Echo is the most common thing wrong with a new stream, and it is usually blamed on the microphone. It is almost always the room. Hard walls, a bare desk and an empty floor bounce your voice around before it reaches the microphone, and the result sounds distant and hollow no matter what you spent.
Fixing it costs little or nothing. This guide covers the difference between treating a room and soundproofing it, the free fixes that make the biggest difference, and where cheap panels and foam actually help.
Soundproofing and acoustic treatment are different things
This distinction saves people a lot of money.
Soundproofing stops sound travelling in or out of a room: traffic outside, a housemate’s television, your own shouting reaching the neighbours. It needs mass and sealing, such as heavy doors, sealed gaps and dense wall construction. It is expensive and largely a building project.
Acoustic treatment controls how sound behaves inside the room, mainly by absorbing the reflections that cause echo. It is cheap, and it is what most streamers actually need.
Foam panels are acoustic treatment. They reduce echo; they do almost nothing to stop outside noise getting in. If your problem is a barking dog next door, foam will not fix it. If your problem is sounding like you are in a bathroom, soft surfaces will.
Start by removing noise at the source
The cheapest noise to deal with is the noise you stop making. Before going live:
- Close windows and doors.
- Turn off fans, air conditioning and other appliances you can do without for a few hours.
- Move a noisy PC further from the microphone, or under the desk, and check whether its fan curve can run quieter.
- Silence phone notifications and anything with a speaker in the room.
- Tell the household when you are live.
Some noise you cannot remove, such as a street outside. For that, microphone choice and placement do more than anything you put on the walls.
Fix the microphone before the room
The closer your microphone is to your mouth, the louder your voice is compared with the room, and the less the room matters. Moving a microphone from the desk to a boom arm a few inches from your mouth often fixes more echo than a wall of foam.
The type of microphone matters too. Dynamic microphones pick up far less of the room than condensers, which is why they are the safer choice for ordinary spaces. Our guide to the best microphone for streaming explains the difference.
Free and cheap ways to cut echo
Echo comes from hard, flat, parallel surfaces. The goal is to put soft, irregular things in the way. Most of this you already own:
- A rug on a hard floor makes one of the biggest differences of all.
- Curtains, ideally heavy ones, over windows and bare walls.
- A full bookshelf, which both absorbs and scatters sound.
- Soft furniture, such as a sofa, an armchair or a bed in the room.
- Blankets or a duvet hung on the wall behind the camera or behind you, out of shot.
- Clothes in an open wardrobe. There is a reason people record voiceovers in closets.
A small room with hard surfaces is the worst case. A larger, furnished room is often fine with very little work. You rarely need to cover every wall.
When to buy acoustic panels
If you have done the free fixes and still hear a hollow, ringing quality, panels are the next step. A few rules make the difference between panels that work and panels that just decorate:
- Thickness matters. Very thin foam mainly absorbs high frequencies, which can leave your voice sounding muffled and boxy while doing little for lower reflections. Thicker panels, and dense fibre panels in particular, absorb a wider range.
- Put them where the sound hits first. The most useful spots are the wall behind you, the wall in front of you, and the side walls level with your head, where your voice reflects straight back towards the microphone.
- Treat at head height. Panels near the ceiling corners or floor do less for speech than panels level with your mouth.
- Leave a small gap between a panel and the wall if you can. Mounting panels slightly off the wall improves absorption.
- Check fire ratings on anything you put in a room with electronics. Cheap foam is not always treated.
A handful of well-placed panels usually does more than a wall covered in thin foam squares.
Keyboard, mouse and desk noise
Desk noise travels through the desk itself as well as the air. A few changes help:
- Mount the microphone on a boom arm with a shock mount rather than a desk stand, so vibrations from typing do not travel up into it.
- Use a desk mat to soften keyboard and mouse sounds.
- Consider quieter keyboard switches if clacking is part of your problem. Linear and silent switches are noticeably less intrusive than clicky ones.
- Angle the microphone so its rear, the least sensitive side on most cardioid microphones, points at the keyboard.
Software can clean up what is left
Once the room is reasonable, software handles the rest. OBS includes audio filters you can add to your microphone source:
- Noise suppression reduces constant background sound such as fans and hum. OBS includes its own option and, on supported NVIDIA graphics cards, an NVIDIA-powered one.
- A noise gate or expander quietens the microphone when you are not speaking, so keyboard noise between sentences disappears.
- A compressor evens out loud and quiet moments.
Go easy on these. Heavy noise suppression can make a voice sound robotic, and a gate set too aggressively cuts off the start and end of words. Software works best as a finishing touch on a room that is already mostly under control, not as a substitute for fixing it. For your video and encoder settings, see our OBS settings guide.
Test your room
Record thirty seconds of yourself talking at your normal streaming volume, including a loud moment, then listen back on headphones. Then clap once and listen to how long the sound hangs. A quick, clean decay means the room is under control. A ringing tail means more soft surfaces. Make one change at a time and record again, so you know what actually helped.
Common questions
Does acoustic foam block noise from outside?
No. Foam reduces echo inside the room. Blocking outside noise needs mass and sealing, which is soundproofing and a much bigger job.
How much acoustic treatment do I need?
Less than most people think. Start with a rug, curtains and soft furnishings, then add a few panels at head height if echo remains.
Why does my stream sound echoey even with a good microphone?
Usually because the microphone is too far away, it is a condenser in a hard-surfaced room, or both. Move it closer before buying anything else.
Is noise suppression software enough on its own?
It helps with steady background noise, but it cannot fully remove room echo and can make your voice sound processed if pushed too hard.
Where to go next
Your room is step two in the streaming gear guide, after choosing a microphone. Next up is streaming lighting, which is similarly cheaper to get right than most people expect.
