Audio room floor question


I know this question has come up before but please indulge me. I'm adding on and am building a room that will serve as my HiFi room. I'm not going the "professional" route but I do want to make the room as HiFi friendly as possible. The dimensions are set so I can't do anything about that. I have a heavy concrete floor poured. What is the best floor covering? I could use hardwood glued, floating hardwood, linoleum, or I could just leave it concrete and add area rugs and pads. I don't want to use carpet as there will be a hallway and an outside door that will bring in snow and mud. Thanks
catfishbob
I'm sure they put a vapor barrier under the concrete with the 'in floor' heating present. Any hard flat surface will reflect the sound waves rather than absorb and create distortion so the rugs should tame some of that.
Plan your room before sealing up the walls so you can run chases for the wiring. If you have a turntable this a good time to 'let in' a half sheet of 3/4 plywood into the studs before sheetrock. Then you can wall mount the turntable shelf and it will be solid as a rock and completely isolated from vibrations.
If your laying hardwood over concrete, then I would put down cork as a barrier between the concrete and the wood. Can you raise your ceiling; this would open up the sound, giving it room to travel. What about your walls? Are you using electrostatic panels?

Here's an interesting read about acoustics in Boston's Symphony Hall;

http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/articles/seen-and-heard-boston-symphony-hall
Zenblaster.......Yes they poured the floor over what looked like 2 inches of foam insulation. I assume that you a floor with the most absorption the best. I wonder about the very hard finishes of the new hardwood floors. If this would be detrimental. Good idea about the plywood for a TT stand. Yes we are planning the wiring. Thanks.

Goofyfoot......We had to actually sink the floor to give us sufficient ceiling height. I'm thinking of doing a double sheetrock wall with "Greenglue" between the sheets. No I am not using electrostatic panels. the article was very interesting. It actually scared the heck out of me!
What about tile? Any soft surface, like floating wood flooring cannot be improved upon or "tuned" once installed. Yes, tile is hard, but is a good, solid, surface that can be "tuned" with area rugs to your liking. Nothing wrong with the raw stained concrete though for the same reason. You are on the right track with doubling up the sheet rock. You want a solid non spongy wall, and the floor is no different. I'd rather start with a solid, hard room that I could tune than with something already spongy.