Hardwood floor or carpet

[98_1LE]

I am looking for a house, and am wondering if carpet or hardword is best for the theater room.

[woodsman]

Carpet, without a doubt. You need something to absorb the noise. Hardwood is awesome, just not in the theater.

Jeff

[jacksonbart]

I would hardwood with area rugs, gives you more options on tweaking the room once you get everything set up.

[oldtimer]

I agree with Jacksonbart.

[oldtimer]

Basically, you are buying a house, not a home theater room. With hardwood floors you can add carpet easily. But keep the right frame of mind here: buy the house, then do the HT.

[Larry1]

I am looking for a house, and am wondering if carpet or hardword is best for the theater room.

Preferably you should have some carpet between the speakers and the listener. You don't want any sound reflections from this area. If you have two large hard surfaces like ceiling and floor to contend with, you could end up with a slight echo (floor slap) and ruin your sound quality.

[formica]

I would hardwood with area rugs, gives you

more options on tweaking the room once you get everything set

up.

Another vote for hardwood... with area rugs. I'll be going a similar route in my own audio room.

[WMcD]

I can see where Jack is coming from with the options.

I do wonder whether the options are ones that are something you would want.

I grew up in a house with hardwood floors (built in the '30s) and since then rented an apartment of similar construction.

The first thing that anyone does is get rugs with a pad. There is great expense.

Now I've got a condo with carpet and event better padding. It is very nice underfoot. Of course you could get a great rug and thick padding and accomplish the same.

I do think that carpet is going to be better acoustically just because it is wall to wall. The modern stuff is fairly stain resistant. Buy a steamer for accidents. I've got one as a first response to spills.

You might want to consider the economics. When you buy a house or condo the carpet and padding is part of the mortgage. So you can be buying some nice stuff and pay it off over the life of the mortgage. That might not be the same with area rugs you buy to put down on a hardwood floor.

Gil

[Hemihorn]

98_1LE Excellent link to properly set up your room.
http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html
"The following is from an exchange that took place in the rec.audio.pro newsgroup in May, 2003:

Bill Ruys asked: Why it is recommended to have bare (un-carpeted) floors in the studio? One web site I visited mentioned that a bare floor was a prerequisite for the room design with diffusers and absorbers on the ceiling, but didn't say why. I'm trying to understand the principal, rather than following blindly.

Paul Stamler: Carpet typically absorbs high frequencies and some midrange, but does nothing for bass and lower midrange. Using carpet as an acoustic treatment, in most rooms, results in a room that is dull and boomy. Most of the time you need a thicker absorber such as 4-inch or, better, 6-inch fiberglass, or acoustic tile, and you can't walk around on either of those. Hence the general recommendation that you avoid carpet on the floor and use broadband absorbers elsewhere.

Lee Liebner: the human ear is accustomed to determining spatial references from reflections off of side walls and floor, and a low ceiling would only confuse the brain with more early reflections it doesn't need. Everywhere you go, the floor is always the same distance away from you, so it's a reference that your brain can always relate to.

John Noll: Reasons for having wood floors: they look good, equipment can be rolled easily, spills can be cleaned up easily, provide a bright sound if needed, sound can be deadened with area rugs.

Ethan Winer: In a studio room, versus a control room, a reflective floor is a great way to get a nice sense of ambiance when recording acoustic instruments. Notice I said reflective, not wood, since linoleum and other materials are less expensive than wood yet sound the same. When you record an acoustic guitar or clarinet or whatever, slight reflections off the floor give the illusion of "being right there in the room" on the recording. It's more difficult to use a ceiling for ambiance - especially in a typical home studio with low ceilings - because the mikes are too close to the ceiling when miking from above. And that proximity creates comb filtering which can yield a hollow sound. So with a hard floor surface you can get ambiance, and with full absorption on the ceiling you can put the mike above the instrument, very close to the ceiling, without getting comb filtering."

[TheSoundBroker]

Basically, you are buying a house, not a home theater room. With hardwood floors you can add carpet easily. But keep the right frame of mind here: buy the house, then do the HT.

PAH! You are buying a home theater first...the house is always secondary! Jeez...some people just have their priorities screwed up []

[Gilbert]

I would hardwood with area rugs, gives you more options on tweaking the room once you get everything set up.

Ditto, that's what I've done. Carpet's okay, but I prefer HW floors or tile with some nice oriental rugs.

[artto]

The correct answer isIt depends

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It depends on what kind of speakers youre using, type, size, height of the mid/treble drivers, etc.

It depends, on the room, its size, proportions, and especially ceiling height.

It depends on what the room is actually used for. Is this a dedicated room or to be shared with other uses? The amount and kind of furniture and other accessories in the room can greatly influence acoustics (to your advantage or disadvantage depending on how you use them).

I can only speak for myself, but heres my scenario. I use Khorns. I have a reasonably well proportioned room. The room is (IMO) approximately the minimum size required for near maximum performance from the speakers. Khorns are rather tall speakers. In most residential environments built the last 50 years or so, generally speaking, the typical ceiling height is 8. This is too low for Khorns. Youll get near field reflections off of it. Khorns would rather see at least a 10 ceiling. IMO a hardwood (or some kind of solid surface) floor would be best for Khorns, especially because of the trihedral corner basshorn which uses, at least partly, the floor as part of the speaker structure. I didnt have the opportunity to have 10 ceiling at the time or to turn it into one. So the compromise was to carpet the floor. This was done only after extensive experimentation using dozens of smaller sections of rug remnants which can be purchased very cheaply or for nothing at all. I also went with carpeting because I didnt want to put much of anything on the ceiling so I could create an illusion of greater height. Sometimes the visual illusion is more powerful than the actual result.

In general, IMO the trick is to keep the room as live as possible, while keeping all the reflections under control and as diffused as possible, with enough delay between the direct sound from the speakers and the primary first reflections that so you are hearing mostly the sound from the speakers instead of the rooms influence on the sound from the speakers. On the other hand if the delay is too long, echo-like qualities will begin to develop as the ear begins to hear two distinct sounds.

So I guess, Id say start out with hard floor surfaces. Go to a carpet place and ask if you can have some of the remnants they were going to through out. Move them around. Pile them up. See what sounds best. And then get the real thing as you like and where you like it.