Hardwood floors vs Carpet

Hi Ernie. My Martin Logans beam (as all panels do) in a way that there is no floor bounce of upper frequencies until you are a very long way from the speakers. It is definitely not just a lateral issue. For ML speaker the panel starts a foot or so above floor level and vertical dispersion is not much more than the vertical height of the panel for some distance. The difference in flutter echo in my "problem room" between a panel speaker and a speaker with a dome tweeter is very significant. Even so a rug is required, but with a panel speaker it needs to only be (in my room anyway) about 6ft by 8ft.

I agree with Subaruguru ... when we shifted from carpet to hardwoods, I was not happy with the increased brightness, and I thought the imaging suffered also. But, I don't have it set up exactly as before, so I thought maybe some of it was my imagination. Also, I found it more fatiguing after a while and my listening durations decreased. There is no way to fit permanent area rugs into the decor at the right locations. I keep foam panels under the sofas and pull out for "critical listening" sessions and place at floor reflection points - that seems to help. I'm sure I could do better with some more effort, or different speakers or electronics. Think we're moving soon and, although I love the look and easy maintenance of the hardwoods, my listening room WILL be carpeted again.

Hardwood is great for live music. SUCKS for audio reproductions though! Replace that carpet with some new carpet in your listening room. I can say from experience that hardwood is floors are going to cost your system, if you care about sound quality. You'll spend a fortune on room treatments and oriental rugs trying to patch the problems the hardwood creates.

If hardwood is good for live music why should it NOT be good for electronically reproduced music if the transduction is accurate? On the other hand I think carpeting Carnegie Hall could be the solution to the current discrepancy between live and reproduced music as long as afficionados of the latter never actually listen to the former.

Khrys: How do you figure out the first reflection points from a 101 piece orchestra?