When we bought our house the ground floor was covered with fitted carpet. It was fairly cheap stuff, so we soon hauled it out only to have a “wow” moment as we discovered that underneath was wonderful parquet flooring in most of the rooms. It’s proper stuff laid in a herringbone pattern with matching edging and with subtly different woods in each room. No music system was going to make us cover it up again, so in the lounge, where the hifi resides, we have a rug on part of the floor in front of the speakers as well as other soft furnishings. To my eyes this enhances the appearance of the room and to my ears the only problem with the SQ I’m getting is that I spend too much time sitting listening to music.
I’m jealous of your parquet! I once laid some using reclaimed blocks in our last house, and getting it right was a labour of love. I wouldn’t expect it to cause problems with acoustics, as it’s pretty solid, and it’s normally glued firmly onto the solid floor below.
Wise words, Peakman. It must have been a brilliant find. The good thing of proper floors is that they get only better when they get older. Did you also find false / lowered ceilings?
Carpet (the thicker the better!) is usually best for sound quality. Hard flooring adds to the reflections that muddy the sound. My sister-in-law won the argument in their house and they put in real oak flooring. Within a year they had bought a large, thick rug covering most of the floor not covered by furniture…
However, it’s surprised how often hard floors without rugs feature in the system pics thread!
I use a combination of solid wooden Oak floor around where the speakers and HiFi sit - and a fitted carpet between the speakers and the listening area. It sounds good IMO and I did this deliberately as I find carpets can also cause problems - as well as benefit.
The first early reflection to be careful with is from the floor between speaker and listener and it does help having a good carper there to control that.
But otherwise all the multiple reflections around and behind the speakers I found benefited greatly from hard surfaces to make the reflections more linear as they get dispersed into the room - it sounds far more natural and less shut-in which I don’t personally like.
But then to the side and especially behind the listener a combination of mainly refracting stuff, like bookcases and shelves with some absorbing items in them works really well, as the rear reflection needs some control, but not elimination.
It is compromise and willingness to experiment to get the sound you want that is needed. So a wood floor with strategic-placed carpet between speakers and listening position - and carefully placed large furniture to reflect and absorb can work very well. The size and position of the main listening seat - for me a large settee - also made an important contribution to obtaining the balance I wanted, as it allows you to control the absorption in the room.
I use no traps or other treatment - but I did go for the environment behind and around the speakers to be clear and spartan as that makes a large difference. Anything that can vibrate will and you want it just your drive units and clean reflections is what I found.
We have our satin finished oak boards glued onto a ground floor concrete surface. Only a smallish room so any ringing if I clap loudly is very short.
I much prefer it over the old carpet. Looks nicer and much easier to keep clean.
Sound wise, I like it a bit lively. For my ears having minute reflections seems more natural. At very loud volumes I get a saturated effect from too much bouncing around, but I had that problem slightly less with the carpet - and I don’t have it so loud very often anyways.
With the wood floor you can always play about with rugs placed strategically.
Reflections are good ! You try whistling your favourite tune in the bathroom and notice how much better it sounds.
I went from a carpet to a real wooden floor. We do also have a rug in central area. The room was very live, but once we put the sofas, bookshelfs etc back the room the room was fine - in fact I thought my system sounded better. I just installed Isoacoustics Gaia 1s last week which made further improvements.
Overall net the room is a little more ‘live’ with wooden floors, but it seemed to improve the sound. Adding furniture and a rug. damps the liveleness a lot.
interestingly i do the sound mixing in a fairly big old church like that . with a good variety of instruments and vocalists . great fun but challenging
I have 2 listening rooms . one has wooden floor with a rug , one has carpets , sofas and overdamped . i find i can listen longer in the overdamped room but i enjoy both
Yes it is challenging. Sometimes when I have a wedding service as organist they hire a gospel band and it is indeed challenging. Many churches were build having good accoustics in mind so they are an instrument by itself. Same applies to normal accoustic concerthalls and theatres or course.
The organist and composer J. S. Bach was known for his ‘soundchecking’ when he visited other cities to check out the new organs and churches. He started by clapping in the building and talking in various directions to test the accoustics.
Parquet over unsprung supports is pretty good actually. I had a similar experience years back. Previous owners had glued the underlay of a nasty fogeyish carpet to lovely parquet and I spent a weekend scraping it off and polishing. Sounded good with one rug.
Quite a few recording studios go for parquey. Much to my surprise. The varying density of the different wood types and different grain alignments greatly reduces the resonant effects that can be had with floorboards.
We recently put engineered timber boards down on top of our wooden floorboards. We like a wooden floor but at ground level the original boards are above a solum, so it can be draughty. An underlay with engineered timber keeps the look and feel but is acoustically quite dead.
But the OP said they just switched to wooden floors. Why would they go back?
Worth noting that for every person who likes wall to wall carpet, there are those that hate it and vice versa. I grew up thinking carpet was the norm and wood floors horrid. But that was largely born out of living in old English homes with terrible quality floorboards that had gaps in for pennied to fall down and spiders to crawl up. Back then, boards were cold comfort farm and carpet was civilisation. Now I’ve lived without carpet in most of the home for 20 years, I can’t imagine going back. I can swap out the rugs as mood suits and send them to be cleaned each year without moving much, if any, furniture.
In one place I had a poured concrete floor and even preferred that to carpet if I’m honest.
Nothing wrong with carpet. It just isn’t everyone’s bag.
What do you mean by a “sprung floor”? We have a suspended timber floor over the basement. Oak planks on plywood on framing. Nothing wobbles. Sure, it isn’t like concrete, but it is fine. But if we ever re-do the flooring, I’ll skin over the top with glued ply and floorboards to make it thicker and stiffer.
I still do. I have never really liked wooden floors: no problem if others like them. Poured concrete appeals, but I’d get Axminster to carpet it if it were me. My cottage has a concrete floor underneath the carpet. Unfortunately floorboards upstairs, though not as bad as you describe, again with Axminster carpet. The kitchen and bathrooms have ceramic floor tiles. No plants or animals in the cottage and I clean the carpets regularly so no problem with allergens. I guess it is what you are used, but having had a wooden floor in a previous dwelling I would not want to go back.
A sprung floor is exactly how it sounds. It is mounted on some sort of shock absorbing frame. That can be engineered into the woid itself using plywood leafsprings, actual metal springs or (in my case) the floor is on 10cm virtical poles with silicone dampers.
It’s very popular for gymnasiums as it reduces knee injuries but in the past 20 years gas become a bit of an epidemic for new build domestic properties. I asked our builder why and he didn’t shy from the truth, “the wives want it and people think they need it to pretect kids”.
We both rolled our eyes at the same time. I’ve put my foot down and never doing it again.
Absolutely right, just ordered a couple of vicoustic for Christmas…
