office Acoustic Setup for Podcasting and Semi Pro Radio Show

Hi everyone. This is my first post. I read the rules so hopefully I dont make any mistakes here. Goal: Turn my home office into a room I can use to record Podcast, Host Internet Radio Show and record Spoken Word such as poetry. Would like to create audio that sounds better than someone just recording in front of a computer. Room Size: L 12' x W 10' X H 10' Restraints: I rent my home and I'm not allowed to do any structural changes. I dont have to worry about neighbors or anything like that. Budget $400 -$500 but I'm a DIY'er and can follow instructions well. My question is do I really need anything else to produce a decent Podcast, Radio show or just to record Poetry? I see a lot of setups here, but most people are creating and playing instruments and creating rooms to best fit that. I'm not really technical in terms of measuring frequencies or decibles. I just want something simple I can use to create better than normal audio. Thanks for all your advice and help.

Hi Jamaul, and welcome! :)

Room Size: L 12' x W 10' X H 10'

You have a problem there: the width and height are both 10 feet, which means that the room modes (standing waves) associated with those dimensions will be twice as strong as normally. Fortunately, you only want this room for voice recordings, so the problems associated with your room ratio are not really in the voice frequencies, and in any case the sound level won't be very loud in there, so you are probably OK. One thing you could do is to download the REW software, and use that to check the response of your room as it is right now.

My question is do I really need anything else to produce a decent Podcast, Radio show or just to record Poetry? I see a lot of setups here, but most people are creating and playing instruments and creating rooms to best fit that. I'm not really technical in terms of measuring frequencies or decibles. I just want something simple I can use to create better than normal audio.

The same basic principles apply, even though you don't need as much as most of the rooms you see here. I see two problems from that photo: 1) The amount of treatment you have in your room right now is not enough, even for voice recordings, and 2) You have your equipment set up in a corner: It would be much better to set up your desk facing one wall, straight on. Corners do strange things to sound, so that's not a good place to be. So here, swhat I would do (after you move your desk): Theoretically, you need about 30 square meters of absorption in that room (about 330 square feet), and you only seem to have a small fraction of that. So I would suggest that you buy several panels of something like 4" OC-703, if you can get it where you live. Each panel is about 32 square feet, so 10 panels of that would be enough. Make simple wood frames for them, and put some type of cloth on the front to make them look good. I would then put one panel in each vertical corner of the room, one turned sideways across the front wall (between the desk and the wall), two on the rear wall, in the middle, one on each side wall at the first reflection points, and the last one hung from the ceiling, right over your desk and chair: If you do that, it would make a major difference to the way your recordings sound. If you can't find OC-703, then use fiberglass or mineral wool insulation. That will also work very well. This should be within your budget, and should make a big difference. - Stuart -