Carpet vs wood for sound quality...

[ImcLoud]

I have a quick question for you guys..
When I built my house we covered the hand scraped thick plank wood floors in my front parlor and rear living room with carpet, since the kids are young and we were doing lots of moving around, the plan was to wait until the kids were less destructive and remove the carpet to reveal the wood..
Anyway yesterday my wife mentioned removing the carpet, and Im wondering how this is going to effect my sound...

 

[SearchofSub]

From what I heard, hardwood floors would do alot of reflectios of the sound which would ultimately give you incorrect imaging. But with EQ and good room correction, it might work.

 

[fuzz092888]

Do you know what's under the wood floors? I'm guessing you have plenty of insulation under there so that would help. Plus if you put a thick rug, or any rug under the coffee table that would probably help as well. The room appears to have a bunch of "stuff" in it, like chairs, couches and other things so there's not a ton of floor exposed. I'm guessing you won't notice a huge difference or possibly any depending on if you put down a rug or not.

The floor surface matters more when you have bigger and/or more open spaces where large areas of a hard floor are exposed. Then you can really get some nasty reflections.

 

[Whitey80]

im withFuzz. pull up that ugly carpet and enjoy that beautiful wood! In that room, you wont notice any difference in sound quality

 

[ImcLoud]

The room is around 440 sq feet, in the pic you can see the front half behind that couch is a bar area also full of furniture. Under the carpet is the wood, then the sub floor then insulation then a finished plaster ceiling..

My wife will have no problem picking a rug for the room, which is why I was kind of on the edge of ripping the carpet up, just to put a rug back down.... The wood will look much better, the kids don't even go on that side of the house, its the formal dining room, my office, that front parlor and a pair of entry ways, that no one uses, one goes to a porch that doesn't go to the yard at all, the other is the front door that we only use for letting in guests, even the pizza delivery guy uses the garage side entry...

Well it looks like that may be an upcoming project, before thanksgiving, to rip up the carpet, its only held down with double sided tape but moving everything from them rooms is going to be the hard part, my entire HT setup 7 couches, 2 desks, 2 juke boxes, the clocks, my music system, the entire bar, its definitely not as easy as it looks...

thanks guys..

 

[cpp]

I've got both, and really once you get your speakers in that "right position" and if you use a little room treatment (rugs, curtains, furniture placement or actual sounds traps etc..) to me it sounds the same.

 

[lsiberian]

I think hardwood floors are ideal for a formal area. Wood actually is more absorbent than is often realized. It's what your speakers are made out of after all. I do think having a decoupler is a good idea. It helps tighten bass in my experience.

 

[Adam]

pull up that ugly carpet and enjoy that beautiful wood!

That's signature worthy.