In the first half of this article, I answered one of the most common questions in recording, "How do I get rid of background noise?" I shared some simple ways to capture clean audio to begin with, so you don't have to hassle with software noise reduction and other "fix it in the mix" hacks later. My strategy, in other words, is to fix it before the mix.

This time, I'll address another common question by going deeper into the equipment side. Below, I'll share my personal gear recommendations — microphones, mixers, power conditioners, compressors, and other recording equipment that's worked well for me. I'll also explain how you can soundproof your home studio inexpensively and effectively.

Power Conditioners: Cleaning at the Source

Power conditioners are devices that remove noise from your AC power. AC power in most cities (and especially out in the country, where I live) is dirty, filled with analog artifacts that sometimes end up in devices powered from your wall socket. Plugging a power conditioner between your wall and your gear can reduce hum, reduce noise in the signal, and just make the whole system run more smoothly.

Here's a list of power conditioners from Zzounds, an online retailer I like to deal with.

I recommend you get a power conditioner with an LED voltage meter; it's fun to watch your power surge and dip. (Most residential power fluctuates from around 114 volts to around 123 volts, depending on everything from the price of power to how many of your neighbors are running their air conditioners.)

My Furman rack-mount power conditioner, diligently cleaning the line, which apparently drooped to 116 volts today. (Click to enlarge.)

Soundproofing and Sound Treatment

There is a difference between soundproofing and sound treatment. A good recording studio, even at home, has some of each.

Soundproofing is keeping outside sounds out. Sound treatment is keeping sounds occurring inside the room from reverberating off the walls. Sound treatment is a lot easier than soundproofing. Sound treatment involves hanging a material that absorbs or diffuses sound. I find that acoustic ("egg crate") foam works best, but you can even use blankets.

An environment can be soundproof but not sound-treated; a cave would be a good example. An environment can also be sound treated but not soundproof. Lying under a blanket in a noisy factory would be a good example.

True soundproofing of a room costs thousands of dollars and involves consultants and contractors. To truly soundproof a room, the best way is to build a room within a room, with none of the walls or the ceiling of the inner room touching the walls and ceiling of the outer one, and the floor isolated with sandbags or other heavy stuff.

But you can sort of soundproof a room in a home you own pretty cheaply, with stuff from Home Depot and some elbow grease. We did this by putting three layers of plywood, with pillow batting in between, over the one window in our studio.

The window was the weak link in my home studio. With this DIY plywood sandwich in place, the outside sounds now stay out. (Click to enlarge.)

Check out my blog post, with many photos, called "How We Soundproofed Our Home Studio for 100 Bucks."

And here's how it sounds — a vocal recorded with my Zoom H2 in my studio, followed by one recorded in my reverberant, tiled kitchen. Notice the difference.

• Studio vs. Kitchen (268KB MP3)

Wall To Wall Carpet (of Sound)

To get the intimate sound I wanted for vocals, I next got extreme with carpet, the DIY substitute for acoustic foam. Not only did I nail rugs up in my closet, I nailed them to practically every surface in my studio. If you go this route, make sure you use fire-resistant rugs.

Cover the walls, ceiling and floor. You can buy the carpet, or I've heard of, um, friends, dumpster-diving clean carpet remnants from the trash bins behind a rug-laying company.

The wife nailed rugs to all walls, floor, and ceiling in a room in our home. We love it. It's not only our studio, but also our office.

If you are a renter, or don't have a dedicated room to sacrifice to the pursuit of perfect audio like we did, you can approximate the same thing by hanging up thick blankets all around you. Or you can use a DIY portable vocal booth.

My 90-square-foot home studio, before sound treatment.

The portable vocal booth is really cool, and hanging blankets to build a little acoustic fort will get the job done, but there's nothing like having a room that you just walk in and know that it's devoted only to making music or doing your podcast (or in my case, both). It makes you take your art more seriously, and I find a sound-insulated room is great for not only making music in, but listening to music in.

Our studio room is not only the place my wife and I record podcasts, do paid voiceovers, and do music; we also hang out there a lot. It's our studio, our den, and our clubhouse. We call it "The InterNest." (Debra Jean's not only supportive of my stuff, I bring her into my art too. How many wives would consider going to a podcasting expo on their wedding anniversary to be a fabulous idea? Mine does. And when we got married, I got her a ring, but I don't like to wear jewelry, so she bought me a microphone.)

We also sound-treated other rooms in the house. Applying the technique to our bedroom let us record podcasts while lying down and gazing at the mountains outside the window, a comfortable setup we call "bedcasting."

This two-mic setup is our more elaborate bedcasting configuration. Alternatively, we use a single mic stand with a Zoom H2 portable recorder.

The studio after treatment. (Righthand photo by Lydia Lam.)

Hanging out much of the time in a sound-insulated room makes your ears more sensitive. Since I've moved out to the country and also become nocturnal I've become a much better sound engineer, partially because I insulate myself so much from the noises of the common world. This can be a hassle, because it makes you more irritable with things like lawnmowers and cars blasting music you hate. But it does attune you to your art. (I have an idea for a short story about "the world's greatest record producer," whose hearing is so sensitive that the bands he records have to whisper to him. Even normal conversation is excruciating to him, and he mixes records on headphones only. Wish me luck with that. . . .)