Quarantined Content Creators – Absorption Is What You Need!

Do you have a message for your followers or want to get your news out to new groups, but you are quarantining and doing the responsible thing to stop the spread? So, you have gathered what you need to record a video message in a location in your home. You have an exciting or acceptable backdrop and adjusted the lighting and camera angle. Have you considered the audio quality of the room? Many cameras, laptops, and mobile devices have acceptable microphones to record audio for your video. Or perhaps you have a more robust setup with a professional camera and microphone. Any of these devices will do an excellent job of capturing your voice, but they also record the sound of the room. If your home has an open floor plan or contemporary design, it likely sounds very active. Meaning the walls ceiling and floors are predominately hard surfaces. Your voice and its message will need to be apparent to the listener. All you need to correct this is some acoustic absorption treatment to tame the chaotic echo and improve your delivery.

In most cases, professional broadcasts in-studio anchors are transitioning to an anchor or guest in their house. The change in audio quality from the broadcast booth to the home is abrupt and less than ideal. Some may believe that this is a streaming quality issue. While that can be a factor, in most cases, it is the reverberating voice in a completely different sounding space that is a distraction. It is hard to listen to, and to turning up the volume to hear better; the message only further reveals the issue of echo and reverberation.

Absorption: When sound energy hits a surface, it does a measure of 3 things, Absorbs, reflects, or transmits through that surface. If you have hard-reflective surfaces like glass, tabletops, wood, stone, granite, or laminate floors, the sound energy from your voice will reflect from these surfaces and arrive back to the microphone. Absorptive acoustic panels placed near the performance area can solve this problem. As well as the acoustic benefits, absorptive panels have a professional and aesthetic appeal on camera.

Portable Treatment: However, you may be opposed to installing absorptive panels to your walls. In some cases, the walls may be too far away from the performer to tame the reflections in the room. That is where portable treatment is the best choice. Portable treatment can be placed on or off camera. It can be focused and moved in closer when needed as well as transported to different locations.