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Audio room floor question

I know this question has come up before but please indulge me. I'm adding on and am building a room that will serve as my HiFi room. I'm not going the "professional" route but I do want to make the room as HiFi friendly as possible. The dimensions are set so I can't do anything about that. I have a heavy concrete floor poured. What is the best floor covering? I could use hardwood glued, floating hardwood, linoleum, or I could just leave it concrete and add area rugs and pads. I don't want to use carpet as there will be a hallway and an outside door that will bring in snow and mud. Thanks
catfishbob

Showing 3 responses by zenblaster

zenblaster
504 posts
 

flooring thread
zenblaster
504 posts
 
I'm sure they put a vapor barrier under the concrete with the 'in floor' heating present. Any hard flat surface will reflect the sound waves rather than absorb and create distortion so the rugs should tame some of that.
Plan your room before sealing up the walls so you can run chases for the wiring. If you have a turntable this a good time to 'let in' a half sheet of 3/4 plywood into the studs before sheetrock. Then you can wall mount the turntable shelf and it will be solid as a rock and completely isolated from vibrations.
zenblaster
504 posts
 
You do not want to put any wood in contact with concrete. Plastic vapor barrier, filled with holes, will not prevent the wood from quickly rotting. Sleepers over sill seal, then you could put the plywood on the sleepers. This would eat up precious floor/ceiling height in your case and dramatically decrease your in floor heating efficiency.
Tile is an excellent finish product over concrete but it could effect the efficiency of your in floor heating, especially if you use a thick Mexican tile.

Stained concrete is a wonderful product, looks nice, easy to clean, durable and environmentally friendly and in your case, maintains the ceiling height.
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