Building your very own recording studio at home is nothing short of a giant undertaking. After all, there isn’t a room out there that can’t be repurposed into something special, and with enough creativity, hard work and know-how, your home recording studio will be up and running in no time.
Consequently, here’s how to quickly create your own home recording studio.
Choose the Biggest Room
An obvious place to begin, but essential all the same. While you might sound at your best singing in smaller, confined spaces (i.e. the shower), the rules of the recording room are different. You need to choose the biggest room to accommodate all the things you’ll be moving in there. If the room is small and overstuffed, you’ll risk knocking things over or even potentially creating trip hazards.
After all, in this room you’ll be storing and using all your equipment and instruments, alongside making space for other people in case you want to work with others, such as engineers or supporting artists, on your projects. Remember, you’ll need microphones and their stands, speakers, computers, a mixing station, headphones, XLR cables and even things like chairs to sit on and desks for storage and work. Much of the more intricate gear you’ll need can be obtained from RS Components, helping you bring the place together. Consequently, securing yourself the most spacious area possible is a great place to begin.
Hard Floors
When converting a home room into a recording studio, every remnant of the home space needs to be disposed of. Nothing should be in there that screams ‘domestic space’, and that includes the carpets. If you keep the carpets and move all your gear in, you’ll quickly find that all the equipment being moved around will quickly ruin, rip and tear your carpet, leaving you in a mess with lots of expensive equipment on top of it all.
Before anything is moved in, remove the carpets and replace them with some wooden or concrete flooring in instead. It might seem like a mundane addition to this list, but it’s practical, as it’ll accommodate all your equipment and enable it all to be moved around effortlessly with far less fuss. Carpets also negatively affect the acoustics, so go for something hard and fast that will complement the work and busyness of the room.
Acoustic Treatment
Now it’s time to add that acoustic kind of sound that the smaller spaces afford you. It’s called acoustic treatment, and it allows you to manipulate the sound in certain places regardless of the size of the rooms, and even makes instruments and voicework seem sharper. In the end, acoustic treatment makes everything you hear sound crisper and more refined.
Acoustic panels go a long way in achieving that effect, as they absorb the sound reflections and eliminate the reverb in the room. They’re black and made of foam and can be attached to just about anything in the room but are predominantly placed on walls and sometimes doors to really box in the quality of sound produced. Consequently, this should make all your recordings sound clearer and, ultimately, more professional too.
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