Controlling the noise.

Voice Over Xtra currently has part one of what I think will be a nice compendium of articles regarding home studio acoustics by William Williams.

From my own experience, I can tell you that soundproofing a pre-existing residential structure is problematic and expensive at best, downright impossible given most circumstances. You can do a lot to absorb and diffuse the sound, but true soundproofing requires DCID or ANSI style requirements to the room, and frankly there comes a time when even yours truly has to question the cost-benefit ratio (or in my case, the "would they lock me up for doing this..." ratio).

William takes a smarter approach IMO by assuming that the voice talent already has a setup and begins by addressing those items which can be removed from your recording chain that might be causing you to have a lower quality output than you should be, given the quality of equipment you're using (aka. "noise").

From an audio forensic perspective, I'm a huge fan of eliminating as much unnecessary interference from the chain as possible. This article looks like the first step in addressing such issues.

For those who are interested, the full article can be found here.