Best flooring for speakers?

[Rob.]

I doubt whether you will have any. FWIW my room approx 28'*16' has plasterboard splodge walls, a large Window at one end and double French windows at the other. The floor is light oak over concrete. The room sounds 'dead' almost anechoic. I think its because the large area of plaster board absorbs a lot of sound. I can actually feel the walls vibrating when I play music so it is being absorbed.

Cheers,

DV

I was wondering if plasterboard walls would have a damping effect as its quite a soft material. Is your flooring the floating type or screwed down? as I have visions of the flooring resonating to the music

 

[Darth Vader]

I was wondering if plasterboard walls would have a damping effect as its quite a soft material. Is your flooring the floating type or screwed down? as I have visions of the flooring resonating to the music

The flooring is 'floating' over a special foam/metallised underlay. The bass from my Shahinians goes deeeeep and you can feel the bass notes through the foundations but no rattle nor buzz.

Cheers,

DV

 

[Mike Reed]

Lewis, what is the bass response of the Shahinians you've got? I know these speakers are very popular, partly because of the bass, but in such a small box, I wonder......

 

[Daniel Quinn]

Have you considered some new materials for your floor. Peek, corin, constrained layer damping,acrylic or aerolam ?

 

[James]

The flooring is 'floating' over a special foam/metallised underlay. The bass from my Shahinians goes deeeeep and you can feel the bass notes through the foundations but no rattle nor buzz.

If you can feel bass through the 'foundations', they are vibrating. That means you have sub-woofery to make George Lucus proud or your house is structurally flexible.

 

[RustyB]

Of course if you live in the Wellington region, it might just be an earthquake. Hard to tell.

 

[S-Man]

I just want to get some opinions on what people think is the best floor covering for speakers.

I am having some work done & we are up to the flooring, I have the choice of wood flooring with the odd rug here & there or carpet either off the roll or carpet tiles. The walls & ceiling are plasterboard & while wooden flooring would probably look the best I can't help thinking it will just cause problems later on with sound reflections.

'Speakers' is the key word here.
Have a think about how people sound when speaking in different room types. IMO grand-designs type rooms sound hard, cold and echoey, whereas people sound natural in more traditionally furnished rooms.
Of course the ear/brain is rather good at filtering out the nasties, so one way to get around this is to record people speaking in a room and play it back through headphones - then it's quite easy to hear the effect of the room.

Once you have room that sounds OK with natural sounds then you can consider reproduced sound. Optimisation of the position of the speakers is largely trial and error as is the mechanical interface to the floor. I personally prefer my speakers' plinths sat on the carpet rather than spikes through to the concrete suspended floor.

 

[Rob400]

There is much bollocks talked about room acoustics. Personally I prefer a carpeted floor as first reflections are less, but a wooden, non absorbent floor can be taimed with rugs to some extent.

The reverberation time of a room with all solid surfaces gets too high for me.

The overall sound depends greatly on the room dimensions.

Heavy curtains or traps can reduce the revereration time satisfactorily.

Excellent post IMO.

FWIW I use the same speakers as DV in a similar sized room with the same positive result. The room has plenty of Oak furniture in it, I have a couple of canvas type artworks on the walls and very heavy curtains at the window. Even with omni directional speakers the rule that more direct and less reflective sound is better still applies in my system.