Need some advice please.
I have a suspended floor in a room over the garage consisting of a layer of plywood and then wall to wall carpet. The room is 17X 25 feet. The speakers are currently on Herbie gliders on the carpet. Tried spiking through the carpet but I think I prefer the gliders. I’m considering taking up the now rather old wall to wall carpet and installing hardwood flooring with a large area rug but not under the speakers or electronics. Would this be a worthwhile endeavor regarding sound quality? Would hardwood flooring significantly stiffen up the floor?
Thinking @Dan_M may have valuable insight.
I have a hardwood floor over a suspended floor on the 2nd floor of my nearly 100 yr old house. It also has a rug but my speakers don’t stand on it. I use isoAcoustics Gaia II as feet for my speakers and recommend highly that you do the same (Gaia I, II, or III, depending on your speakers).
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I use the AV Room Service EVP’s, four per side for the ProAc K6 Signatures. I started with the Herbie’s Fat Glider and like them very much. The EVP’s work better with the heavier bass of the K6 Signature.
Hi @jsaudio
Doesn’t really matter what flooring you have, the movement will be in the joists.
The only thing that would steady it more would to put a steel joist under the floor half way in the garage area if there is not one already in but that gets expensive for what you want to achieve.
Try josquindesprez’s advice.
Thanks
Mark
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Townshend podiums solved my problem with my R6 Arrete Gaias didn’t work or slabs under the speaker
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I believe the best practice is to have a section specific to the equipment using a hard floor.
Then, the listening area using a soft carpeted and furnished area. Ideally with some means to then separate the hard floor energy using a compliant disruptive material.
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This was a consideration for me when I was moving house. Fortunately I had time to renovate the new house before I sold the old one but went from solid floor to suspended. It was my intention to go full solid but didn’t want to create a damp issue in the dividing wall with my neighbour. So, I ripped the old floorboards up(made a desk out of them), reset the joists in the wall and built two brick and paving slab pillars under the joists where I intended my gear to go, The joists were tied together with a scaffold board which the pillars(inc damp membrane) supported. I then netted the underside of all the joists and filled with loft insulation. New floor of 22mm interlocking chipboard, expanding foam adhesive in joints and screwed down. Underlay, carpet. Then made speaker plinths. Glued together 18 and 10mm plywood, mahogany surround on all sides, painted satin black, drilled underneath, threaded hex nuts bonded in, Spiked. Then in the surround 20 mm inserts of polished granite sat on thin anti slip rubber matting. My Linn composite bases sit spiked in cloth backed metal cups on said granite… you still awake ?? 
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Cement board, glued and screwed down to the original floor, and then put your new floor down on top off that. This makes a massive difference to a wooden floor.
Then glue the new solid wood floor down to the Cement board.
The Cement board is 6mm think by the way, an not the 12mm stuff that you use insoff plaster board for walls.
What does the cement board do Dunc, is this damping, stiffening, absorption or what. I have a bouncy floor that I need to take a look at later this year.
I use it under tiles when tiling on a wooden floor.
But it certainly stiffens up the floor structure, more density.
It also helps remove the sping in the floor.
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My main rig is in a bedroom so suspended floor. I’ve experimented with tiles, boards etc. but have found that my speakers (Scansonic MB5) are just best on the carpet and they don’t have sharp spikes, just rounded ones and once they have settled are pretty rigid.
Tim
This is the problem. The entire floor structure moves. Not a lot you can do about this. I don’t think gliders/spikes/cups, etc, will make much difference. I had a concrete slab floor in my first house and the system sounded amazing. For the last 30 years, I’ve had suspended floors and, frankly, my system doesn’t sound anything like how much it cost me!
Very difficult one this, so many variables.
My listening space is on the top floor of our house, a few years ago we reconfigured that level and noticed when removing the chipboard flooring the joists at one gable end ran in a different direction to the other.
Before replacing the chipboard with 22mm mdf I screwed batons along the joists ( giving clearance for the electrics below) which supported 5mm mdf on which to put rock wool acoustic slabs.
I glued rubber strips to the top of joists and when placing 22 mdf screwed with rubber sleeves.
After considerable research, I purchased a pair of Townshend Podiums, on which my Kudos T88 Titans sit.
I’m very happy with the results, but it was the Podiums that were transformational for me.
Have you tried isolating the speakers? (I use stillpoints but have used isoacoustics in the past) I can not sit barefoot with my feet on the floor and there is no vibration, it basically removes the floor from the equation (apart from reflections of course!)
i had a similar issue, when we renewed the carpet i installed exactly 1000 extra screws into the hard wood floor boards, took all day with 2 close friends, was a complete nightmare of a job but the return was ten fold. by the end of it i never thought just touching a screw could hurt so much……
btw each screw was countersunk into very hard NZ Rimu wood.
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