8 Reasons Why Your Recording Sounds Echoey

Whether you are recording music or audio, echoes can certainly have an impact on your product. Not everyone can afford to rent a studio whenever they want to do some recording, so makeshift home studios are the only way to go. However, recording around the house can bring about issues like echoing audio, which may ruin your recordings. 

Your recording may sound echoey if you are recording in a large open space with hard surfaces or high ceilings. Using a speaker instead of headphones can also cause an echo as well as being far from your mic. Overall, the best way to reduce echo is by adding more soft surfaces to your environment.

There are many possible reasons you may experience echoing when trying to record, but thankfully they all have reasonable fixes. Let’s break down these reasons a little further and figure out how you can get your echoey audio to sound better. Read on to find out how to make your amateur home recordings sound like professional studio tapes!

1. Being Too Far Away From the Mic

One reason your audio may echo is that you may not be close enough to the mic. If this is the case, your audio will not sound as clear as it could, and you may also experience echoing. Doing this can also cause you to pick up too much background noise as your voice will not register loud enough to reduce those noises. 

The best way to see if this is causing your echo issue is to test it out. Try a test recording where you get closer to the mic. We recommend being about 6-10 inches (15-25 centimeters) from the mic, depending on the sound you want, but no further away unless you want to sound faded. This rule should help guide you to the right distance, but you can choose what works best for you. 

It is important to know that moving closer to the mic can help with echoing and overall volume, but it may cause some other issues for you. For example, moving closer to the mic may pick up plosives. Plosives happen when certain sounds you make cause air to go into your mic. So, being closer to the mic may make you need a windscreen to prevent this. 

2. Recording in a Large or Empty Room

Sometimes, echoes can happen in your recording because of the room around you. Certain things in any room can cause echoes, like the size of the room and what is in it. You are more likely to experience echoes in a large or empty room because the sound will bounce off the walls to create an echo. 

This is something you can commonly experience when you move into a new place. If you go in before bringing your furniture, you will notice that larger rooms probably have an echo. This later gets diluted when you add furniture and other objects to the room that help prevent the sounds from bouncing around as much. 

To prevent this from happening, try recording in a smaller space or a room that has enough in it to prevent sounds from reverberating too much. In fact, if you don’t have a studio setup, then you can consider recording in a closet or small room to prevent the echo and get a cleaner sound. 

3. Using Speakers Instead of Headphones

When recording audio, an echo can happen if you use speakers instead of headphones. This frequently happens with those who are recording to music or with another person. If you play audio out loud while you record, it can cause a major problem with echoes. 

Using headphones instead of a speaker can help you produce clearer audio and prevent echoing. The best way to compare this is by being on a conference call and using a speaker phone. Not only does your speaker pick up your voice, but it will also cause the voices of other people around you to echo on the call. So, it is best not to use the speaker or move. 

Similarly, playing audio out loud and recording to it causes the same problem. Not only is the audio you hear coming through like your voice, but it is also poorer quality because it is being processed again through the mic. So, always record with headphones and create one single audio source rather than overlapping them. 

4. Recording From Multiple Mics

This is an extension of the previous reason, but it is worth mentioning separately because it is common. If you are recording from more than one mic, this can cause a major echo. For example, recording audio from different people who are in the same room can be challenging. But if they each have their own microphone, it can quickly become a disaster. 

The problem with doing this in the same room or even in different rooms that aren’t soundproof is that mics tend to pick up just about everything happening nearby. So, if one person is singing and another is playing the guitar, both mics will pick up both sounds, which often causes an echo. 

There are certainly ways to combat this with the right tools, but this is a common problem when recording with more than one person or microphone. So, consider this if you hear an echo in your recording and try recording separately or including things that can help reduce reverberation. 

Using Audacity to edit your music? You can read my guide on using Audacity to reduce echo here.

5. Too Many Doors and Windows

Doors and windows can actually cause a good amount of echoing in your recording. Even if you choose soundproof doors and windows for your recording area, echo can still have a major problem. This is because soundproofing keeps outside sound from getting in rather than the inside sound from reverberating. 

This is why people often cover windows and doors when recording audio. Any hard surface will help your audio bounce around the room, causing echoes and distortion. So, doors and windows do this as well. 

If you are recording in a room with too many doors or windows, consider hanging curtains to help prevent the sound from reverberating too much and bring the echo down. Windows and doors are hard surfaces that can easily reflect sound rather than absorb it. While this is also common with walls, doors and windows tend to be harder. So, it is a lot more common. 

To prevent this, consider hanging curtains around doors and windows to help control the echo. Opening the windows and doors in your recording room may help prevent intense echo, but this may also allow outside noise to interfere with your recording. So, it is best to deal with the problem by covering these areas rather than opening the doors or windows. 

6. Lack of Foam Panels

One of the best ways to ensure that your audio doesn’t echo is to use foam panels to help keep the sound from reverberating. Not having foam panels can also create an echo and allow background noises to take over your audio recording. So, it is best to have these if you are serious about recording good quality sound. 

If you have a recording studio set up in your home, then adding these panels just makes sense. They can help create the best possible environment for recording audio and don’t require much effort to install. Plus, having a dedicated room in your house that’s covered in foam panels can make you feel like you have a real recording studio at home!

Foam panels work by creating a cushioned area for absorbing sound. This is much different from a wall, door, or window that each allows sound to bounce off of them and reverberate around the room. They won’t do much to keep outside sound from entering the room, but they will certainly help with echo as they reduce the ability for sounds to bounce off surfaces. 

Most recording studios and places focusing on audio have foam panels installed to create a much cleaner audio experience. So, you should also consider putting them in your recording area to help your overall audio quality. But if you just need your audio to stop echoing, they are a fast fix for preventing this. 

7. High Ceilings

Another possible cause for echoing audio is high ceilings. If you spend a lot of time in a room with high ceilings, you may stop noticing how much audio can echo. High ceilings create a unique audio experience because they can muffle quiet sounds and make loud sounds echo. This can make it difficult to record audio. 

For example, in a big church with tall ceilings, it can be difficult to hear someone who is speaking softly as it can get lost in a large space. However, a loud voice in a church can echo profoundly. On a smaller scale, this is what you are dealing with while recording in a room with a high ceiling. 

High ceilings can be challenging to work with regarding audio unless you want the booming echo they can create. So, you may need to take special care to create a recording area with lower ceilings or help the ceiling by hanging something from it to prevent the echo. 

There are plenty of options available for this specific problem, but it will require you to change the room a bit. Companies create foam that hangs from high ceilings to prevent echoes in larger rooms. While putting foam panels on the walls will certainly help, tall ceilings will still create some audio issues. So, the best way to go is to choose panels made for this. 

Primacoustic creates a great ceiling acoustic panel available on Amazon. While these panels are definitely on the expensive side, they can help you negate the negative effects of high ceilings by adding foam and bringing them lower. This helps prevent the sounds from reverberating, but it also lowers the ceiling making the sound travel a shorter distance. 

Last update on 2024-04-17 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

You can consider making your own if this is a little out of your price range. You can find a foam panel and hang it yourself with something strong to ensure it doesn’t fall. But if you aren’t into DIY or just don’t have the time, there are plenty of options, like the Primacoustic panels to choose from. 

8. Lack of Furniture or Carpet

Another factor that can cause a lot of echo in your audio is the lack of soft surfaces in the room. These work like acoustic panels to help absorb sound. While hard surfaces create a barrier for sounds to bounce off of, soft surfaces like couches and carpets will absorb the sound instead. 

So, keeping your recording area free of furniture may not be the best idea. Try adding some soft furniture into the room to help improve the audio and prevent echoes. This can be a couch, bed, or anything that is soft enough to absorb audio rather than allowing it to bounce off. 

The same thing applies to carpeted rooms. While hard floors may not be the only reason you are experiencing echoes, hard floors can combine with other issues to create the echo. For example, high ceilings and hard floors can create a major echo problem by working together. The sound will travel all around the room, finding many surfaces to bounce off. 

To help combat this, we recommend recording in a room with carpet to provide one less surface for the audio to reverberate. Now, this doesn’t mean you need to reconstruct your home by adding carpet to your recording studio. There are better and cheaper ways to manage echoes, but this is still a valid reason you may be hearing echoes. 

If this becomes a big enough problem, consider adding a rug to the room to help. Like furniture and audio panels, this can help catch sounds without needing to reconstruct your home. So, consider adding softer surfaces for your room with furniture and rugs. You may also be surprised how much this can impact your overall audio quality and prevent background noises. 

References

• https://yonamariemusic.com/yona/blog/79/microphone-distance-from-mouth-when-recording
• https://transom.org/2016/p-pops-plosives/
• https://www.diyvideostudio.com/why-does-an-empty-room-echo/
• https://soundproofadvice.com/reduce-echo-in-a-room-with-high-ceiling/