How to Soundproof a Room for Voice Acting at Home
When people first start getting into voice acting, one of the first things they usually think about is the microphone. What microphone should I buy? Do I need an expensive one? What equipment do voice actors use?
But even a great microphone can give you a bad recording if the room around it sounds bad.
If you're trying to record voice-over from home, you need a space that is quiet enough to keep outside noise out of your recordings and controlled enough that your own voice isn't bouncing all over the room.
Most beginners would call all of that soundproofing.
Technically, there are actually two different things happening: soundproofing and acoustic treatment. You don't need to become an audio engineer to start voice acting, but understanding the difference can save you a lot of money.
Soundproofing and Acoustic Treatment Are Not the Same Thing
Soundproofing is about stopping sound from traveling into or out of a space.
If you can hear cars outside, your neighbor's lawn mower, people talking in another room, airplanes overhead or the television downstairs, those are soundproofing problems.
Acoustic treatment deals with what your own voice does once it is inside the room.
When you speak, sound travels away from you, hits walls, floors, ceilings, windows and other hard surfaces, and reflects back toward your microphone. Those reflections can make a recording sound echoey, hollow, boxy or obviously like it was recorded in a bedroom.
So when someone asks me how to soundproof a room for voice acting, what they usually need is some combination of both.
They need to reduce outside noise and control the sound inside the recording space.
Start With the Quietest Room You Already Have
Before you buy acoustic panels or start pricing professional voice-over booths, listen to the rooms you already have.
Turn off the television. Stop talking. Listen.
Can you hear traffic?
An air conditioner?
A refrigerator?
People walking around upstairs?
A computer fan?
Dogs outside?
The quieter your starting room is, the less work you'll have to do.
A smaller interior room can sometimes work better than a large bedroom facing a busy street.
A room without windows may also give you an advantage because windows are common places for outside sound to enter.
You may even discover that the best recording space in your house isn't the room you originally planned to use.
Can You Record Voice Acting in a Closet?
Yes. Plenty of people start recording in closets.
A closet filled with clothes already contains a lot of soft material that can absorb sound reflections. That can make it significantly easier to get a dry voice recording than standing in the middle of a large room surrounded by bare walls.
That does not mean every closet automatically makes a good recording booth.
Very small closets can create their own reflections and boxy sound. They can also get hot quickly, and a closet beside a noisy room doesn't suddenly become isolated just because there are clothes hanging inside it.
Still, if you're starting with what you already have, a quiet closet is absolutely worth testing.
Record a few lines there. Then record the same lines in your bedroom or office.
Listen with headphones.
Your ears will tell you a lot.
Can You Use Blankets to Soundproof a Room for Voice Acting?
Blankets won't completely soundproof a room, but they can be extremely useful for controlling reflections.
Heavy moving blankets, quilts and duvets can be placed around your recording area to absorb some of the sound that would otherwise hit a hard surface and bounce back toward your microphone.
This is one reason you'll see DIY voice-over setups made with PVC pipe, blanket stands or blankets hung around a small recording area.
You're essentially creating a smaller treated space inside a larger room.
A rug can help with a hard floor. Heavy curtains can help around windows. A couch, bed and other soft furnishings can also make a room less reflective than a nearly empty room with bare drywall and hardwood floors.
You do not have to cover every inch of the room.
The goal is to improve what the microphone hears.
Does Acoustic Foam Soundproof a Room?
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings beginners run into.
Those foam squares you see covering studio walls are primarily designed to help control reflections inside the room. They are not going to stop a truck driving past your house from reaching your microphone.
That doesn't mean acoustic foam is useless.
It means you need to buy it for the right reason.
Foam, acoustic panels and other absorptive materials can help reduce reflections around your recording position. Thicker acoustic treatment generally controls a wider range of frequencies than very thin foam.
But if your actual problem is loud outside noise, covering your bedroom walls with foam probably won't solve it.
That is a sound-isolation problem.
What About Reflection Filters?
A reflection filter is the curved or partially enclosed acoustic shield you sometimes see positioned around the back of a microphone.
These can help reduce some reflections around the microphone, especially when you're working in a room that isn't fully treated.
But again, think of a reflection filter as acoustic treatment, not a portable soundproof booth.
It won't stop sirens, neighbors, traffic or someone running a vacuum cleaner in the next room.
This is why it's important to figure out what problem you're actually trying to solve before you start buying products.
Do You Need a Professional Voice-Over Booth?
Not necessarily.
A dedicated recording booth can be a fantastic investment for a professional voice actor, especially if you're recording frequently and need a reliable environment that sounds the same every time.
But you do not need to spend thousands of dollars on a booth just to begin learning voice acting or recording auditions.
Your first goal should be creating the cleanest recording environment you reasonably can with the space and budget you already have.
That might mean:
choosing a quieter room or closet
hanging heavy blankets around your recording area
adding acoustic panels or other absorptive treatment
moving away from windows, computers and noisy appliances
recording during quieter times of the day
upgrading to a dedicated booth later if your work and income justify it
The important thing is the recording, not whether your setup looks like somebody else's studio.
When Do You Actually Need More Soundproofing?
There is a limit to what blankets, foam and acoustic panels can do.
If you're dealing with constant traffic, loud neighbors, aircraft, construction or other outside noise that regularly ruins recordings, you may eventually need actual sound isolation.
Real soundproofing usually involves the structure of the room itself.
That can mean sealing air gaps around doors and windows, using heavier doors, adding mass to walls or ceilings, or building isolated structures designed specifically to prevent sound transmission.
That's a much larger project than acoustic treatment, which is why I wouldn't recommend starting there unless your environment actually requires it.
Test the room first.
Solve the problems you can solve inexpensively.
Then spend money where the recordings tell you that you need it.
What Does a Beginner Voice Actor Actually Need?
For most beginners, the goal isn't to construct a perfect commercial studio on day one.
You need a space quiet enough to record clean audio, enough treatment to control obvious reflections, and recording equipment appropriate for voice work.
Your recording environment and your equipment work together. An expensive microphone in a noisy, reflective room can still sound bad, while relatively modest equipment in a well-controlled space can produce surprisingly good results.
If you're still building the rest of your setup, I break down the basic equipment and recording process in How to Record From Home: 9 Steps to Setting Up a Basic Studio at the House.
You can always upgrade your microphone, interface, acoustic treatment or recording space later.
Start by getting the room you already have to sound as good as you reasonably can.
Then record.
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