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Author Topic: Smallish room - wood floor or carpet?  (Read 4191 times)

jnorman

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Smallish room - wood floor or carpet?
« on: September 17, 2009, 01:58:32 PM »

hi guys - my studio space is about 17x23' with 8 ft ceiling. all sheetrock walls and ceiling, and a carpet floor, with plenty of diffusion due to book cases, furniture, etc. the space is currently quite dead, and i have to create some good digital reverb to make the space sound somewhat realistic, which is always tricky...

i do chamber music (no vocals, no amps, no drums), usually a solo instrument (flute, strings, etc) with baby grand piano or pedal harp accompaniment.

i have read that you generally need to have a room of something like 6000 cu ft before you start getting any kind of decent natural ambient reverb. my space is only about 3000 cu ft.

anyway, i am considering replacing my carpet floor with a wood floor and placing acoustic panels on the ceiling. i am wondering, though, if i might not be creating more problems than i will solve by doing this. will i be able to effectively create some natural ambient reverb in a space the size of my studio without introducing flutter echo or winding up with a "ringy" sounding space?  or am i better off leaving the space dead and spending my money on a bricasti reverb?

any thoughts or recommendations regarding this would be most appreciated. thanks.
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jnorman
sunridge studios
salem, oregon

franman

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Re: Smallish room - wood floor or carpet?
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2009, 08:47:22 PM »

If you have a drywall ceiling and lots of 'scattering' items around the room against the walls, and you put down a hard floor, you will notice more flutter between the floor and ceiling than with your current carpet. Of course, the carpet really only affects very high frequencies, so if you're not having any midrange flutter issues now..... then you may be ok. Impossible to be sure without seeing and hearing the existing space. You really shouldn't be going to any type of reverberant field in a room this size... unless it's carefully designed be a reverberant space, you will have issues.... Others will have varying opinions I'm sure..

FM
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Ethan Winer

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Re: Smallish room - wood floor or carpet?
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2009, 11:59:52 AM »

jnorman wrote on Thu, 17 September 2009 13:58

i am considering replacing my carpet floor with a wood floor and placing acoustic panels on the ceiling.


This is probably a good idea. Carpet is thin and absorbs only high frequencies. But ceiling panels can be any thickness, to prevent flutter echo to an even lower frequency.

--Ethan

OOF!

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Re: Smallish room - wood floor or carpet?
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2010, 07:22:21 PM »

my room is a similar size to yours.  After many years trying to get it to sound "musical" i finally figured it out with a lot for absorbers and diffusers etc...  I bought a thick rug to place over the wood floor thinking it would be better to keep it pretty dead and use Bricasti. Altiverb etc.

But, the room sounds much better without the carpet and instruments sound better without it too.  the carpet deadened the instruments tremendously.

Check into going with the wood floor and really do a great job in treating the room.  I got a bunch of different Real-Traps from Ethan (no sales pitch here, just saying they've worked great) and built my own 12' deep absorber on the back wall.
best of luck with it- acoustics are a mystery- usually better left to the pros!
david
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