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I record and produce as a hobby, so funds are limited. What are some nice do it yourself solutions people have found.

As an example, you can line the walls with egg cartons instead of paying for expensive soundboards.

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    Since you're not looking for a specific answer (rather, trying to create a list of solutions), I am going to convert this to community wiki to allow for more collaborative editing. – Robert Cartaino Dec 09 '10 at 16:37
  • Some cool ideas. Thanks for all the suggestions! –  Dec 18 '10 at 03:40

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The pantyhose pop filter. So simple, so helpful, and so cheap.

Seriously, I can't believe they charge 30 bucks and up for these.

pop filter from nextplease

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    +1 Works like a charm, bend a metal coat hanger to put the tights over it and your done –  Dec 10 '10 at 15:10
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Bring every sofa pillow you have in the house into the room and line the walls with them!

Joel Spolsky
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    Just make sure you make some DIY bass traps too! Sofa cushions, sleeping bags, and blankets don't absorb the whole spectrum, so if that's all you have, things can start sounding boxy or boomy from the unattenuated bass. –  Dec 09 '10 at 17:25
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    1+ this goes for mattresses too which are great for the walls of a DIY vocal booth –  Dec 10 '10 at 15:12
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FYI, egg cartons, at best, eat the high end. They do almost no soundproofing and don't control bass at all.

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    They're half-decent diffusors though, which can help with flutter echoes and reduce reverb decay time in the room. But you're right, they aren't worth much as absorbers. –  Dec 09 '10 at 17:27
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    This might be better as a comment. – Goodbye Stack Exchange Dec 15 '10 at 19:11
  • Neither do soundboards of similar shape. Dampening bass is all about mass (so, very heavy plates and stuff like that). The egg cartons and soundboards are all about reverbs and room resonances. –  Dec 19 '10 at 10:54
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To make cheap mic stands a little more stable attach some velcro ankle weights or a barbell weight around the base.
ankle weights

BenV
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The key thing to remember is that your studio needs to be balanced.

For example, there is no point in having Neumann microphones if your preamps are buzzy!

So the first thing I would recommend is to build a minimal studio and move on from that. In practice one could start with a computer and a 2 line soundcard, together with a cheap microphone. That's all that is needed to have a minimal studio setup.

From there, you would basically fix issues as they arise:

  • find a separate sound room
  • get good earphones

Then expand your set up and fix again:

  • get a multichannel card when you need it
  • get cheap and decent dynamic or condenser mics if you need them (but try to borrow them if you can)
  • get cheap and decent monitors

From that stage you can start considering to buy a good "strip", like a good preamp-compressor combo so that for important tracks you get better quality - like vocals.

If you need soundproofing, do get that in place before doing this investment though. What kinds of sound do you need to dampen? Only spend money to fix real problems: not all rooms have bad sounding reverbs, not all kinds of studios need to record loud instruments, etc. In particular, before aiming to have a dead monitor room, I would make sure that my monitors are precise enough to tell the difference :-)

Another key thing to keep in mind is that many tools trade time for money. This only makes real sense if you are running a business. Do you really need to buy a hardware autotune if you can simply repeat the take? Do you really need to have a good sounding hardware compressor to avoid clips in recording? In many cases, it's a trade off between the money you are prepared to spend and the time you are prepared to spend on something.

Sklivvz
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A lot of acoustic treatment companies charge you a premium for wrapping a large pillow case over Owens Corning 703 rigid insulation.

The stuff is so cheap, you can just order it online or special order it from Home Depot and mount it on your walls. It is the industry standard sound absorption material.

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Keep a soldering gun around and learn to use it. Even if you don't ever crack an equipment case, it'll pay for itself when you fix 1/4" cables that are getting noisy because the ends are damaged. You can also add ground leads to patch cables to reduce noise.

Goodbye Stack Exchange
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A closet with clothes in it can be a great vocal recording booth.

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    Great sounding, but not great to use ;-) –  Dec 19 '10 at 10:52
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    is not there a helmet for this? – sites Dec 12 '14 at 06:02
  • @juanpastas I've been wanting the same thing! I just want to wear a contraption on my shoulders that envelops my head and lavalier and prevents my room's walls from making echos. – Ryan Jan 07 '17 at 04:06
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My band lined a 18'x10' garage with (free, reclaimed, clean) mattresses (two deep, walls and ceiling) that fitted behind a rudimentary inner wall (not that expensive - chipboard with a decent frame will do).

We shoved two mattresses in the door cavity and jammed another piece of chipboard over it (stuffing a few bits of rag into the remaining gap above the mattresses) and the room was VERY well soundproofed.

That setup dampened the noise of two 100W 4 x 12 Marshall guitar cabs, a 300W Trace Elliot bass cab, a full drum kit and a 200W PA (three vocalists) to an extent that we could play rather loud (all wearing expensive earplugs, deafening without) till 11pm at night in a quiet residential area without complaint.

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  • We used to have a studio shaker made of a cheap pack of rice. Remove half the amount of rice from it, and just use tape to close it again. There's your shaker.
  • Egg cartons as acoustic treatment of your room, they take away reflections
Pelle
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It really depends what type of sound you are trying to record. If you just need to reduce the natural echo of a room, hang blankets on the walls, and drape sheets from the ceiling. I used this method, plus a couple large pillows in the corner where I was recording a person speaking, and had the person face the corner. This worked very well for a clear and consistent recording, but of course you will need a different solution if you are recording, for instance, a guitarist, drums, flute, etc.

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There's always the SoS bible: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb98/articles/soundproofing.html

Just google studio soundproofing and you'll get plent of resources that are cheap and/or free if you happen to have the tools and materials available. For example, diffusors are easy to make with some wood, and some hour or so put into it.

Basstraps are similar. Google is your friend.

gbsr
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