Hardwood Floors?

[Race Car Driver]

I have an older house, and recently found out there are hardwood floors under the carpet in my living room.
Im thinking I may end up yanking the carpet and refinishing them after the snow thaws. (twas a high of -6 deg today with a -37 windchill..... :roll: )

Now my question is what will this do to the sound in my room? I was thinking of an area rug in the center of the rug infront of the TV, but having the 802s on the hardwood floor.

The plan is to have rest of the room treated on the walls, corners and bass traps, and thinking i want the hardwood floors regardless of what it will do to my sound.

Curious if anyone has gone through a similar switch and how it affected their listening experience.

[Burke Strickland]

Hardwood floors can be beautiful, but because they are highly reflective compared to carpet, they typically tend to make the room much more "live" with echoes and reflections. If the rest o the room has hard surfaces, the overall effect is to make the sound rather "bright", the midrange "muddy" and the bass overly "boomy". In extreme cases, the sound stage might even seem to have "collapsed".

Area rugs, upolstered furnishings, plants and wall treatments with irregular surfaces, as well as bookshelves with items not all at the same plane, can help. Also carpet squares in front of the speakers can help if the floor seems to reflect too much. Just avoid glass topped coffee tables, hard plastic vertical blinds, etcetera, which would also tend to be highly reflective.

I've witnessed a setup in a "live" room with all the ill effects described above where a simple change of speaker wire made a huge difference. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it, because I was expecting no real change. Especially since I had brought over the "new" cable and had heard no such dramatic difference in my own listening room. But although the room slap-echoes were still there since nothing else had changed, the sound was a lot more enjoyable to listen to after the "switch".

So go ahead and try the combination of hardwood floor, area rug (assuming it is a fairly good-sized one, not a "bath mat") and the room treatments. It will probably all work pretty well together. If not, maybe it's time to try some different speaker cable. :>)

Good luck,

Burke

[RobP]

I have seen alot of successful listening rooms that had hard floor surfaces, the reflections were taken care of on the ceiling and walls with proper placed treatment. Are the rooms perfect? No, but what room is? I believe there can be a balance. I hope I dont step on toes here and if I do then I deserve a :smackbutt: , but over at Rives Audio's website you can view some of the rooms they have designed, alot of them have wood floors. You can learn alot by looking at these rooms and apply some of the ideas in your room. :T