Podcasting Q&A
On Podcasting Q&A, you'll hear the best tips and strategies to launch and grow your podcast with confidence. Whether it's getting more podcast listeners, promoting your podcast on social media, or how to produce high-quality episodes in your editing software, Podcasting Q&A has everything you need to succeed. New episodes come out every Monday.
Podcasting Q&A
Creating Studio-Quality Sound at Home
You can record studio-quality podcast audio from your home without professional equipment. This episode shares practical tips for eliminating reverb and creating an optimal recording environment.
- Check out this article at Aqousticfreq.com for DIY acoustic panels that can be made with mineral wool or fiberglass wrapped in breathable fabric.
- You can find all of the links to the soundproofing materials we use for our Buzzsprout Studio in this blog post!
- Buzzsprout's Magic Mastering can help enhance recordings in less-than-ideal conditions, check out this episode of Podcasting Q&A for more details, Level Up Your Audio with Magic Mastering.
If you have questions about setting up your home recording space, email us at support@buzzsprout.com.
Have a topic or question we should address on a future episode? Text us or email the Buzzsprout Podcaster Success Team at support@buzzsprout.com
Keep podcasting!
Welcome to Podcasting Q&A brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, cara Passetti, and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence. Today we're answering the question how can I have studio quality audio from home without a professional recording space? I want to encourage you. It is absolutely possible to record a great sounding podcast from your home. Many podcasters do it. It takes a little bit of work up front, but I'm going to go through some tips in this episode to help you get set up, and I'm going to explain one of the telling signs that will allow your listeners to know you are not in a studio and how to avoid it.
Cara Pacetti:One of the most apparent indicators of a subpar podcast is a roomy, reverberant sound. This effect is called reverb. So I want to start off. What's reverb? Simply put, reverb is a sound reflecting off of a surface. Think about those old cartoons when you see a character walk into the Grand Canyon and they scream hello, hello, hello. That is reverb, also known as an echo. What's fascinating about the way our brains work is when your brain hears reverb and they hear that tail end of what you're saying, dragging on and on. It actually tells us how big of a space you are speaking in. So the brain hears the echo and recognizes oh, that is a very large empty void. While that is a fascinating brain fact, that is not great for podcasting, so reverb has got to go. So now that we know what reverb is and why it matters, let's talk about how we can prevent it.
Cara Pacetti:First, you'll need to select a room inside of your home that is fairly small. Larger rooms tend to allow for noise to travel and you guessed it bounce off of the surfaces inside of the room, creating that reverberant sound. Think about it this way If you walked into an empty auditorium and recorded your podcast, it would sound very echoey and hollow and your listeners would recognize that you are in a large space. Some of the best rooms to record in inside of your home would be a home office, maybe a smaller spare bedroom. So we want to avoid kitchens, living rooms, anything that is hard to sound, treat and is a very open and large space. Okay, hear me out, this might sound crazy, but another great option for a recording space inside of your home is actually your closet. A closet is a great space because they tend to be fairly small and typically there is a lot of soft surfaces within a closet. You want to make sure it's not an empty closet because if it is, those hard walls will allow the sound to travel and you will almost sound boxed in, so kind of the opposite of that big auditorium feel. So choose a closet that's packed with clothes, snug yourself in there, set up your mic and your headphones and get to work. Pro tip on this if you decide to record inside of your closet, we recommend it being a solo podcast and an audio-only podcast. It might look a little weird if you're trying to fit your guest inside of a small closet and the backdrop might not be the best for video.
Cara Pacetti:Once you've selected the room you want to record in, the next step is to make sure that room is sound treated. I mentioned in the closet that it's helpful if there's clothes hanging in there, because the soft surfaces help to deaden the sound and cancel out that reverberant noise that we're trying to avoid. Think of it this way when absorptive material is placed between a sound source and a reflective surface like a wall or hard flooring, the sound has to travel through that material, bounce off of the hard surface and travel back through the material in order to make it back to your microphone. So that's what I mean by we are deadening the sound so as soon as it enters your mic, that's where it stops. We don't want it bouncing all over the walls and then bouncing back into your microphone. When listeners are hearing a crisp, cut sound, it's a much better listening experience and your listeners are likely to stay for the entirety of your episode because it's just easy to listen to.
Cara Pacetti:The best solution for treating an untreated recording space is honestly to fill it with stuff. Start with the stuff that you have around the house. If you have a full bookshelf, if you have furniture, maybe a rug, make sure you add blackout curtains. All of those soft surfaces will help prevent that sound from bouncing back into your microphone. So if you need to take a tip from your kiddos on creating a pillow fort, this is actually where it will really come in handy for setting up your recording studio. If you want to take it a step further and actually create your own acoustic paneling, you can frame fiberglass or mineral wood and wrap it in a breathable fabric. We've seen recommendations of making the size about four by two foot and making sure that the mineral wood or the fiberglass is two inches thick, and then you would put these panels on your wall and again, that will help to absorb that sound. Acousticfreakcom has a great article that actually teaches you how to build your own acoustic panels. If you are interested in that, I'm going to go ahead and link their article in the show notes.
Cara Pacetti:If what you're working with at home still isn't providing your ideal audio quality and you're just not in the mood or have the time to do a DIY project to create your own, I have some recommendations for a more professional soundproofing option. These include bass traps, pyramid acoustic foam, blackout curtains, and these can range anywhere from about $60 upwards of $200, depending on how big your space is and how much paneling you will need to treat your entire recording space. We actually use bass traps and pyramid acoustic foam pieces in our recording studio at Buzzsprout. I'm going to link those below. These soundproofing options can be found on Amazon, so they should be really easy to grab when you're ready. So now that you've found the perfect room to record in, you have filled it with all of your stuff in order to treat it for the best audio possible.
Cara Pacetti:There's one more thing I want you to consider. You will want to make sure the recording studio you've decided to use has the ability to be undisturbed for the duration of your recording. Along with treating your room, it's also important to reduce interruptions during your recording sessions. This means you will need to schedule your recording times to avoid interferences. Take into consideration, if you are recording from a front room with a window and the lawn service is scheduled to come at 10 am, you want to make sure that either it is treated enough where you can't hear that outside noise, or that you make your schedule fit around interruptions that could be heard by your listeners. You'll also want to make sure that the door can be locked or that you can put up a sign that says do not disturb recording in process, so that your family members know hey, we can't go in there right now. There's recording going on and you want to avoid interruption. If you are doing a remote recording with a guest, you also can share some of these tips with them. If you get on the video call and you can hear the echo in their sound, or maybe you see that they're in a big, wide, open room say, hey, can you jump off and go log back on from within your closet. That might really help help. They may look at you like you're crazy, but they may be really grateful in the end that their audio quality is matching your level and that you guys both sound super professional.
Cara Pacetti:In our last episode of Podcasting Q&A, we mentioned a feature that we offer here at Buzzsprout called Magic Mastering. If you are in a pinch and you are recording from somewhere that just isn't an ideal studio setup, I recommend giving Magic Mastering a try. I'll link to that episode in the show notes and you can hear a little bit more about how that works. But try to get your recording space as ready as possible and then let us help you with the rest of it by running Magic Mastering on your next upload. I want this episode to encourage you to go ahead and set up that recording space.
Cara Pacetti:Don't let the idea that, since you don't have a professional studio to go to, that you can't start your podcast. Like I said in the beginning, you absolutely can. You can record an amazing sounding podcast right from your home, and the more work you do in the beginning to set up a great space, the less work you'll have to do in post, and so it will help to reduce the editing. Go ahead and get that studio set up and then you will be good to go.
Cara Pacetti:If you have any questions about setting up a home recording space and you just want to get our opinion or maybe our recommendation with your specific situation, please reach out to the Podcaster Success Team. You can email us at support at buzzsproutcom and we'd be happy to help you and offer ideas or solutions to get you set up with a great studio so that you can go ahead and start recording your episodes. If you have any questions about your podcast or podcasting in general, click the send us a text link in the show notes. I'd love to feature your question on a future podcasting Q&A episode. Thank you so much for tuning in today and be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week. Have a great week and, as always, keep podcasting.
