Clap your hands. Hear that ringing? That's echo — and it's ruining your recordings, video calls, and listening experience. Here's exactly how to fix it.
Calculate Your FixEcho happens when sound bounces off hard surfaces. To stop it:
Sound travels in waves. When those waves hit a hard surface — drywall, concrete, glass, hardwood — they bounce back. In a bare room with parallel walls, sound bounces back and forth many times before dying out.
This creates several problems:
The technical term is reverberation time (RT60) — how long it takes for sound to decay by 60 dB. A typical untreated room might have an RT60 of 1-2 seconds. For clear speech and music, you want 0.3-0.6 seconds.
Caused by parallel walls close together. Clap your hands and listen for a metallic ringing. Fix with absorption on at least one of the parallel surfaces.
General "bathroom" or "gymnasium" sound. Too much hard surface area. Fix by adding absorption throughout the room — walls, ceiling, and floor.
Single strong reflection from a distant wall (usually back wall in larger rooms). Fix with absorption or diffusion on that specific wall.
Low frequencies pile up in corners and along walls. Regular panels don't help — you need thick bass traps in corners.
The RT60 calculator measures your room's reverberation time and tells you exactly how much treatment you need to hit your target.
Analyze Your Room — FreeWalk around the room clapping. Where does the echo sound worst? Those are your priority treatment areas. Usually: parallel walls, bare ceiling, hard floors.
Sit in your main position. Have someone slide a mirror along the walls — where you see your speakers in the mirror, that's a first reflection point. Treat those spots first.
The ceiling is often the biggest untreated surface. A "cloud" (suspended panel) above your listening/recording position makes a huge difference.
Bass traps in corners handle low-frequency buildup that thin panels can't touch. Floor-to-ceiling traps in at least 2-4 corners.
The wall behind you reflects sound back to your ears with a delay. Absorption or diffusion here cleans up the sound significantly.
Rugs, couches, curtains, bookshelves — all absorb sound. Sometimes furniture changes alone are enough for casual listening rooms.
Professional acoustic panels can be expensive. Here are cheaper alternatives that actually work:
Buy rigid fiberglass or rockwool insulation (Owens Corning 703, Rockwool Safe'n'Sound), wrap in breathable fabric, mount on wall. 80% of the performance at 20% of the cost.
Thick velvet or thermal curtains hung a few inches from the wall. Good for treating windows and adding general absorption.
Move bookshelves to problem walls. Add a couch. Hang tapestries. Sometimes the stuff you already own is enough.
The amount depends on your goals:
The RT60 calculator gives you exact square footage based on your room dimensions and current surfaces.
Enter your room dimensions and get a personalized treatment plan showing exactly how many panels you need and where to put them.
Use the Free CalculatorA thick rug with pad helps with floor reflections, but it only absorbs high frequencies. You'll still have echo from the walls and ceiling. It's part of the solution, not the whole solution.
Yes. Too much absorption makes a room feel uncomfortable and "dead." Speech sounds unnatural, music loses energy. Use the calculator to find the right balance for your use case.
Absorbers reduce echo by soaking up sound. Diffusers scatter it, keeping the room lively while reducing harsh reflections. Most rooms need primarily absorbers, with diffusers optional for larger spaces or when absorption alone makes things too dead.
Clap test: clap your hands and listen. No ringing or flutter? You're probably good. For precision, measure RT60 with an app like REW (Room EQ Wizard) — aim for 0.3-0.5 seconds for recording, 0.4-0.6 for listening.
Hard floors contribute to echo. A large area rug with thick pad helps. For serious studios, carpet or rugs are common, though some prefer hard floors with treatment elsewhere.