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Can I Live With A Hardwood Floor?

Hi All,
I could certainly use some advice on this matter. I have Quad 2905 ESL's in my attic and my attic has hardwood floors. I recently moved into this residence never having experienced hardwood floors previously. My speakers are on cones and isolated with Herbie's titanium gliders. I've been able to position the speakers so that they are given enough room to operate effectively but those hardwood floors are brutal at times. My thought leads me to the only obvious solution, 12 feet by 12 feet carpeting. Are there more cost effective ways of approaching this?
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks as always!
goofyfoot

Showing 4 responses by randy-11

randy-11
1,913 posts
 
sure - just put a rug in between you and the speakers

that’s what I did (Maggie 3.7i)
randy-11
1,913 posts
 
if you have a line problem then go straight to an isolation transformer; buy used on ebay or somewhere else & you may need an electrician to wire it in

PS Audio will be glad to sell you one for 3x to 4x more and it will look nicer...
randy-11
1,913 posts
 
I have maggies and no rug behind them - any bipolar speaker should have a fair amount of diffusion behind it for best sound.

My "Persian" rug is not as large as I might like but has been in the family for 3 generations.  If it extends beyond a line drawn between you and each speaker (a triangle) that should be fine.

For high freq.a, which are the issue here, you can just use ray tracing to analyze the room.  More info is in the master Handbook of Acoustics, which every audiophile should read a couple of times...
randy-11
1,913 posts
 
an isolation transformer is a device about the size of an amp that your equipment plugs into - it will not adversely affect your SQ

since you are on a budget (yet have Quads??) you will want to be very careful about wasting money:

- you probably do not have line noise - most noise is from bad gnds, gnd loops, or is generated INSIDE your own equipment

- you may well want to add some absorbers and diffusers (or a combination unit) - you can read about them extensively in the Master handbook of Acoustics (I saved money by checking it out from my city library (twice)).  And you can build both types of room treatments yourself - I posted some links on here somewhere before

Room Treatments will be by far the most cost effective way to get better SQ
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