I do have a few suggestions.
Does the room have a closet with some clothes hanging on hangers in it? Is there a bed or anything else in there? Any carpets? Any large windows with or without cutrains?
OK, so here are a few of the basics, you may be doing some of these things already and they are something that you could experiment with...
1 - When recording you do NOT want to be pushing the recording levels anywhere close to 0db... indeed I make all my recordings (for both audio and videos) somewhere between -12 and -18db as a maximum recording levels. One doesn't need to worry about final levels until the last step of the process as it depends a LOT on what the destination use will be.
2 - Sound controlling the room is likely the biggest thing that most people don't pay attention to and then wonder why things sound off. Live reverberant rooms are sometimes a but hard to tame, but there are a few ideas. Now, to be clear, we are talking sound CONTROL, not sound deadening. They are 2 different things. Sound deadening is where are cut down exterior noises from coming in to our room... sound deadening is where we control the sound better from bouncing around inside the room where you are recording. Both are important, but deadening is way harder and more expensive.
- If you are making an audio recording only and are in a bedroom, place your recording position where you have an open closet with clothes hanging and play directing the sound into the closet (imagine mic(s) just outside the closet, you sitting down facing the mic looking at the clothes. The clothes serve as a device that reduces room ambience.
- If you have some moving blankets (thick blankets that are used to cover furniture when moving) are great at cutting down unwanted echo. In some cases, one can purchase them very cheaply. I purchased 20 blankets from Harbor Freight for $3 each on sale. They are a bit smaller but I can place them on a hand made wooden frame and cut the ambient size of a room in half. For me, I used them more as protective covers to place over my Corvette in the winter, but I did experiment with them in my basement where they did not make a big difference. Where I tried them once and heard a nice improvement was in the area between our living room and dining room... cheap and easy. Sometimes you can find places where they have the big heavy moving blankets that are damaged for near nothing, and with a little easy repair work, can make some very easy dividers.
3 - I mentioned it before... get the mics closer. I was doing some experimenting today upstairs in my dining room, and the sound difference between the sound that the cellphone camera caught versus the two small pencil condenser mics (using the cardioid heads) that were less than 2 feet in front of me was very pleasantly surprising. camera mic caught all the echo and sound was weak and thin. The condensers caught the sound without echo and was a little richer and clearer.
4 - Post processing. Training yourself to have a good ear and practicing so that you can improve the sound captured is worth the time and effort. If you go to YouTube and listen to the best sounding videos, you can bet that they have passed through the hands of someone that tweaked the sound. I have a little motto here... "a little does a lot", so don't go nuts with any one EQ or effect, it is easy to go over the line.
5 - Final recording levels. KNOW WHERE YOUR FILE IS GOING TO BE USED. Different locations have different demands on the final levels. For example, if I am making a recording in MP3 format to be placed on a CX, or a WAV file for a CD, I normalize the files to max out at -1db for best output (loudest), but still never touch that 0db mark because anything above that is clipping and in the digital audio world, we distort in a bad way and that is something we never want to do.
In the "old days" using analog recording methods, it was desireable to go past 0db on the VU meters as they had additional headroom and this made the recordings more "crunchy" and added a natural compression. You CANNOT do this in the digital world, you just clip and the song sounds like crap.
There are different places/ways that a file will be used. In the broadcast world, most channels recommend a max volume of -12db so everything you watch on the TV is set to these levels (that gives them 12db to raise the commercials so those are heard better and are more invasive). For this reason, audio at -12 dB sounds normal. On the web, virtually all producers target 0 dB, and web viewers are used to this higher volume... but it should NOT always be so because some places modify your file in potentially very negative ways and that is something we want to avoid if possible.
A couple examples:
- YouTube and now Spotify use the -14LUFS standard, meaning that if your song is set to average out at around 0db, they will known it down -14db often adding some compression or using a lower quality level.
Know your destination and adjust your levels to match the requirements of where/how that file is going to be used.
CDs use a 44.1 Hz level, DVDs and most movies today use 48Hz level.
Did you know that YouTube now supports 24-bit 96Hz audio? That is what I upload to YouTube... using the -14LUFs standard, of course. Now, in music, most people won't hear a big difference between 44.1, 48 or 96Hz, but for me, in back to back tests, I found that I could hear smoother highs and generally more dynamic range when using 24-bit 96Hz, so that is the lowest level I record at. My audio interface can capture at 192hz and when using that, I capture at the highest level and output it to 24/96 for upload purposes.
People listening to cell phones or low quality speakers will never hear the advantages, but I can and enjoy knowing its there for those that can appreciate it.
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