- On this channel in countless videos now, I've hammered home. the
point that your audio matters arguably having good audio
quality is more important than having good video quality. We've looked at many different dynamic and condenser microphones, XLR interfaces and even software solutions to
hopefully improve the quality of your sound. But one thing that I always
mentioned is the actual space, the environment that you're
streaming or creating content in plays one of the biggest factors in the sound that your
microphone picks up. So in this video, we're
going to be talking about acoustic treatment for your setup which aims to reduce the reverberation and echo of your voice. And we'll be testing
three different solutions and seeing no, listening to
how much difference they make. And I would know I've owned and used many of these different types
of treatment in my time as a content creator from the
cheap stuff that you can buy from Amazon that I originally had in my old studio set up all the way up to more expensive panels that
I purchased for my new studio. And today Elgato have
introduced their new wave panels which aim to fit somewhere in the middle. Now full disclosure. I
purchased two of these sets of panels with my own money. Those are the cheap
AmazonBasics foam panels and the expensive ones
that I have up currently from GIK acoustics. Elgato did send me their
Wave Panels ahead of release for review, but no money changed
hands Elgato gets no input on the production of this video and they don't get to see
it before it goes live. This video does have a
sponsor though, and that is the Melon live streaming app. Also it's worth sticking
around to the end of the video because I'll be sharing
some bonus tips and tricks for anyone looking to improve
the acoustics of their setup for free. Let's go. (upbeat music) Melon is a new web based
live streaming studio where you can create
professional live streams in seconds with no downloads
or software needed. You can easily invite guests onto your show by just copying a link. They don't even need an
account and you can, of course customize the stream
with your own branding lower thirds and colors or backgrounds. You can even stream to four different
platforms simultaneously, right from your browser. To get started with Mellon simply visit the link
down in the description. So I think it's important to distinguish between sound absorption
and sound installation. Sound absorption is what all of these panels are designed to do. And they actually absorb the
sound waves and stop them from reflecting or echoing
back into your microphone. What they are designed to
do is to reduce the noise from sounds coming from
outside of your room. So if that's the problem
you're looking to solve you'll need to look for
sound insulation products not sound absorption products. So let's start with price. The cheap foam that
you can get from places like Amazon typically
costs between 30 and $50 for a pack of around 12
to 24 different squares or around $2 per square. For the pack I got, each square measures just
under 10 by 10 inches with a thickness of just
0.4 inches at the base of each pyramid. Elgato's new wave panels come in a kit of six larger hexagonal
panels for a hundred dollars which works out at just
under $17 per panel. These are 19 inches
wide and 16 inches tall with a thickness of 1.85 inches. Finally, the professional
treatment that I got from GIK acoustics cost me around $500 for six
panels or $65 per panel. And they're much larger
still at 24 inches wide 48 inches and 2.6 inches deep. Next, let's talk about mounting these to your wall. For the foam squares, they don't typically come with a way of mounting them to the wall,
but quite often recommended is either sticky tabs or
like an adhesive spay both of which I've had some really
awful experiences with. In my old studio, I went with
the recommended sticky tabs. Now, though they stayed in place fine. But when I actually came to removing them about six
months later, they also stripped off some of the paint when I removed them. And I've heard countless
other horror stories of people that have used adhesive sprays and really ruined their
walls when they come to remove these foam panels. So instead, what I would recommend doing for these foam panels is mounting them to something thin and
lightweight like cardboard and then mounting the
cardboard to your wall using some command strips or something that can be easily removed without damaging the wall. Elgato's Wave Panels, not
only come with the foam but also some plastic frames that are used to Mount the panels to a wall
and clips to connect multiple of these frames together
in any arrangement. Also included are two
different mounting options of either screws with roll
plugs for non smooth walls or adhesive strips for smooth walls, which similar to command
strips can be removed without damage or marks. The GIK acoustics panels
come with picture wire. So you just need to install a picture hook and then hang them from that hook. They're not solid. So they're really quite
surprisingly lightweight. The final thing that we'll
look at before jumping into the test is the
materials and design used as these should really make
the notable differences in the amount of reverberation removed. The Foam Panels that I got from Amazon might describe themselves
as Thick High Density foam but in reality, these panels
are pretty flimsy and very very easy to compress. If they were high density
and thick, as they promised they wouldn't be able to pack 24 of these into a package about this big. As I mentioned before,
at the thinnest point these panels are only
about a centimeter thick. So since they're designed to
be mounted directly to the wall I imagine we'll still
hit some reverberation at those thinness points. You can get these in pretty much any color
combinations you want and you also get different
sizes and variations on this pyramid style. Elgato's Wave Panels use two foam layers of varying densities. And overall, this feels
a lot more high quality. The Foam Panel sits on
these plastic frames which snap together into shape. This offers an air pocket behind the foam to trap
additional sound waves. On launch, you can only get
the Elgato Wave Panels in black but there are plenty of PR images coming out today showing a blue option as well. So hopefully Elgato start
to release other colors. So you can really customize and hot swap these panels in
and out to suit your setup. The GIK acoustics panels
differ as they aren't made out of foam and instead feature a
rigid rock mineral wall core for better absorption,
particularly of lower frequencies. The frames are made from plywood keeping them lightweight and
similar to Elgato's panels, they offer a big air gap
for improved performance. For reference, these panels are roughly
twice the thickness of Elgato. So they definitely do take up
more room and you can get them in pretty much any colors you desire. Right. So onto the testing now I'm going to run
four different tests here one with absolutely nothing on my walls so you can hear what my room
sounds like with no treatment. And then one for each of the
different types of panels. Now, like I mentioned before there's absolutely no chance
I'm going to ruin another wall by directly sticking the
foam panels to the wall. So instead, what I've done
is I've cut three pieces of cardboard to a similar
size of the GIK panels. And then I've stuck eight pieces of the foam to each of
the cardboard panels. It goes without saying that the Elgato panels do
offer a bit more flexibility in how you want to choose to mount them and you can sort of design them to seek some kind of aesthetic. The main thing you are
trying to achieve is to break up the large flat surface that you're most commonly talking towards. So mounting things around your mouth level
makes the most sense but obviously some aesthetic
choices can be made here too. I have no idea what YouTube
compression is going to do to the audio here. So I would highly recommend
sticking on some headphones. If you really want to
be able to differentiate between the different results. I'll also be swapping out the short SM7B which is a notably
quiet dynamic microphone for the RODE NT1 which is a more sensitive
condenser microphone, which again should help
emphasize any differences that can be heard. Right. So let's run the test keep an eye down to the bottom of the screen which will show you exactly
which test I'm running. And I'll cut these back to back to back so that you can
isolate the differences between the different acoustic treatment. This is how the studio sounds with no acoustic treatment at all. This is how the studio sounds with the cheap Amazon foam panels. This is how the studio sounds with six of Elgato's new wave panels. This is how the studio sounds with 12 of the Elgato
Wave Panels installed. This is how the studio sounds
with the GIK acoustics panels. This is how the studio sounds with no acoustic treatment at all. This is how the studio sounds with the cheap Amazon phone panels. This is how the studio sounds with six of Elgato's new wave panels. This is how the studio sounds with 12 of the Elgato
wave panels installed. This is how the studio sounds
with the GIK acoustics panels. (narrator clapping) Right. So let's talk about results. So firstly, the blank
walls I thought as expected they sounded pretty awful, definitely more noticeable when you use the
camera microphone rather than the road microphone,
which just shows how much of a difference you can make by moving a good microphone,
close to your mouth. Next step up was the Amazon panels. And not surprisingly really for me these just didn't really suffice. I'm not surprised that
they didn't make much of a difference compared
to the blank walls because I have as I said at the beginning used them before and ended up taking them down because I just
didn't like the aesthetic. And I didn't think they made enough of a difference when compared
to just even blank walls. So the next step up was
the Elgato Wave Panels. And especially I think when
we went from six panels to 12 panels, I could
really notice a difference. And that's probably because
I've got such a big flat and hard wall behind me. So I really do need that extra coverage. Probably if I played around
with the layout a little bit I could have spaced them
out and seen similar results with less panels, but I was
lucky enough to be sent 12. So I decided to use all
of them up on the wall. Now I know not everybody
is going to be able to afford $200 to put 12
of these on your wall. So I reached out to
Elgato and actually found out that you can buy the kits
of six for a hundred dollars but they're also going to
be selling expansion packs of two panels each for $40. So you can kind of get eight or 10 if you don't need quite as
many as 12 for your wall. I've got to be honest, I was kind of dreading
having to Mount these on my wall and take down the old panels. Cause I thought was going
to be an absolute bore like but it was really as
simple as they make it out in the video. They're so lightweight that just two of those sticky tabs that
come included can hold up a panel and then you can swap and rotate the foam really
quite easily once the frames are mounted to the wall. So yeah, it was a really
great experience that I wanted to point that out. Finally, then we get onto
the GIK acoustic panels which I'd spent an eye watering amount of money on a thankfully for me, I feel like there was quite a notable
difference even between 12 of Elgato's Wave Panels and
these professional panels and you'd hope so because they
cost over double the price. Now I will say that this
was definitely more notable on the camera microphone and maybe less noticeable
when you're talking about having a microphone
right up close to your mouth. Especially when I
swapped back to the shore SM7B I'd expect the
differences to be even smaller but for me it professional
content creator. This is what I do as my full-time job. It was worth the investment. I feel like, especially as
Elgato's offering wasn't on the table, when I originally moved into the studio and bought
the professional solution. It sounds from what you should do. Well, you've got to
decide for yourself based on your budget and what
your room layout is like. I would probably avoid investing
in the cheap Amazon stuff because you're probably
going to get six months down the line wish you'd
bought something better. And then you've kind of
wasted that 30 to $50 and probably ruined some of
the paint on your wall as well. So I would probably avoid that. I definitely think that the Elgato Wave
Panels are a good option and probably pretty reasonably priced. They kind of put themselves
right in the middle there with a notable improvement over the kind of foam panels that you get on Amazon but still not hitting
the high price points of professional installation
like I have done here or professional for a studio at least. It's worth pointing out here
that if you're quite handy with tools and woodwork
and things like that you could probably build some
acoustic treatment similar to these for a lot less of
the price that wasn't me. And obviously I had to get my
studio set up quite quickly. So I decided to pay for it. But I know many creators
that have built things like this for themselves no matter which acoustic
treatment you end up going for or even if you end up
building some yourself there are some bonus
tips that I put together for anybody looking to improve any aspect of their stream or content creation audio. Tip number one is if your
setup is on a hard floor such as wood or laminate it can really be beneficial
to put down a thick rug if you have one, just anything
that you can do to break up that hard surface that's beneath you will help
reduce the reverb and echo. Tip number two is if you are facing or if you have a window nearby glass is a super
reflective surface as well. So, if you can curtains that will help reduce the reverberation and echo of your voice and it will also help make
that lighting more consistent for your webcam. Tip number three is to
make sure you either choose or set your microphone up to
use a cardioid pickup pattern if you can, and make sure that you're speaking into
the right side of it. Now, the cardioid pickup
pattern is the one that looks like an upside down heart. And if you're speaking
into the right side of it that just gives your microphone
the best chance of picking up your voice and rejecting
sounds from the back which will be the reflections
of your voice from the wall. Tip number four is to try and
move your microphone closer to your mouth because this in
turn will allow you to turn down the gain of your
microphone, which will improve your signal to noise ratio,
the signal being your voice which is what you want to be
able to hear and the noise being everything that you
don't want to be able to hear. So reflections or keyboard
sounds or fan noise or things like that. So you can improve that ratio
by moving your microphone closer to your mouth. Finally, tip number five is to
make use of the audio filters that are built into
software like OBS studio or Streamlabs OBS things
like noise suppression and noise gates can make
a massive difference to the environment that
you're recording in. And the actual audio that
gets sent out to your videos or to your streams. If you want to check out any
of the products that we've talked about or tested in this video I will leave some affiliate
links down in the description below so you can check
them out if you wish to. Hopefully find this video helpful. If you did, please do give it a thumbs up. And if you're new to the
gaming careers channel have a look around at some of the videos
and consider subscribing Catching the next one, please. (upbeat music) - There are a couple of
things that Twitch did add, which are good I want to
talk about really quickly. - Is that how it is though? So I bring up all the bad
points that it comes over to you and you get to talk
about the new features. Okay. I see. - All right you be the bad guy - Bad cop Good cop. - The good. Yeah exactly. It's how we do it around.
