Acoustic foam for a home studios

If you already bought the required equipment for a home studio, you face a terrible quest: to treat the recording room with acoustic foam. If you know nothing about audio treatments for room, I will try to share some of the basics. In order to properly treat a room, you will need acoustic foam for sidewalls and front wall, bass trappers for the higher corners of the room and diffusers for the back walls. For the recording booth, you will also need to use acoustic foam panels with at least 50% coverage.



The control room
The control room is the place where everything gets mixed together, and you need to have the best possible sound. Insulating this room is rather easy:

1. Place two foam panels behind the studio monitors (the speakers). This will help with echoes and noise cancellation.
2. Place 3 or four square panels in the left and right sidewalls at the ear level, with 50% coverage.This means you should allow some space between the panels.
3. Place 1 or 2 bass trappers in every hight corner of the room. This will reduce the bass in the room.
4. Place 2 diffusers in the absolute center of the back wall of the control room. If you are on a tight budget you can use normal acoustic foam.
5. Insulate the door between the booth and the control room. You don't want external noises in the booth, right?

The booth
Place at least 50% coverage in the room, and try to apply panels everywhere. If the mic captures too much bass in the voice, this means that you are have a small room and you need to place some sort of foam on the high corners.
source: home foam