There's also a misconception that with soundproofing or acoustic treatments it's either all or nothing, which unfortunately keeps most people from choosing to invest in any sound materials for their room whatsoever.

The truth of the matter is that oftentimes for home recording purposes, all you really need is sound isolation. Isolating sound effectively keeps external noise from bleeding into the room you'll be recording in, and also prevents internal noise from leaking outside the room. Of course for home studios, you'll probably only be able to trap so much noise with soundproofing, given the circumstances most home studios are placed in. But even so, it's almost always adequate enough to allow you to produce professional sounding recordings.

If you have windows in your recording area, the first thing you should do (before you start thinking about wall or ceiling soundproofing) is consider window soundproofing, because soundproofing windows is usually the quickest and most effective way to reduce incoming and outgoing noise. If there's a steady stream of loud traffic outside your studio, window soundproofing will reduce the noise by about 60-80% roughly, and at that point you can evaluate whether or not you need to do wall soundproofing, which--if done correctly--can drop the outside noise levels into single decibals.

Soundproofing windows can be remarkably easy to do as well. It does depend though somewhat on the functionality of your windows, in addition to the horizontal and vertical lengths. If you have parallel windows measuring between 40-80 (or more) inches horizontally, the most efficient way to go about window soundproofing is to design a single window soundproofing unit that can simply be placed over both windows like a framed painting would be hung on a wall. Although it might sound odd, this is far easier (at least for soundproofing windows) than using multiple pieces of foam because it allows for continued easy access and functionality of the windows.