With a complete acoustic treatment pack, you can quickly improve the acoustics of pretty much any space in just a few easy steps. Install a few absorber panels and bass traps to reduce sonic reflections and your recordings will immediately sound more professional. These packs can even be used to treat living spaces and meeting rooms, getting rid of echoes and improving the atmosphere as well as intelligibility.
Enhance the Acoustics of Your Home Studio with Panels
Since the rooms in any average house aren't exactly designed to function as a recording studio, installing a few absorber panels, bass traps and diffuser panels can go a long way when it comes to reducing the echoing effect of sonic reflections and standing waves. This kind of acoustic treatment can really help improve microphone recordings by removing the more amateurish sounding 'bedroom reverb' from your tracks. It'll also help during the mixing phase by enhancing the frequency response of your monitors. Here, you'll find an array of complete acoustic treatment packs, so there's no need to spend hours browsing for your absorbers, bass traps and diffusers.
Absorber Panels
Absorbers are acoustic panels that can be mounted on the walls and ceiling of your studio space and are made from special materials able to absorb sound waves. Since these panels efficiently absorb sonic reflections (better known as echoes), you'll be left with far less natural reverb in the room, so you can kit any home studio out with far more professional sound during recording and a far better audio image when mixing, since the performance of your studio monitors are far less 'coloured' by the acoustics of the room you're working in. Absorber panels are also often used to improve the acoustics of offices and meeting spaces.
Bass Traps
Bass traps are a more specialised version of absorber panels that have a triangular design so they can be installed in the corners of a studio space. These panels are also much thicker than standard absorbers, and by placing them in the corners, they're able to effectively rein in the lower frequencies that are bouncing around the space. For this reason, bass traps are really important, especially in smaller rooms where lower frequencies often cause the biggest issues. This is because of standing waves: if the wavelength of a certain frequency matches the size of the room, you suddenly get annoying resonance and dips in the frequency response.
Diffuser Panels
Instead of absorbing frequencies, you can also diffuse them using diffuser panels. If the space you're working in has really smooth walls, the sound of any instrument or vocal is going to bounce back in a perfect echo which is then picked up by the microphone a fraction of a second after a phrase is played or vocal line is sung. This creates a well known effect called 'room-filtered' sound, and once it's on the recording, you can't get rid of it. Diffuser panels can help solve this problem while making sure that there's still life to the acoustic sound, rather than completely dulling the acoustic sound like absorber panels would. To start, we recommend solving any standing wave issues with some absorbers and bass traps before polishing up the acoustics with a couple of diffusers.
Foam or Mineral Wool?
Foam panels are generally a bit thinner than mineral wool panels, meaning that they're also less effective when it comes to handling lower frequencies. For podcasting, vlogging or voice-over recording, foam panels will definitely do the job. But if you're recording vocals and musical instruments, then some thicker fibreglass or rock wool panels are recommended.
Acoustic Treatment or Sound Isolation
The terms acoustic treatment and sound isolation are often confused, but while both are to do with sound, they each have a completely different goal. The point of installing acoustic treatment is to improve the sound in the space and has nothing to do with reducing 'noise pollution'. If you want to isolate a room and make sure that no sound can escape and annoy your neighbours, then you'll need entirely different materials. The only fire-proof solution is to actually build a room within a room, which is an undertaking and involves visiting a builder's yard or DIY shop.
