Flooring

[Diapason]

Lads, I'm thinking strongly of replacing the floor in the mancave, because what's there is the naffest laminate ever, and very badly-laid with it. It's downright bouncy in places, and you can imagine how much it sings along when things get cooking.

I'm assuming there's concrete underneath but I'm not entirely sure. There's a rug on it too for reflection reasons. So, sonically speaking, should I replace it with another wood floor (and rug as appropriate), should I put carpet directly onto the concrete, or should I put some form of wood down and carpet over that?

[sima66]

I had, on the part, where my system and speakers was, carpet on concrete (20% of the room) and the rest of the room was 8mm floating laminate with some underpad.

From "always changing something" my molding between the carpet and laminate broke and I decided to re-glued and I put around 100kg of gym weights all the way to keep in place. All the sudden sound became better!!! Nah, that can't be, that is just in my head!
After two days, when I removed the weights, I could not believe it. Sound was more punchy, articulate and separated when the weights were in "place". I brought the weights back and the sound was back! Than I realized that the more weight I ad on top of the laminate the more solid sound I get! Soon, I had more weights in my music room than in my gym!!
Now I have tick antistatic carpet with thickest underpad in whole room. The sound now got softer and with less highs, which was expected.

After all this, I would prefer nailed (or glued), solid hardwood with some rugs on top and definitely not floating laminate!

Just my experience

[Diapason]

That's exactly the kind of experience I'm looking for, thank you!

[Fran]

Leave the laminate in place and put a big rug down?

[Ivor]

Assuming you do have a concrete floor get some half decent carpet and very good underlay - somewhere around 10mm thick. It will help absorb sound and give longer life to the carpet too. You can get sound absorbing underlay but that might be overkill and even counterproductive.
Do get it laid professionally.
It's not a huge room so consider it a once off spend and do it right!

[Derek]

Hi Si,
I had a similar experience.

I have my new man-cave and decided on thick carpet right from the off.

The Eist Dubh's had been on hardwood flooring in the front room and the sound was open and lively with a wide sound stage.

I had the carpet people put down some heavy dense-foam underlay then a pretty heavy carpet, it really does help in keeping the sound in check, better bottom end definition and front to back depth. Now in saying all that the rooms are different shape and size the new being quite a bit smaller and needed taming.

Something to consider is the speaker feet or spikes or...
I have the Dubh's on 3 Ceraballs onto some granite/marble chopping boards, sitting on the carpet, it works well.
I had tried to use some standard spikes but they weren't long enough, the base of the speakers sat on the carpet, wobbly.
I DIY'd some long spikes but that was worse, and wobbly.

I might try putting the granite/marble boards on spikes (a bigger footprint) but that'll be for another day and not in the near future.

[sima66]

I had the two big rugs (from the picture), plus two more small on the sides, in front of speakers (not in the picture) and than I had that "weight experience" with my laminate!

[panda2rom]

I'm 100% with Ivor : " half decent carpet and very good underlay".

Either you want to "link" your speakers to the concrete and its mass or isolate your speaker from it... and either way a wood floor would be a bad idea.

[Diapason]

Okay, I think we're slowly reaching a consensus. The "leave it and put a rug down" is exactly what I have right now, and while the rug aids reflection, it does nothing to stop the vibration. I'm serious when I say it's like a trampoline in places, if you walk near the speakers you can see them wobbling around (and I know I'm heavy, but still!) It seems to resonate very badly at some frequencies in particular, and you can feel it vibrating underfoot for those. I think it needs to go.

Although I have another piece of room rearrangement to do first which will probably change the acoustics drastically itself. Anyone ever use a pipe organ for sound treatment???

[HiFiFan]

Can't comment on the pipe organ (will be interested to see where that thread goes) but in my experience you need premium underlay and 12 mm laminate/engineered wood to achieve anything close to a solid wood floor. I remember in a previous house I installed the engineered wood myself and I had to do significant work to ensure the support floor was actually level. It could be yours isn't which is why you are seeing such movement in places.

It is also worth checking the rug, some modern rugs (and often cheaper ones) have backings that don't actually let sounds through rendering them less useful. Might be worth checking.