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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
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,249 posts
 
As with Mapman,Mesch and Rrog my floor is carpet and pad over concrete. The acoustics in this room are exceptionally good IMHO.
Regards,
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,059 posts
 
I use both bottom ported OHM Walsh speakers and rear ported Dynaudio monitors. The thin carpet and pad over concrete floor prevents a lot of bass interaction with the floor, especially with the bottom ports. When I use same speakers on the floor above with typical modern plywood flooring under similar carpet, bass can be overwhelming and harder to get under control.

I've also used front ported B&W P6 floorstanders and Magnepan planars in same rooms. Maggies were the least sensitive to flooring type sound wise for sure, but harder to get clean full extended bass out of. Much less interaction with the floor acoustics it seemed with those.
mesch
3,452 posts
 
Thanks all! Based on your feed back I think I will leave well enough alone. I was hoping to avoid installing a wood floor but was willing to try it out if other's found it beneficial. Enjoy the interaction this forum provides, and this thread in particular.
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