You really might not even need to make a great impulse... you can probably get away with recording response to a series of "known signals" (e.g. chirp signals p

You really might not even need to make a great impulse... you can probably get away with recording response to a series of "known signals" (e.g. chirp signals played back over a known loudspeaker), and then determining the impulse response from that, and applying that (via convolution) to your actual signal of interest.