The Best Room Treatment for a Home Studio on a Budget

A microphone hears your room as much as it hears your voice, and an untreated space adds echo and mud. The good news is that budget treatment, carefully placed, fixes the worst of it for very little money.

Treat the room in priority order.

1. Hang thick curtains or blankets at the first reflection points.
2. Add a rug to break up reflections off a hard floor.
3. Place acoustic panels behind and beside the microphone.
4. Fill the space with soft furniture that absorbs sound.

You do not need a professionally treated booth to sound good. A few well-placed soft surfaces tame the echo that makes home recordings sound hollow.

The results are audible immediately. A room with a few soft surfaces sounds noticeably less hollow on the very next recording, and the improvement costs a fraction of what you would spend on a better microphone to mask the same problem.