Music Room/Studio Flooring Options

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

I'm currently in the process of changing my spare bedroom into a music room/studio. I'm not sure whether to get a laminate floor or a carpet. I would prefer laminate due to a better look, feel and the ease of cleaning. But I'm not sure whether in a small room it might make things a bit too 'boomy' sound-wise. Would getting a shallow-pile carpet be better in terms of deadening/softening the sound a bit better?

I'll have a digital piano, my guitars/bass, and will occasionally have my band members coming over for some little rehearsals and songwriting sessions.

Any thoughts in what would be best, or even if it would make any discernable difference? 

Danny1969

Laminate floor will make the room sound brighter and thus sound louder, carpet will absorb more highs. 

Maybe a big rug ?

pintspiller

I'm old fashioned and prefer carpet. Back in the day I'd have done "the skips" and got carpet for walls and ceiling in our garage. 

Seemed to work fine. Except in the summer when we'd have the doors open.

Stuckfast

Sound-wise the best option is usually to have a hard floor, but hang a decent-sized 'cloud' over the mix position to control reflections and so on. If you have too much carpet everywhere you end up over-absorbing the high frequencies but not having any control over the lower mid-range.

Jalapeno

Thought dirty carpet tiles were standard

Caffeine_Vampire

I have carpet down with crazy thick underlay and no issues with the higher frequencies being absorbed.  Lots of factors come into play when it comes to frequencies being affected.  Best bet is tiles/laminate and a couple of thick rugs to be placed where you get the results you want.

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

Laminate flooring with a rug? Seems like an ideal compromise. Not sure why I didn't think of that myself! 

Cheers everyone!

p90fool

Some of it depends on how big the room is and where you do your recording. I do most vocals and amps in my vocal booth and used to record acoustic guitar in there too, because recording in the main room always sounded like a wardrobe. 

Since I removed the carpet and went back to bare floorboards it's now my favourite place to record acoustic instruments. It's obviously a touch livelier than before but it no longer has any weirdly attenuated highs. 

Of course the best thing most of us do with our home studios to improve damping is to fill them with junk.

Caffeine_Vampire

Of course the best thing most of us do with our home studios to improve damping is to fill them with junk.

^ Much truth in this there is - Yoda

octatonic

If you are mixing in there you can mitigate some of the room issues with Sonarworks.
When I moved back from Singapore I wanted to get back to work as quickly as possible so set up in my old workshop area before doing a remodel that would have seen some proper acoustic design going into the room.
I will still do that but when I have time- for now it is unideal in that it has plaster walls, no air gap, carpet and is pretty much oblong.
I have about 12 bass traps in the room in various places.
Sonarworks sorts out a room mode around 100hz and it sounds fine in there for now.

Sometime this year or next I'll remodel it- bass traps off the ceiling and non-parallel walls with an air gap.