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How To Make A Podcast Room

How To Make A Podcast Room: Optimizing for Superior Voice Clarity

How to make a podcast room has many variables to consider. We decide on the size of the podcast room, how many people will be generating energy within the room, will they be sitting down or standing up when they are using the room. How to make a podcast room requires that we develop a strategy in order to achieve our sonic objectives. Let’s break the process down into steps to ensure that we end up with a room that has the proper reverberation times managed along with speech intelligibility rates that are proper in a room that is devoted to the accurate reproduction of human voice.

Our first goal on how to make a podcast room that is the proper size that works well with both male and female voices. We must have a room size and volume that works for both female and male voices and is designed to minimize reverberation. Reverberation is defined as to how long a sound stays around within the room after it has been sung, spoken, or played within the room.

podcast room

Securing Silence: Strategies for Noise Isolation in Podcast Studios

Our first objective on how to make a podcast room is to determine the proper room size and volume to use. When we are deciding on how to make a podcast room, we must choose the proper width, length, and height to accommodate both male and female voices. The frequency range for male voice is 100 hz. – 8 k. The frequency range for female voice is 350 hz. – 17 k.

The goal in selecting the proper room size is to make sure that the energy generated from both male and female voices will fit within the room dimensions. Energy that does not fit produces distortions that are audible to both the people within the room and to the microphones that will be transmitting the voice through the electronics. We do not want the distortions of the room sound to enter the presentation value of the podcast room.

sound diffusers on podcast studio wall

Enhancing Speech Intelligibility with Targeted Acoustic Treatments

Once we have the room size determined, we must manage all noise transmission from outside sources into the room and also from the podcast room to adjacent structures. You can have the best room size for how to make a podcast room. However, if the noise floor is too high, you will not be able to use the room for voice. In order to ensure a low noise floor within the podcast room, we need to measure any noise sources outside the podcast room.

The noise sources outside the podcast room will have a certain frequency and amplitude to the noise. We will need to measure all frequency and amplitude of the noise sources since the barrier we will build will be completely dependent on the source noise frequency and amplitudes. Every material type that is used within the barrier is directly based upon the external noise issues.

acoustic foam panels on ceiling

Choosing the Right Absorption Materials for Pristine Audio Quality in Podcast Rooms

Once we have determined the proper room size along with the frequency and amplitude of the noise and constructed the proper barrier to reduce the noise transmission from external sources, we must now focus on the treatment that goes inside the room. We must treat the reflections from the wall surfaces that interfere with speech intelligibility.

Since this is a podcast room, our sonic goal must be speech intelligibility. We must minimize the impact of reflections at the microphone position. To achieve this goal we must reduce the strength or amplitude of the reflections. We can use sound absorption as our treatment technique. We can not use just any sound absorption materials. We must use the proper rate and level of absorption for voice and not just any treatment type.

acoustic foam performance chart

Specialized Absorption Materials for Voice and Music

Music and voice are special. They require a particular rate and level of absorption to achieve the ultimate resolution in both. Music and voice require a smooth rate of absorption from 125 – 500 hz. It must be consistent and predictable with peas or dips in its response. It must treat all frequencies and associated octave bands equally. It is easy for us to distinguish small tonal variations in the harmonics of both music and voice.

This is why it is imperative to treat with a technology that has a smooth rate and level of absorption to absorb excess energy that reflects from our walls and ceiling. Notice the smooth rate and level of absorption in our foam response curves. Our foam at Acoustic Fields took 8 years and 2 M to create. It is the finest foam developed to manage specifically music and voice.

Dennis Foley

I am an acoustic engineer with over 30 years’ experience in the business. My technology has been used in Electric Lady Land Studios, Sony Music of New York, Cello Music and Films founded by Mark Levinson, and Saltmines Studios in Mesa, Arizona, along with hundreds of others.

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