Sound room, bare floors or wall to wall carpet?

im planning on restoring the floor in my sound room (family room devoted to my audio system) and not sure whether to go with vinyl flooring or wall to wall carpet, over a concrete laid floor. It had very thick w t w carpet once, kind of a dead sound room, took out the carpet last year, which turned the room into an echo chamber, cured only by a mismatch of scatter rugs over broken and missing old asbestos
Armstrong tile from the 60s. Hi m not sure whether going with thin w t w carpet or vinyl flooring with scatter rugs over, would sound best. On a tite budget with 600 sq ft to cover.

 

Thick wall to wall carpet -- unbacked -- over a thick jute pad, can have sonic pluses and minuses, but for the most part it's only going to be very absorptive down to around the A above middle C with some absorption down to middle C, so it will definitely effect the room's frequency balance, letting any low frequency ringing ring freely while damping the highs. Unless you do some bass trapping, and probably bass trapping that's reflective at high frequencies, that kind of wall to wall carpeting may through the room's frequency balance off. If you use latex backed carpet, it still will only work at those high frequencies but it won't be quite as absorptive. If you just use plain carpet on concrete, without the thick underpadding, you'll only absorb the very high frequencies, really from like 1kHz, and barely effective below that.

I think unbacked area rugs (ideally over thick cotton pads), combined with bass trapping, and first reflection point panels are better than wall to wall carpet and no other room treatments. I understand you're on a tight budget so I'd say set up the room so you can add things over time. You really want to do more than just deaden high or upper mid and high frequencies, which may kill apparent echoes and especially flutter echoes, but still leave the room kind of boomy from bass standing waves. You want the reverb time in the room to relatively consistent across the whole audible range. If you're planning on doing absolutely no room treatments of any sort beside the carpeting, maybe the unbacked rugs over the vinyl floor will be the least intrusive, affecting only the highest frequencies.

 

Big area yute rug in front of the speakers; worked for me, rest of the floor is hardwood over concrete but the room has plenty of furniture. Listening area is free though. Good luck !

 

Another vote for bare floors with area rugs.

 

Wall to wall carpet for most rooms but you really need to shoot it to be sure.

 

I used to have this in my old place and I liked the sound. Now I have wall to wall carpeting and while there are some positive aspects, I find that the overall sound is something I am still getting used to, even six months later.

 

I like a live of lively room sound. My fear is that putting wtw carpet in will deaden the room, which already has it's challenges being 20 x20 ft square.

 

I recently moved, so my main system went from an upstairs room with hardwood floors and a rug to one with bare terrazzo floors. Granted it's a small room, but I like the sound of the bare floors compared to before. The sound "jumps out" more.

I'm hoping to get a rug in there eventually, but more for comfort than for sound treatment.

 

Generally a wall to wall carpet is great for a music room with a lack of furnishings. The area rug in front of the speakers will also work, but needs to be a large area rug, maybe a 12 ft x 12 ft. Your large square room will benefit by treating the walls in the near field. (very important) It is better to remove early reflections, and allow the back of the room to be brighter. Also for the large square dimensions, treat the walls asymmetrically, which will help reduce any echo flanging effect.. a highly destructive kind of echo. For example, drapery on part of the back wall may be very beneficial to the overall echo decay in your room.

I use the handclap method for testing the echo quality and decay. In the ideal room, the handclap should sound sharp and treble, followed by a smooth 0.25 to 1 second decay. (time depending on size of the room.. the decay needs to be smooth) If you hear a discrete echo (bad) or rapid bouncing around of echo, (worse than bad) your room needs sound absorbtion. If you hear a flanging effect, a very fast "ripple" and "phasey" kind of echo, this is devastating to the sound in your room.

good luck.. start by experiment with the hand clap, at or near your listening position, and where you plan to locate the speakers,
Steve VK

 

You should aim for about 1/3 reflective, 1/3 absorbent and 1/3 refractive surfaces, it's a rough rule of thumb consideration. Since you have 6 surfaces in most rooms, one surface ( the floor ) being completely cover is a good start.

 

wood flooring with a throw rug in the middle

 

There are differences between a 'lively' room and one that creates excessive echo and reflections. Strictly speaking, fewer reflections will result in a clearer & more focused soundstage & imaging truer to the original recording. Any speakers used in poor acoustic spaces will smear the sound, no matter how fabulous the rest of the system is.

It all depends how you like your sound (you mention lively). I prefer carpet but if you do decide to go with rugs on a vinyl floor then a useful approach is to get a largish mirror to help find the first reflection points.....

Put it in various places on the floor & where you see the speakers from your preferred seating position, try to have a rug at that point to soften first reflections.

Likewise, if someone can help and move the mirror along the side walls, again while you are seated in the listening position, where you also see the speakers (especially the position of tweeters) are good places to put something to break up reflections - canvas (not glass) pictures, wall hangings or bookshelves, music storage racks etc. Dedicated acoustic panels would be best of course.

 

This every time. There is no way IF you have a choice, in thinking of a room for sound that you would choose carpet over a hard floor, ever.

 

If you have cracked asbestos tiles I'd get those looked at before considering flooring options.

 

This again, simply because it will give you more options in the future.

Who's to say you won't find another pair of speakers that will sound better with one or the other flooring choices? And you can change the rug out, too.

Bonus.
Accesso-rize.

 

I was going to get carpet in my Music and Movie room in our new house.
That would have been the only room in the house with Carpet.
I was talking with my Audio Dealer and he suggested Cork.
I read up on it some and am happy I went with it. The room now doesn't look different from the rest of the house (hardwood).
I also put a 5x7 rug in front of the listening chairs and it all sounds very good I think.

 

no need to think.............if it sounds good to you.....it sounds good.

 

Good advice folks - we just had our house redone with hardwood floors and while I have yet to put the rig back together I've been thinking about what it's going to sound like. My room has a vaulted ceiling that angles away from the end of the room where the sound system is located, almost like a bellows.

 

I prefer wall to wall.

 

I've been advised to leave the old tiles in place and just go over them with whatever I choose to put down. I've gotten rid of any loose or broken ones, best not to disturb the asbestos vinyl tiles.

 

All good advice. I have a lot of things on the walls, mostly framed prints and artwork, which may or may not help. The speakers and system have a brick wall and glass enclosed fireplace behind them. I had thick spongy wtw carpet before, which made the room pretty dead sounding I think. Would indoor/outdoor carpet, no padding, be different?

 

I concur.But doesn't any flat reflective surface suck?
How does your spectrum analyzer react to reflective surfaces Tim?

 

nothing good about wall to wall carpet in terms of acoustic

 

This. Allows you to play around with the sound and appearance a bit. Some speakers/rooms are more sensitive to reflections from floor than others.

 

Yes big flat reflective surfaces will always be a problem.
My FFT spectrum analyzer will oscillate off the screen if one of the mic's gets within 14" of an untreated floor. A spike at 16,300Hz is unavoidable even using an off-axis response.
I suppose thats why anechoic chambers are designed the way they are, although there far too flat sounding for my personnel listening pleasure.