Listening Room flooring upgrade... replacing carpet with wood or tile

Any time, just give me a call.

Yea, grilling was a large part of ousurvivalal until the appliances finally went in to the new kitchen. There is nothing like doing dishes in the bath tub on your knees to make you appreciate a real sink.

The ironic thing with the remodel was Donna saying almost 2 years ago "Why don't you make a room just for your music stuff". Though I think part of the underlying thought was, please I have been subjected to your equipment taking over the house for 37 years, can't we have a normal house.

Since then we have been living in the old music/tv room with no windows and black plastic on the walls to cover insulation.

If we are lucky the carpet will go in our bedroom next weekend and that will make one of us very happy.
Oh well it will all happen with time.

Didn't think solid wood was an option for glue down on concrete due to moisture/warping. You might check on that. I would recommend engineered, the thickest you can find. We ripped up carpet and put in wood. We have a glue down for living room, dining area and kitchen and used 5/8" engineered, Hartco Valenza was the brand/name and at the time, 4 years ago, 5/8" was the thickest overall I could find (solid thickness is 3/4"), had the thickest "veneer" of real wood and had the most "plyed" layers. Bought it online and had a flooring specialist glue it down; a crew of five guys cutting, glueing, installing and wiping excess glue. About 900 sq ft and they did it in a day. With this and an area rug, I don't notice any issues with sound, I can still hear my wife perfectly . Anyway, best on your project.

Mirage has some good engineered choices in fairly hard wood.

jprkeller said:

Didn't think solid wood was an option for glue down on concrete due to moisture/warping. You might check on that. I would recommend engineered, the thickest you can find.....

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Great advice, and beautiful floor. Hoping this project turns into a win-win situation from both the acoustic and WAF perspective! How has Hartco engineered held up with regard to scratches (and spills)? We're thinking of getting a distressed finish, so scratches/gouges will blend in.

Spills and scratches not a problem...some "knock me down" pumps will leave a heal depression (impression?) but it goes with owning hardwood floors...have had oak solid floors installed in the last house and tigerwood engineered in this; either will leave marks but you truly don't notice them unless you consciously look for them...

and any new flooring will darken with daylight, sun or otherwise so if you move your area rug after a bit, don't panic as the newly exposed wood from under the carpet will be lighter but will darken like the rest in a couple months...as with the ML's, go with what you and the lady like best, distressed or not...either will look fantastic...

oh and of course different woods are harder than others...there's a "hardness" table you can find on the internet to see how your possible choices may stand up against wear and tear like the high heels factor...

Best, Jim

Have a predicament. After some research, we decided we want "distressed" engineered Brazilian Cherry, with a natural (unstained) satin finish. We found the perfect style and natural color from Ark Flooring (see pic).



I never heard of Ark, and turns out they are a Chinese manufacturer (a division of A&W Group/Anxin in Shanghai), and use South American sourced wood, with U.S. and European distribution. They supposedly meet all U.S. (and stringent California) regulations, and their flooring carries a 25 yr warranty. I'd gladly pay $1-$1.50 /sq ft more for a U.S. manufactured product, but according to our local flooring supplier (and surfing the net) there is virtually no comparable distressed Brazilian Cherry finish available from any U.S. manufacturer.

As in audio manufacturing, looks like the Chinese are taking over in engineered wood manufacturing as well.

What do you flooring gurus think? Should we take a chance, or look for something else? (BTW, the Ark pricing is moderate, ~$5.50/ sq ft if purchased locally, less if online).

FWIW, I just changed several rooms in my house from lenoleum->tile and lenoleum->wood. The tile rooms are VERY live, wow, it is amazing how much more loud it is. The wood is quieter than the lenoleum was. Carpet rooms are still quieter than both.

Good luck with choosing a wood - I like that choice. FWIW, we went with a slightly darker colored "exotic" cherry in engineered wood (on a slab) and I am sure it is from some Chinese manufacturer, but the quality seems good.

A friend has Brazilian cherry . Very nice.

Remember no spikes on the wood. I have used marble squares under my speakers.

Alan, I was speaking with our flooring contractor about a meeting we have later this week and asked him about non Chinese Brazilian Cherry. He said that was the only option though the company he has dealt with for 17 years from China comes through Califorina and is tested to be sure it passes all requirements. He said the price was $4.95 sq ft. If you are interested his name is Jim Yeager and his company is Yeager Flooring. They are located in Odessa 813-918-2737.

We had all the carpet taken out. We went with mahogany glued down in the living room.



We went with teak floating in the den.

For what it is worth, some like Ethan Winer some don't. His comments on floors in relation to sound.

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=rives&m=6532

Well, it's been a year, but we finally got the wood flooring in! We ended up going with (U.S. manufactured) Anderson's engineered Dellamano Maple Amaretto, glued on slab. It's hand-scraped and lightly distressed, and a more uniform color than the Brazilian Cherry we originally considered. We still have 6+ weeks to go with the full kitchen remodel, so I'm only temporarily setting my system up again for preliminary acoustic measurements. Then I'll move everything out of harms way before more drywall gets cut. In the meantime, we'll start looking at 8' x 10' heavy wool rugs.

Looks nice.

So how does it sound?

Actually, surprisingly good! More energy and a smoother XTZ measured high frequency response than before! Temporarily adding an 8' x 10' rug, as expected, further smoothed out the upper midrange and highs (yellow trace is with rug, green trace without). I thought bass was a tad more boomy, and there is indeed a slight bump at ~100-120 Hz. However, I haven't yet optimized speaker placement, so I don't expect that issue to persist. At this point, it looks like the wood floors are my best (albeit expensive <g>) acoustic tweak yet! However, the adjoining kitchen is essentially an empty space right now, so will be interesting to see what happens when cabinets, granite, and appliances go in!

Flooring looks great. Can't wait to see the finished product.