How-to · Research-based

How to Treat a Room on a Budget

The mirror trick that finds where absorption belongs, what to use when panels are not an option, and the free changes that do most of the work.

A room with heavy floor-length curtains and an upholstered sofa
Evidence: Research-based

We have not tested these products. This comparison is reasoned from manufacturer specifications, documentation and warranty terms. How we test

On this page
  1. Evidence & disclosure
  2. Do the free things first
  3. Find the points that matter
  4. Cheap materials that work
  5. Check your work
  6. Questions people ask

Room treatment is one of the few areas where free and nearly free options genuinely compete with products sold for the purpose.

Do the free things first

Get closer to the microphone. More direct sound relative to reflected sound. This is the whole objective of treatment, achieved for nothing once an arm holds the microphone where you need it.

Point the microphone at something soft. A cardioid microphone rejects what is behind it, so turn the arrangement round: put the soft surface behind you, where the microphone is looking.

Stop recording in the middle of the room. Equal distances to opposite walls is the worst case. Move off-centre.

Find the points that matter

Sit where you record. Have someone slide a mirror along each side wall at head height. Anywhere you can see your microphone position in the mirror is a first reflection point, and it is where absorption does the most per unit.

Mark them. There will be fewer than you expect.

Cheap materials that work

Heavy curtains, doubled over. A full bookshelf, books pushed to different depths so the surface scatters rather than reflects flatly. A thick rug. Anything upholstered. Moving blankets, which are cheap, dense and easy to hang.

Check your work

Record thirty seconds before and after, and listen on closed-back headphones. If you stream gameplay, keep the capture card feed running for one of those takes so you hear your voice in the same mix viewers get. Clap once in the room and listen for the ring afterwards; less ring means it worked. Both take a minute and tell you more than any specification.

Questions people ask

What can I use instead of acoustic panels?

Anything thick, dense and soft, which describes a lot of things you already own. A folded duvet on a clothes rail behind you is genuinely effective and outperforms thin foam by a wide margin. Heavy curtains, a full bookshelf with books at varying depths, a thick rug and an upholstered sofa all absorb and scatter usefully. The principle is thickness and density rather than the label on the packaging.

Do I need to treat the whole room?

Not for voice. You are trying to stop early reflections reaching the microphone shortly after your voice does, and those come from a small number of predictable surfaces: the walls either side of you, the wall your microphone points at, and any large hard surface directly in front of you such as a desk or a window. Treat those and you have addressed most of the problem without covering a single additional square metre.

Will treatment stop my neighbours hearing me?

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding in the subject. Treatment changes how sound behaves inside a room and does nothing to stop it passing through walls, which requires mass and structural work. Panels, duvets and curtains will make your recordings sound better and will not reduce what anybody else hears. If containing sound is your actual goal, that is a building problem rather than an equipment one.