Radio Ga Ga
Hello my fancy friends, I’m so happy you’re here! We are having the most meta episode ever for an interior design podcast. Today we are talking about the interior design of creating a podcasting room! So if you’ve ever wanted to record yourself talking about your favorite subject or interviewing the very interesting people in your life, this is your episode, because we are going to cover everything from size to sound; how to create the most simple set up and the most deluxe. These tips and tricks can even help if you’re a frequent zoom-from-home person, or you just want to get on a quiet FaceTime with your family. This episode is all about the wonderful world where interiors meets broadcasting and acoustics.
But first, let’s talk about the Color of the Week. We are right in the middle of hurricane season and while we’ve had several powerful storms already this year, warmer climates like Puerto Rico and Florida still have the majority of their palm trees in tact. Palm trees thrive in tropical conditions are an amazing example of the resiliency of nature. With over 2,500 species of Palms, these trees have more in common with grasses than they do with the common maple tree, as their leaves wrap around each other to form a stable but bendable trunk. Palms can withstand flooding, salt water, wind, and seasonal tourists, and that’s why our Color of the Week is Pantone 18-0230 TCX Banana Palm. This deep, warm green brings out the cozy side of nature and looks good as a bold accent wall, especially when paired with a choir of warm neutrals like goldenrod, cream, oxblood, and terra cotta. This color will have your space feeling as sturdy as a palm tree.
So you love podcasts and you want to start your own! Or maybe you’ve got back-to-back video meetings scheduled for the foreseeable future and you just want a quiet, distraction free place to dial in. Either way, the principles are the same. You need a space with robust acoustic absorption, minimal visual distraction, and maybe, just maybe, a cute little background and lighting set up if you happen to create a video version of your podcast or even if you have guests join you via Zoom for interviews.
Let’s start with acoustics. The episode called “The Sound Of Silence” provides a deep dive on this topic, but in the world of podcasting, there are a few key things to keep in mind.
When it comes to recorded audio, it’s about what you don’t hear. Traffic, voices of nearby people, and the echo in a room can all serve as distractions on your audio, but the right acoustic set up can help to minimize all of these things.
Many people will tell you that your microphone is the key to top notch sound quality, and this is certainly the most critical piece of equipment for podcasting. I am by no means an expert in technology, but I can say that even with a fairly mid level mic, you can achieve good sound quality, when you set up the right spatial acoustics.
First, we can address limiting noise within the space, namely echos and reverberation. Sound travels through the air in waves, and it behaves similarly to a basket ball. If there are lots of hard surfaces like tile, hardwood flooring, painted drywall, stone, and metal - sound will bounce off of these surfaces and create an echo. This echo is fairly inoffensive in real time conversations, but the second a microphone starts recording, its amplified to the point of rendering the audio unlistenable. So the solution is to give your self lots of soft surfaces. You can’t bounce a basket ball on carpet. A professional recording studio will line their walls, doors, and ceiling with rolls or tiles of black pyramid foam. This product’s pointy structure stops echos from bouncing within a space, but other things like flat fabric panels and egg crate foam can also be applied to your walls for the same purpose. Adding an area rug or choosing wall-to-wall carpet for your room is another good idea. If you’ve ever been in an anechoic chamber, which are used in technology testing facilities, these have extra pointy, super deep foam tiles, and the absolute absence of any echo, even the sound of your foot steps, can be, frankly, disorienting. And while we don’t have to take our efforts to that extreme, it’s an amazing precedent to understand. The quietest room in the world is currently Microsoft’s anechoic chamber, the Sound Lab, that has dubbed itself the place “where sounds go to die”
If you’re podcasting from home and working with limited space, this is one reason that recording in a closet works so well, and the more packed with hanging clothes, the better. I remember the first time I had to record something for work, I literally draped a blanket over my head. The things we do for good sound.
If you have a more dedicated area in your home, make sure any fabric panels you add are directly in front of you and your microphone. Having an acoustic panel behind you is nice and all, but it won’t do much if there’s a hard surface directly adjacent to the source of sound, aka you.
Another way to prevent sound from bouncing around is by having slanted surfaces. The easiest way to incorporate this idea is if you have an attic space where the roof line makes all the walls slant inward, this is your ideal space for podcasting! If you’re building from scratch, you can choose to build a more trapezoidal shaped room, rather than a perfect square, and add fabric panels at an angle, rather than straight up and down.
So that’s how we manage sound within the room, now let’s talk about keeping noise out. This is the biggest reason a podcaster would build a custom, dedicated room, because while minimizing echos can be done with interior surfaces, blocking exterior noises requires the big guns. It’s all in the make up of the walls. When you think about it, the walls around you are really your first and only line of defense in keeping sounds out, so the wider and more dense they are, the more surface area there is to absorb any sound outside. Good soundproof walls effectively soak up sound before it gets to your beloved microphone.
Most walls in a home are somewhere around 4 inches thick, framed out of wood 2x4’s, given a little of that pink insulation and sealed up with big sheets of dry wall. Soundproof walls are typically twice as thick, eight inches, still framed in the same fashion as regular walls but rather than one big wall, two walls are built side by side, right next to each other like books on a shelf, with a tiny gap in between them. This is referred to as decoupling the walls. Sounds will have to filter through both sets of framing, and because there’s that tiny gap, any vibration from the first frame won’t transfer over to the second frame. Then of course both frames are filled with the same style of fiberglass insulation and covered in drywall to appear as one big old wall.
You’ll see lots of products on the market that claim to create more acoustic privacy like “quiet” drywall, “acoustic” insulation, rubber sheets to line the back side of the drywall, and so on. These might help marginally if you are retrofitting an existing wall, but the decoupling method is the strongest defense against outside sounds. This, and making sure the walls are built all the way up to the underside of your roof, or the floor above, leaving no crawl space in between.
It’s important to note that whether you’re building from scratch or working with an existing room, any space’s weakest link, acoustically, is an opening - meaning doors, windows, and vents. Avoid having windows in your podcasting oasis if possible, and the door should be as robust as possible. This means you want a traditional swing door - no sliders or barn doors, and if there is a gasket at the bottom then you’re really golden. If you’re building from scratch, look for doors with acoustic seals and an STC rating of 45 of higher. STC stands for Sound Transmission Class, and is an industry standard rating system for any barrier product like walls, windows, doors, ceilings, and floors. If you’re working with an existing space that does have a window, arrange your set up so that your back is to the window. This is will minimize the reverberation by directing your words away from the hardest surface in the room. Plus, if you happen to use the video feature for your podcast, a window with a good view can be a great background, but make sure to have at least two ring lights on either side of your face so that you don’t appear as a back lit silhouette. Other good backgrounds can be wallpapered walls, tall open shelves with curated knick knacks, or even adding a plant can bring some interest. If you want to rock the Twitch streamer look, sit in front of a blank white wall and shine a colorful LED light in purple or blue on the wall behind you. It’s a very techy look.
If you’re working with an existing space, you can add edge gaskets and doors sweeps to the existing doors, which will likely not be the cutest look, but will be a better insulator than putting up a curtain in front of the door, as some people try. And that’s another thing to expand on - many of these acoustic big moves are not the most refined looking. Sound studios look like work rooms, because they are. You can always dial down the acoustic strategies in favor of ones that are more traditionally beautiful, but everything we are talking about today is what will leave you with the most functional space. And a pretty room isn’t worth much if you can’t do what you need to do in it.
If you’re like me and don’t have a dedicated space, but you’re working in the corner of a room or in a closet, hello from my hall closet by the way, keeping sound out is a little trickier. There’s less that can be done physically to keep out sound without diving into construction, and it’s more about choosing a quiet time of day to record, which might be off hours. I also make sure all fans, air conditioners, and air filters are turned off, which makes it pretty spicy in the summer months, so plan on dressing for hot temperatures, taking water breaks, and maybe even bring an icepack to record with you, that’s my favorite trick because I run pretty hot.
Those ice packs keep me comfortable in July and August, and there are a few other important things to keep in mind for the comfort category. In terms of furniture, you’ll need a table for your microphone and computer, plus a comfortable chair. Make sure you select a chair that is squeak-free, as any little shift in position can get picked up on to your recording forever. I sit on my Ergo Ergo stool and it’s is sound-free. I would also recommend investing in an adjustable mic holder. NPR legend Ira Glass says that the microphone should be about 4 inches away from your mouth, and if yours is sitting on the table, you’ll have to hunch over pretty far to get close enough, which isn’t sustainable for more than a few minutes. A mic holder can sit on the floor with a tripod stand or clamp to the edge of your table, and provides a long movable arm for your microphone to attach to. That way, your mic can come to you, rather you having to contort to reach your mic, and this is important because having good posture and keeping your body relaxed will help you talk more evenly.
Have you seen these little booths that you can buy now for recording? They remind me of superman style phone booths and come with everything you need for a sound set up. I’ve never tried one but they look pretty cute and contained. I’ve also seen friends build their own, which is a major project, but more flexible than building a permanent room. You can also opt for the cheaper version that is freestanding fabric panels that rest on the floor with a bifold configuration like one of those changing screens from an old Hollywood movie. Whatever method you decide to pursue for your recording environment, when you treat soft surfaces with a “the more the merrier” attitude, you’ll set yourself up for smoother, clearer, audio that’s as crisp as an autumn day in Brooklyn. I hope you are taking awesome care of yourself, and I will talk to you in the next episode.
