Have you noticed that in our little music studio world, it seems like 95% of the tips on acoustics and treating your room are all about optimizing mixing rooms.

But what about recording or live room acoustics?

Do the same techniques and approaches even work? What should you focus on here? Where do you start?

Since I haven’t talked much about that yet, I jumped at the opportunity when the DIY Recording Guys (Ben and Vadim) asked me to be on their podcast to get down and dirty on recording room acoustics.

What came together is a jam packed episode for you, not the least because they asked some really great questions.

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What you'll find in this podcast:

• What the typical acoustic problems with recording rooms are, and how that's different to a mixing room.
• What you should focus on first when treating your recording or live room.
• How to understand the relationship between depth and density in broadband porous absorbers.
• Why it’s not worth obsessing about finding the perfect density for your absorber material.
• How is a bass trap different to just a thicker absorber?
• Why measurements in a recording room are actually pointless.

Click Here To Listen To The Episode

And because we had such a good time, we recorded a quick sneaky bonus QnA episode for you as well.

What you'll find in the bonus episode:

• "When you don’t have enough money to acoustically treat your room, what are some of the best ways to dampen reverberations specifically when recording vocals into the mic?"
• „What are some tips for recording vocals when you don’t have an isolated room? How essential is it? Are there mics your recommend for musicians recording vocals without a vocal booth?"
• „Say you have a few 2x4’ acoustic panels. Where is the first place you would put them to be most effective?"
• „If you have a limited budget, would you recommend starting with absorption or diffusion?"
• „What would you say is the most important place to start when treating a mixing room? 80/20 principal: what gives the biggest results and leaves the rest to be fine tuned later?"
• „What are some basic recommendations for treating a room that is basically a cube?"
• „As you’re adding more and more bass traps, can you get an unbalancing effect on the high end?"
• „Why would you want, or not want, to work in an anechoic chamber?"
• „What’s the philosophy behind your bass trap - diffusors? What makes them particularly suitable for treating small rooms?"
• „What is the role of software like Sonarworks in a comprehensive strategy for small rooms?"

Click Here To Listen To The Bonus Episode

Btw, one thing I once again realized doing this episode is that the answers you get are only as good as the questions you ask. And Vadim and Ben ask all the right questions, as you’ll hear when you listen to this episode.

So if you’re into recording, I highly recommend you check out their other episodes as well: The DIY Recording Guys podcast.

As a final bonus, I also prepared a free 5 step guide to treating recording rooms on a budget, which goes along with the episode.

You can get that here:

"5 Steps To Recording Room Acoustics On A Budget. And why it’s nothing like treating a mixing room."