How to Set Up a Podcast Studio at Home

The most valuable decision in a home podcast studio is free, and almost nobody makes it deliberately: which room you record in. A $400 microphone in a tiled kitchen sounds worse than a $100 microphone in a carpeted bedroom, and no amount of editing closes that gap. Pick the room first, then buy the gear it needs — which will be less gear than you expect.

What you are listening for is reflection. Sound leaves your mouth, bounces off hard flat surfaces, and arrives at the microphone a few milliseconds after your voice does. Your brain ignores that in the room and the microphone does not, which is why recordings sound hollow in a way the room never did. Everything in the first half of this guide is about reducing those reflections, and most of it costs nothing.

Choosing the room

Smaller is better. A small room has less air for sound to travel through and reflections that arrive so quickly your ear reads them as part of the voice. The bedroom beats the living room; a walk-in closet beats both.

Softer is better. Carpet, curtains, a bed, a sofa, a full bookshelf and a wardrobe of hanging clothes are all acoustic treatment. A room that already contains those is treated. A converted garage, a kitchen or any room with a hard floor and bare walls is the opposite, regardless of how good it looks on camera.

Quieter is better, and quiet is not the same as silent. Listen for the things you have stopped hearing: a fridge compressor, a bathroom fan, a computer, traffic, a neighbour’s air conditioning unit. Those sit under every word you record and cannot be removed cleanly afterwards.

The test takes two seconds: stand where you will record and clap once. A short ring after the clap means a reflective room. A clap that dies instantly means you have found your studio.

Treating the room for nothing

Treat the wall you are facing first. The reflection that reaches the microphone is the one bouncing off the surface in front of your mouth, so a duvet on a stand, a heavy curtain, or a full bookshelf on that wall is the single most effective change available — and it is the one most setups skip in favour of foam tiles behind the host, where they do the least good.

After that, in order: something soft on the floor, something soft on the ceiling if it is low and hard, and avoid recording in a corner where two bare walls meet behind you. Thin acoustic foam is largely a visual purchase; it absorbs the high frequencies and leaves the boxiness. If the room is genuinely bad and cannot be changed, that is an argument for a dynamic microphone rather than for foam.

Buy in this order

1. One microphone per host. This is the purchase that changes a podcast most, and in an untreated room a dynamic mic is the one that forgives the room — it is less sensitive, so you work close to it and the walls arrive quieter. Recording each host to a separate track is what lets you fix one person’s cough without touching the other.

2. Headphones, for everyone. Non-negotiable and frequently skipped. Headphones are how you catch a cable problem, a fan, a rustling collar or a clipped level while you can still do something about it. They also prevent the echo of one host’s voice leaking from the other’s speakers into the microphones.

3. A boom arm or a proper stand. Mic placement is a specification. Four to six inches from the mouth, slightly off-axis so breath passes the front of the capsule rather than hitting it. A desk stand that puts the mic a foot away undoes most of what you paid for.

4. A camera, if the show is video. Not before. See our podcast camera roundup for the record-limit and battery questions that actually decide this.

5. A light. One light placed well beats three placed badly, and a seated shot that never moves only needs setting once.

The three picks below are the first purchase in each of those categories from the registry, with live prices.

Lighting a seated shot, if the show is video

A podcast is the easiest lighting job there is, because your subject is seated, barely moves, and the camera does not move either. That means you can set the light precisely once and it stays right for an hour.

One light at roughly 45 degrees to the side the host is facing, raised a little above eye level and angled down, does most of the work. A second, weaker source on the opposite side stops the shadow side of the face going black. For two people at a table, place one light on each side, between and slightly camera-side of the pair — each light becomes the other person’s fill. The three-point lighting explainer lays out the full arrangement, and our interview lighting roundup ranks the fixtures.

For a desk-based show, a software-controlled panel on a desk clamp is the practical choice over a floor stand, for the same reason it is on a stream: the floor stays clear and you can change the light without standing up. If the room has a usable window, use it as your key and turn the overheads off — but be aware that daylight changes over a two-hour recording and your footage will shift with it.

Where to put the camera

At eye level, not above and not below. A camera looking down at a seated host is the most common mistake in home video podcasts, and it is purely a tripod height problem.

Frame reasonably tight on one host — head and shoulders with a little space above the head. For two people at a table, you need roughly a 24mm equivalent field of view from about eight feet back, and you should shoot around f/4 rather than wide open so both faces stay in focus. Our podcast camera roundup covers the bodies and the record-limit question that decides between them, and depth of field explained has the arithmetic on why f/1.8 will not hold two faces.

Keep the background honest. A bookshelf, a plant, a lamp left on behind the subject — anything that puts some depth behind them. A bare wall two feet behind a host is what makes a shot look like a hostage video, and a light on that wall fixes it more cheaply than a new camera does.

What to skip

Thin acoustic foam. Those 1-inch tiles absorb high frequencies and leave the low-mid reflections that make a voice sound boxy. A duvet does more. If you later want real treatment, thick broadband panels are what work, and they are a different product entirely.

A mixer, at first. Two USB microphones recorded to separate tracks in software handles almost every two-host show. A mixer or interface becomes worth buying when you have three or more XLR mics or you are going out live.

A second camera, at first. One wide shot of two people at a table is a perfectly good podcast. The second angle is an editing convenience, and it is the right purchase after you have discovered that editing a 90-minute conversation into 45 minutes is the actual work.

Recording video before the audio is right. Nobody has ever stopped listening to a podcast because of the picture. Plenty stop because of the sound.

A sensible first recording session

1. Close the windows, switch off the air conditioning, the fan and anything with a compressor in it.
2. Sit down and clap once. If you hear a ring, add something soft in front of you and clap again.
3. Set your levels while talking at your loudest, aiming for peaks well below clipping.
4. Put headphones on. Everyone. Record ten seconds, play it back, and listen for anything that is not a voice.
5. Record the episode. Record each host to their own track.
6. Before anyone stands up, record thirty seconds of silence as room tone.

That sequence, with one microphone per host and nothing else, produces a publishable podcast. Everything else on this page is an improvement to it, in roughly the order worth making them.