How to Set Up Your Home for Recording

You don't need a purpose-built studio to get a clean recording at home. Most professional home studio recordings are made in regular rooms - bedrooms, living rooms, even wardrobes. What separates a good home recording from a bad one isn't usually the gear. It's the room.

Here's how to work with what you have.

The Clap Test

Before you set up a microphone, do this: stand in the middle of the room and clap once, sharply. Listen to the tail - the sound after the clap. If you hear a flutter or a metallic ring, the room is bouncing sound between parallel surfaces. That's called flutter echo, and it will appear in your recordings.

Now walk slowly around the room while clapping. The sound will change as you move. You're looking for the spot where the tail is shortest and the clap sounds the most "dead" - absorbed rather than bounced. That's where you want to record.

Corners are usually the worst spots. The centre of the room is often better. But every room is different, so trust your ears.

Why Bedrooms Are Usually the Best Room in the House

Bedrooms absorb sound. A bed with a thick mattress, pillows, duvets, and a wardrobe full of clothes are some of the most effective acoustic absorbers you'll find in a domestic setting. That's not by design - it's just what soft, dense, irregular materials do.

Carpet or rugs help a lot too. Hard floors reflect sound straight back up, which creates a bright, ringy quality that's difficult to remove in mixing. If your bedroom has a rug and curtains, you're already ahead of most spare rooms.

• Carpet or rugs on the floor - even a single large rug makes a meaningful difference
• Heavy curtains over windows
• A bed with a thick mattress and bedding
• Built-in wardrobes full of clothes
• Bookshelves full of books - irregular surfaces scatter sound well

Rooms to Avoid

Bathrooms, kitchens, and hallways are the worst places to record. They're designed for hard surfaces - tiles, stone, glass - that bounce sound everywhere. The reverb you hear is not the kind you can remove after the fact. It's baked into the recording.

Rooms with high ceilings and bare floorboards can also be problematic unless the room is large and well-furnished. A small room with hard floors and bare walls is probably the worst-case scenario.

Quick Acoustic Treatment with What You Already Have

You don't need to buy foam panels. Before you spend anything, try these:

• Hang a heavy duvet or blanket on the wall behind you when recording vocals
• Record in a wardrobe - hang clothes on all sides around you, leave the door open enough for a mic stand
• Place a duvet or mattress on the floor if it's hardwood
• Position a bookcase or stacked storage behind you to scatter reflections
• Use the bed itself as a low-cost bass trap by positioning yourself with your back to it

None of this is glamorous. It works.

Microphone Distance and Wall Proximity

The closer you are to a wall when you record, the more room sound you'll pick up in the microphone. As a general rule, position yourself at least a metre from any reflective wall - more if possible.

For vocal recording, the mic should typically be 15-30cm from your mouth. Closer than that and you get proximity effect (excessive bass buildup). Further away and you start picking up the room more than you want.

Background Noise

Room acoustics and background noise are two separate problems. Rugs don't help with a noisy air conditioner. For noise, the approach is different:

• Turn off air conditioning, fans, and heaters before recording - record in short bursts if you need to
• Close windows and doors
• Record later at night when street noise drops
• Keep your computer as far from the microphone as practical - computer fans are a very common source of low-level noise
• Move external hard drives away from the recording area

Listen back to a short test recording on headphones before committing to a full take. You'll hear things in the recording that you didn't notice while recording them.

The Standard to Aim For

A good home recording is clean and dry - meaning it has minimal room sound and no distracting noise. It doesn't have to be completely dead. A small amount of natural room sound is fine, and your mix engineer can add space and dimension in the mix.

What you want to avoid is a recording where the room is louder than the performance. That's the problem that acoustic treatment solves - and in most cases, a thoughtfully chosen spot in a carpeted bedroom will get you there without spending a cent.

What We've Heard Over the Years

At JNP, we've mixed and produced recordings made in every imaginable environment - professional studios, converted sheds, spare bedrooms, and on at least one occasion a wardrobe with the door slightly ajar. The best home recordings we receive are almost always from carpeted bedrooms with soft furnishings and a bit of thought put into the mic position. The worst are usually tiled bathrooms and kitchens that someone assumed would be "quiet."

If you're preparing recordings to send to us and you're not sure whether your recording environment is good enough, send a short test clip first. We're happy to give feedback before you commit to a full session. Good source recordings make a real difference to what's possible in the mix.