considered the best shape for recording studios, as it provides a balanced distribution of sound waves and allows for optimal placement of acoustic treatment.

It is ideal to avoid curved walls or ceiling as much as possible as they lead to convergence of sound waves causing unwanted resonances in the space. Although the curves bumping inwards the rooms are great as they act as diffusers instead.

Layout and Orientation

The Positioning of Monitoring and listening position should be considered along the central axis that joins the listening position and the center of distance between the Left and Right speaker. The room shape, spacing, acoustics and geometry should be symmetrical on either sides of the central axis with minimal early reflections arriving from closest boundaries such as a front wall behind Nearfield monitoring, and the side walls.

The rear of the room should be as absorbing so as to have minimal to nil reflections arriving back at the listening position. This is generally done with a combination of diffusers, broadband absorbers, bass traps or architectural features that emulate similar acoustic attributes.

Acoustic Treatment

Acoustic treatment is a critical component of a home recording studio. The goal of acoustic treatment is to mitigate unwanted sounds and echoes, creating a clean and clear sound at the listening position. The treatment and it's position should ensure broadband absorption such that there's no coloration, such as the comb filtering effect due to early reflections arriving at the listening position in addition to the original signal. The most common materials used for acoustic treatment are open cell foam absorber panels, diffusers, and bass traps. Glazing act as good bass absorber as they let the lower frequencies pass through.

Only issue is that they reflect High frequencies, so its best to avoid placing the monitoring such that we get first reflections at the mix/engineer position.

Foam panels (having open cell structure) are used to absorb high-frequency sounds and are typically placed on the walls and ceiling of the room primarily at the points of first reflections. Diffusers are used to scatter sound waves, creating a more natural and pleasant sound. Bass traps are used to absorb low-frequency sound waves and are typically placed in the rear and the corners of the room. A commonly referred unit for absorption values on acoustic materials is NRC value, which is a weighted average of absorption at only four frequencies (250, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 Hertz). Materials with the same NRC rating can sound very different. It's always important to refer to the entire absorption curve of any material to understand better how the material performs considering it's fixing situation (for example a specific air gap behind the material in the testing condition).

Room Layout and Equipment Placement

The layout of the room and the placement of equipment can also have a significant impact on the acoustics of a home recording studio. The goal is to create a balanced distribution of sound waves throughout the room, which can be achieved by placing the speakers and other equipment in the optimal position.

The speakers should be placed at an equal distance from the walls and ceiling, and at an equal distance from the listener. This helps avoid Haas effect wherein the perceived direction of origin will be dictated almost entirely by the sound that arrives first.

The monitoring may be either baffle/wall mounted which is ideal for improved low frequency efficiency and reduced diffractions, transient response and imaging. This is also called as a Farfield setup.

The other option, which is also the mostly opted option due to lack of space, is a nearfield setup wherein the monitoring is free standing or sitting on the mix desk. It has its compromises but works well for lack of large enough space.

It's important to note for both Nearfield and Farfield monitoring, the console/workstation desk should be as acoustically transparent as possible. A solid counter on the desk can add first reflections causing coloration to the mix, and can be avoided by perforating the desk as much as possible, and covering the top with fabric, leather or rexene. The computer and other equipment should be placed away from the speakers (maintaining a clear line of sight) to avoid unwanted noise and interference.

Air-conditioning and Ventilation

Due to lack of space, the best option for cooling systems becomes split AC units with an indoor and an outdoor unit. While traditionally highly silent ducted AC systems are used for professional studios (conforming to Low Noise criterion such as NC15-20), a low noise Split AC unit cuts it for a home studio on the compromise of sometimes having to turn off the Ac during tracking. For positioning the unit inside the room, it's recommended to avoid throwing cold air above the monitoring system as it affects imaging, or above the listening position as it can cause discomfort for long durations.

Test and Adjust

Once the acoustic design of the monitoring space is complete, it's essential to test and adjust the setup to ensure optimal performance. This is where final calibration comes in where one may plot frequency response graphs, waterfall, decay times and impulse response to analyse what may need to corrected, i.e. added or modified in the acoustical design of the space.

For a Control Room environment, its recommended to achieve a balanced RT curve between 0.3-0.4 seconds.

Summing up ..

Acoustic design is a critical factor to consider when setting up a home recording studio. The size and shape of the room, acoustic treatment, soundproofing, room layout, and equipment placement are all essential components of a successful acoustic design.

With proper planning and implementation, it's possible to create a home recording studio that produces high-quality recordings with clean and clear sound, which may not even need to be taken to a professional studio for final mixing and mastering.