RoomTone Scan Results Score: 34/100 | Bass: Moderate | Echo: Very High | Voice Clarity: Poor (2/10)
A voice clarity score of 2 out of 10. That's what the app returned for this room.
For context: most bedrooms scan around 5 or 6. A good home studio might hit 8 or 9. A score of 2 means the room is actively working against every word you say.
The owner of this room — a consultant who runs back-to-back video calls all day — put it like this: "My clients keep asking me to repeat myself. I thought it was my mic. Turns out it was the whole room."
This room started life as a guest bedroom. Laminate floors, one small rug that doesn't go anywhere near the desk, bare walls on three sides, a window with venetian blinds. When it became a home office, the furniture changed but the acoustics didn't. Nothing in the room is absorbing sound. Everything is bouncing it back.
The scan came in at 34 out of 100. That's in the "Poor" range — a room that's measurably making your calls, recordings, and focused work harder.
Here's what's happening and how to fix it.
What the Scan Found
Excessive reverb time. This is the main problem. In a well-treated room, sound decays quickly after the source stops. In this room, sound lingers — bouncing between the hard floor, bare walls, and ceiling before it finally dies out. To a microphone, this sounds like you're calling from a tiled hallway. To a listener, your voice sounds hollow and indistinct.
Parallel wall flutter. Left wall and right wall are bare, parallel, and reflective. Sound bouncing between them creates a fast, repeating flutter echo — audible as a brightness or "ring" in the room.
Voice clarity 2/10. The combination of reverb and flutter means spoken words lose their consonants. The t, d, s, and k sounds that give speech intelligibility get washed out. People ask you to repeat yourself not because your connection is bad — because the room is garbling your voice before it ever reaches the mic.
The Three Fixes
1. An Acoustic Desk Pad (fastest fix)
The desk surface is a major reflector that almost nobody thinks about. It's large, flat, hard, and positioned directly in front of your face — right between you and your microphone. Sound from your voice bounces off it and back into the mic, adding an extra layer of reverb to everything you say.
An acoustic desk pad is a thick mat that covers most of your desk surface. It's designed to absorb this specific reflection, and it makes a surprisingly immediate difference to call quality.
What to look for: At least half an inch of density, covering the majority of the desk. Not just a thin mousepad.
Recommended: Acoustic Desk Pad (Amazon) [affiliate link] — oversized format, dense foam core, looks professional on camera.
2. A Bookshelf Behind Your Camera (medium-high impact)
In video call rooms, the wall directly behind you — the one that shows on camera — is also the wall behind your screen. Sound from your voice travels forward, hits that wall, and bounces back into the mic.
A bookshelf filled with books is one of the most effective acoustic diffusers you can add to a room without buying anything acoustic. Irregular surfaces (book spines at varying depths, objects on shelves) scatter sound rather than reflect it cleanly, which reduces reverb without deadening the room.
You don't need a dedicated acoustic product here. A real bookshelf filled with real books, positioned behind your monitor or camera, addresses both the reflection problem and looks intentional on camera.
Bonus: Books with varied heights and depths work better acoustically than evenly arranged shelves.
3. Two Panels Behind the Monitor (medium impact)
Most people think to treat the wall behind them on video calls. The wall behind the monitor — which is also directly behind your screen — matters just as much.
Two acoustic panels at roughly ear height on the wall behind your monitor will catch the first reflection off that surface and significantly reduce reverb time. This is where you get the most acoustic return per square foot of panel.
What to look for: Fabric-wrapped panels, at least 2 inches thick, ideally 2x2 feet or larger. Placement matters more than quantity here.
Recommended: GIK Acoustics 242 Panel [affiliate link] — absorbs across voice frequencies, looks intentional rather than DIY.
What Happens After
These three changes — desk pad, bookshelf, two panels — address the voice clarity problem directly. In testing similar rooms, the score typically moves from the low-30s into the mid-50s, and voice clarity scores jump from 2-3 up to 6-7.
More practically: people stop asking you to repeat yourself.
The consultant who shared this room made all three changes in a weekend. Their follow-up: "My next call, a client actually said I sounded different. Better. I didn't tell them what I'd done."
That's what treating the right surfaces does to a call room.
Try It in Your Room
A home office has a different acoustic profile than a living room or a bedroom — and the fixes are specific to how you use the space. The fastest way to know what your room actually needs is to scan it.
Want to see your room score? Scan it free in the RoomTone app.