Control Room floor, wood or carpet?

[heathen]

Still trying to decide what to use in my control room, wood flooring or some type of hard packed carpet.

I've thought about the pros and cons of both such as:

Wood:
Pros: Easier to keep dust free, looks fantastic, feels earthier.
Cons: More reflections = more expensive acoustic design, if floating will lose maybe 150mm floor to ceiling height, noisier to walk on.

Carpet:
Pros: Less floor to ceiling reflections, quieter to walk on, cheaper than wood.
Cons: Does'nt look as good, harder to keep dust free.

I'm sort of leaning towards carpet though unless someone talks me out of it. I'd rather save a bit on the floor and have a better acoustic design. I guess in the end the look of the floor is'nt that important, I want it to be a great listening environment more than anything.

Any thoughts.

[heathen]

Also I found these for double glazing, the last ones I found used acrylic, these ones hold glass.

http://www.soundblock.com.au/alum_window1.html

[Gian]

Wooden floor with a rug?

[TimS]

Wooden floor with a rug?

Thats what I have in my mix/control room - floating wooden floor (Kempar) with a large thickish rug..

[The Tasmanian]

Wooden floor will be so much sweeter for the top end, then use rugs to adjust the amount of relections you need.Once you go down the carpet road it will be a pain in the arse to put plywood sheets over carpet to liven the mixing area
Chris Townend

[tunetown]

Wooden floor will be so much sweeter for the top end, then use rugs to adjust the amount of relections you need.Once you go down the carpet road it will be a pain in the arse to put plywood sheets over carpet to liven the mixing area
Chris Townend

Yep, My rooms carpeted and I wish it wasn't. The next room will be wooden floor with some adjustment rugs.

Looking forward to seeing your new room Heath. How long before it's ready?

[Chinagraf]

I have boards from under the console to halfway back, then the back half is carpeted with a couch on it. The back half of the room acts a bit like a big bass trap.

[heathen]

Looks like you have all convinced me with wood, I guess rugs are much easier to put in and adjust accordingly.

I agree the sound in a room with wood flooring is much sweeter sounding.

Pete, probably about 6 months, hopefully handover is this week or early next, the builders have a few things to fix, just driveway and flooring to go and that's pretty much it, ahh then there's the garden to do, that will be fun. :(

I'm probably going to leave the studio bare for the time being and get the flooring and acoustics done in a few months, the builders left out my solid doors and put these other ones in, pretty stupid considering the double gyprocking and other requirements I made, oh well easily fixed.

I'm going to set up a workspace though for any projects in the meantime, but yeah as soon we are settled in I'll get cracking on the room.

When it's done you're welcome over anytime.

I guess with wood flooring the door seals on the bottom edge will seal better also.

[rick]

my vote is always to make the central area , ie the work areas wood flooring
and carpet the back and front of the room ie the areas closer to the walls
as always every room is different , but as a general rule thats what i do when i can

[NYMo]

Hi there,

The other thing is, if you have clients (or dogs) who piss on the carpet..its hard to get that smell out....
I went with wood and a rug (that can be hosed down ;-)

cheers
N
Y
M
O

[HA_DA_JA]

I just spent the day on saturday clearing everything out of my office to do a huge clean up. I cant believe the amount of dust that it collected in that room over 2 years. Had to pull all the audio equipment apart and take it out. Have put most of it back in after a good vacuum and clean. It has wooden floors and a carpet rug. I would hate to have full carpet as it would be detrimental to my wife and sons health as they suffer from dust mites and other hay fever allergies. It was a good way of keeping them out of my room - but alas not anymore.
Cheers

[heathen]

Alright that settles it, wood and some sort of carpet/rug or mats at the back with my big couch.

[heathen]

I just spent the day on saturday clearing everything out of my office to do a huge clean up. I cant believe the amount of dust that it collected in that room over 2 years. Had to pull all the audio equipment apart and take it out. Have put most of it back in after a good vacuum and clean. It has wooden floors and a carpet rug. I would hate to have full carpet as it would be detrimental to my wife and sons health as they suffer from dust mites and other hay fever allergies. It was a good way of keeping them out of my room - but alas not anymore.
Cheers

Yeah my least fav job, I'd usually do it once every six months to a year.

[heathen]

my vote is always to make the central area , ie the work areas wood flooring
and carpet the back and front of the room ie the areas closer to the walls
as always every room is different , but as a general rule thats what i do when i can

Rick I think we had this chat nearly 2 years back before the building started, the builders did stay to your exact predicted timeline. :)

[Mark Bassett]

You need to keep the RT60 in mind, covering the floor in carpet may effectively kill your top end, depending on the surface area and type of carpet of course. Do you have a rough RT60?

[heathen]

No Mark I don't, was just reading about RT60, will have to book some time with Rick to get all this sorted properly, though I used a calculator for it and it was about 2,01 seconds at 1khz and 0.52 at 125hz. I read speech intelligibility is worse with longer times. Though could suit say classical music?

I will be using a mixture of both carpet and wood as everyone suggested to keep the top end nice throughout.

[chris p]

You need to keep the RT60 in mind

Well yes, but in a control room the goal is more to treat the room so that the RT60 is as constant as possible over a range of frequencies than the actual value itself. The room should settle down evenly rather than giving bass, treble or mids and noticably longer or shorter tail than the others.

[Mark Bassett]

Well yes, but in a control room the goal is more to treat the room so that the RT60 is as constant as possible over a range of frequencies than the actual value itself. The room should settle down evenly rather than giving bass, treble or mids and noticably longer or shorter tail than the others.

Sure, when I said RT60, I meant the RT60 over the usual range of frequencies given for absorption coefficients. ie
125Hz 250Hz 500Hz 1000Hz 2000Hz and 4000Hz, not a single value.

Control room acoustics generally exhibit a high frequency roll-off anyway as I'm sure you know.

If he knows the RT60 at those freq's, or hell, the total absorption in sabins for each (used to calc Rt60 anyway) he could predict what the effect of different floor treatments would be.

Thanks for the clear up though.
M

[Mark Bassett]

No Mark I don't, was just reading about RT60, will have to book some time with Rick to get all this sorted properly, though I used a calculator for it and it was about 2,01 seconds at 1khz and 0.52 at 125hz. I read speech intelligibility is worse with longer times. Though could suit say classical music?

I will be using a mixture of both carpet and wood as everyone suggested to keep the top end nice throughout.

Heathen tell me your:
Total Surface Area
Volume
Total Surface area for each material type (ie 10m square of plywood)
and I'll double check your results
and all your dimensions if you like.

[chris p]

Control room acoustics generally exhibit a high frequency roll-off anyway as I'm sure you know.

That darn bass just rolls around like thunder, don't it? And that's where the idea comes in to get the decay times more frequency constant. There's a reasonable discussion here, especially the posts by Ethan Winer -

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/401561-control-room-target-decay-rates.html

[ChrisW]

Check out this place in Marrickville:
http://www.naturalfloor.com.au/readymaderugs.html

I've bought several rugs from there.
They often have very cheap rugs in all sizes (60% off retail).
They are a natural material, they look great....... and probably sound great (OK).
They probably aren't as cheap as a Harvey Norman off-cut, but you'll enjoy looking at them more, and they'll make your studio feel classy.
(I have no shares in the company, I just honestly feel they're great value)

[heathen]

No Mark I don't, was just reading about RT60, will have to book some time with Rick to get all this sorted properly, though I used a calculator for it and it was about 2,01 seconds at 1khz and 0.52 at 125hz. I read speech intelligibility is worse with longer times. Though could suit say classical music?

I will be using a mixture of both carpet and wood as everyone suggested to keep the top end nice throughout.

Heathen tell me your:
Total Surface Area
Volume
Total Surface area for each material type (ie 10m square of plywood)
and I'll double check your results
and all your dimensions if you like.

Thanks, though I'll have to dig out the plans to be exact, this was for a bare room that I calculated which really makes no sense yet, except I put wood in the calculation on the floor to replace the value with bare concrete and plasterboard for the walls. Also tried carpet too but can't remember the result.Was just buggering around with it. Will have to bugger with it some more now out of interest. :)

Dimensions are, 4.5Wx6.5Lx2.8H,

Basically at the moment the room is just CSR souncheck level2 (gyprock) and a concrete floor and a couple of windows.

Getting the flooring in and then tuning the room around my main monitoring position with diffusers, absorbers and rugs/carpet is the plan.

[heathen]

Check out this place in Marrickville:
http://www.naturalfloor.com.au/readymaderugs.html

I've bought several rugs from there.
They often have very cheap rugs in all sizes (60% off retail).
They are a natural material, they look great....... and probably sound great (OK).
They probably aren't as cheap as a Harvey Norman off-cut, but you'll enjoy looking at them more, and they'll make your studio feel classy.
(I have no shares in the company, I just honestly feel they're great value)

Thanks Chris, great prices and they do look very stylish. That's ok if you own shares in it, with prices like that Rick would have to let it slide. :) I'll be checking these out for sure, actually will look good in the hall and kitchen too.

[NYMo]

Hi there,

Go the Shaggie !!

Cheers
n
y
m
o

[heathen]

Hi there,

Go the Shaggie !!

Cheers
n
y
m
o

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo, heh. Just got rid of the only shagpile I ever hope to live with when we demolished the old place. It was 50 years old and had about 49 years worth of crud in it. Was'nt pretty. :)

[heathen]

Ok so now I've decided to go with wood there a a couple of considerations.

Engineered floating floor or solid 19 mm planks like the rest of the flooring?

My thoughts, when I was watching the guy install our 19 mm flooring I noticed in a couple of spots there were places which were hollow between the plywood bottom layer and the actual floor, it's solid as a rock but will introduce resonances at certain freqs without doubt.

So I thought the "Enhance engineered wooden floor" would be better with a layer of Regupol so that sits flat on the concrete slab with no air spaces for resonances, also it will help isolate it from the rest of the flooring.

Flooring website, stuff I'm thinking of using is halfway down the page.
http://www.cityfloor.com.au/products.html

What do you guys think?

[13thbeach]

Wooden floor with a rug?

Bingo!

[Senad]

another half-half suggestion...I have jarrah parquetry in the front half, makes it easy to roll your chair around console, and carpeted rear end.