How Much Soundproofing Do I Need For Streaming?

Have you been doing live streams while gaming, or simply working in your home office, but notice that there’s too much background noise ruining your audio quality?

Here’s how you soundproof your streaming room or home office for optimum audio quality: 

• Make sure your floors in your streaming room are covered with sound absorbing carpet from wall to wall. 
• If you have windows in your streaming room then make sure you cover them with thick curtains
• Place acoustic soundproofing panels on your walls in your home office or streaming room
• Cover your ceiling in acoustic panels  for even more sound absorption as needed.

The first thing that comes to mind when we think about soundproofing our home or office is the walls.

In fact, most of us will start with the wall before anything else.

Of course we want to make sure that the walls are thick enough so that we’re not getting noise from other rooms and no one can hear what is going on in your streaming room.

Odds are they aren’t, so that’s why we need soundproofing material in place to eliminate that extra unwanted sound.

But there are many more parts of a room that need to be considered when trying to make sure that your streaming room has good soundproofing in place. This includes the floor, ceiling, doors, and any furniture that might be in the room.

Let’s take a look at each part of your streaming room, or your home office, and see if it has an impact on the way people hear what is happening inside your space.

Real quick: before we get too far along here, if you want to get more great ideas for your gaming room or home office and connect with other home office hackers to make your space the best join my free private Facebook group, Battle Station Setup here.

What Is The Best Way To Soundproof A Room?

Soundproofing is an important part of any content creation project.

If you don’t soundproof your room, then you run the risk of having a lot more opportunities for frustration that will slow you down.

That could cause problems if you are working on something sensitive like music production. So, you should always consider soundproofing your room.

But, where do you start? How much soundproofing do you really need? What kind of material should you use? And, how do you go about doing it? These questions are answered below.

Soundproof Your Floor

Make sure your floors in your streaming room are covered with sound absorbing carpet from wall to wall.

Floors are easily forgotten when it comes to thinking through the soundproofing materials you’re going to need, but it’s a simple problem to solve.

If the floors in your streaming room or home office are solid surface, like tile, hardwood, or vinyl plank, you will need something to absorb sound waves that will reflect off those surfaces.

Adding a big rug will often do the trick. Another option is to install carpeting. Both rugs and carpets work well at absorbing sound waves. They also help keep the room cooler during summer months.

You can find a variety of different types of carpeting available in stores today. Some are made specifically for this purpose.

You can also look into installing soundproofing mats under your desk or table.

Soundproof The Windows

If you have windows in your streaming room then make sure you cover them with thick curtains.

Who wants cars, emergency vehicles, trains, or other outside noises making their way into their streams? No one!

While it’s great that most newer windows are double-paned that doesn’t mean that they’re completely sound proof. They do a great job of reducing the sound waves with the extra layer of glass, but there could be a chance that there could still be some sounds bleeding through.

Plus, not every place has these newer types of windows, and replacing windows is NOT cheap.

So when you’re streaming and recording cover up your windows with a dense material that will absorb sound.

You can use soundproof blankets or thick curtains that you can close when you’re recording or streaming.

Soundproof Your Walls

Place acoustic soundproofing panels on your walls in your home office or streaming room.

You can easily add acoustic foam panels that will do the trick.

These acoustic foam tiles are easily applied by using double-sided tape, strips, or spray-on glue adhesive.

You can also use acoustic wall panels that are made from different material than foam for a different look.

These polyester panels will do a great job of reducing the background sound in your streaming room or office, and look fantastic at the same time.

You can also use acoustic sound panels placed strategically in your streaming room or home office.

They’ll effectively control unwanted sound and reduce the reverb and echo of any kind of room.

Soundproof The Ceiling

Cover your ceiling in acoustic panels for even more sound absorption as needed.

One of the other things that’s easy to forget about is applying a sound treatment to your ceiling.

You might not realize this until you’re done with your project and you notice that you still have some noise coming through. This is because the sound treatment doesn’t work well unless it absorbs all the unwanted ambient sounds in the entire area.

So, if you’re looking at soundproofing your streaming space, you’ll want to look into getting acoustic panels installed over your ceiling.

They’re available in all kinds of different sizes and shapes and you can choose between using them as a full-coverage solution or just covering a partial area. Either way works but the full coverage option is usually better since it also helps to absorb sound waves.

How Much Soundproofing Should I Use?

When it comes to figuring out how much soundproofing you should use, think first about the area you need to cover.

A good place to begin is to start with a strip on your walls of your streaming room roughly 2 feet off the ground, and 3-4 feet thick. Depending on the size of your streaming room, this could be roughly 30-40 square feet per wall.

On your floor start with a good area mat, like the one mentioned before, if you don’t have carpeting.

Make sure that you test your set up thoroughly to see if you need to expand your coverage.

If you’ve got windows, and you live in a high-traffic area, nothing worse than police car or emergency services with sirens wailing, so make sure that you use a soundproof blanket, or soundproof curtains, or some other dense material to soak up as much of that ambient noise as possible.

If you’re still bouncing sound on walls in your home office or streaming room, you need to increase your coverage until you get rid of it, or to a level that it’s easier to catch by your filters in post production.

Which Materials Are Best For Soundproofing?

When it comes to soundproofing, the main kinds of materials used by streamers and content creators of all kinds are primarily soft materials like carpet, foam, acoustic panels, and blankets.

There are two main types of soundproofing material:

Sound reduction: sound reduction materials aim to stop sound waves from entering into an area. For example, this would be stuff like stormy weather, traffic and outdoor noises, and other external noise.

Sound absorption: sound absorbing materials seek to minimize and eliminate sound already in an area and keep it from bouncing off of surfaces in that area, or reverberating through the space.

The most popular soft materials for soundproofing include:

Why Should You Soundproof Your Streaming Room?

Doing live streaming but room noise is bleeding through your audio?

Have a podcast, but ambient noise is creeping in because of echo in your room?

If you have background noise problems in your audio you should consider soundproofing your space.

There are several reasons why you should soundproof your streaming room.

First off, if you don’t soundproof your room, people may not enjoy listening to your content.  There is no shortage of audio snobs out there who take delight in pointing out the slightest flaw in your audio quality.

You might even end up losing listeners and followers because there is too much going on in the background. If this happens, you could lose potential listeners who may never come back.

Second, you may find that you are unable to focus due to all the noise. Being distracted during your live stream can throw you off and make for an awkward experience for your followers.

Third, you may find that your voice gets lost in the mix. You may find that some people cannot understand what you are saying. Dealing with extra noise can pull attention away from you, which is not what you want.

Fourth, you may find that the ambient noise is getting into your recordings. Sure, you can do a lot to remove background noise in post production, but it gets old, especially when you can prevent it from being there in the first place.

How Can I Soundproof Without Spending Too Much Money?

If you’ve on a budget you can still get some outstanding sound proofing in place without breaking the bank!

Here, you can grab 48 square feet of acoustic foam panels for under $40. (check this link for price on Amazon).

Here is full set of soundproof curtains for under $30 ( check this link for price on Amazon).

Here is a fantastic set of acoustic panels that are perfect for making your own custom soundproofed panel system.

ZHERMAO 12 Pack Hexagon Acoustic Panels Beveled Edge Sound Proof Foam Panels

Next Steps

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