Not many people realize one of the greatest and most valuable methods for drying out and clearing a room- shelves loaded with books and other odds and ends. My workspace is a rough space of odds and ends, irregular shapes, nooks and crannies, and all sorts of places ideal for absorbing and dissipating sound waves. All those college textbooks, product manuals, books your parents bought you as gifts, anything… it’s ideal material to kill that room noise and give you a clear, dry tone ideal for sampling and recording, especially when coupled with good mic usage.
The author’s (admittedly messy) workspace. Dry as a bone! Bookshelves! Stuff! Excitement!
Now, mind you, this may not be the best approach of you’re super into being organized, but for you fellow “organized chaos” advocates out there, this stuff is really auditory gold. Take a listen to this track, with about half the elements being live recordings made in the very space pictured above.
Some good post effects and reverb and you can get a sweet sounding track in the end!
Note also the wooden, broken ceiling. The exposed beams and rough wooden surface also helps to reduce reverberance. It’s amazing what wonders an unfinished man cave can work on your recording quality… as long as the people upstairs stop stomping around.
Versilian Studios Blog 
Warning pedantry incoming 😉
I realise this post is a few years old but I’ve only just stumbled onto it so….
“Soundproofing ” is not really the right term to be using in this instance, “Soundproofing” is the practice of isolating rooms from “noise”, be it preventing external noise such as outside traffic, machinery etc or internal noise such as band rehearsal, drum kit etc from escaping the room and annoying others.
What you are describing is “acoustic treatment” through absorption and/or diffusion its a small detail but quite fundamental.
Great blog though well done !
Hey Neil,
For some reason your comment got caught in the spam filter- just fished it out. Hopefully that won’t happen again!
Thanks for the suggested correction. I wrote this about 2-3 years ago, before I understood the difference, and I typically don’t go back and edit or even look through my previous work on here (it’s a bit like a time capsule to me). I’ve changed the wording of the article title to ‘Room Treatment’.
Thanks again for your time and for reading through!
-Sam