floating timber floors

[raindog]

Hi I,m new to this forum-so far what I've seen it looks great. No doubt my question could have been answered before but I wasn't able to find it quickly (I'm on my lunchbreak at work).

I have been recording from home for years but recently moved in with a girlfriend who owns a house. She has basically given me the granny flat downstairs(ground level) to use for my music. I have set up a control room in the bedroom. This is painted concrete floor and brick walls with a fairly low ceiling. The next room has slightly higher ceiling carpet floors and brick walls.

Basically I have recently seen a "home renovators" style TV show where they talked about floating timber floor kits etc. Would installing one of these improve the sound quality of these rooms-both are pretty dead at this stage.

Sound proofing in not an issue as neighbours are too far away-am just thinking about this from a sound point of view and for aeasthetic appeal.

Also the other factor is that my Uncle owns a carpet franchise and they offer floating timber floors as a product. So i would get the right price.

what are the pro's and con's????How much of an improvement could they bring to the room. I plan on tracking drums, vocals, accoustics guitar etc

what type of timbers should I look out for??

any info appreciated

[knightfly]

Take some more time when you can, and read through all the posts here, as well as reading through the goldmine of info here

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

Much as I'd like to post answers that will bring each person with questions up to speed from the beginning, I don't have that much time. The information is largely available both here and on the SAE site that will answer general questions - then once you have an idea of some of the concepts involved, we can handle specific questions on a case by case basis.

Generally, carpet is not desirable in any serious amounts (like an entire floor) in ANY studio environment - brick can have a fairly wide range of acoustic properties, depending on whether it has deep or shallow pointing, whether it has been sealed or rendered or stuccoed or whatever - room size and proportions seriously affect acoustics (including ceiling height and shape)

If you could actually describe what you're calling "floating timber floor", that would also help - different materials are called by several names thru-out the world so that gets confusing, especially since there is no mention of your (general) location in your post.

Once I get more information I'll do what I can to help you figure out what you need to do, and how... Steve

[Sen]

Sound proofing in not an issue as neighbours are too far away-am just thinking about this from a sound point of view and for aeasthetic appeal.

If sound proofing is not an issue, you shouldn't need floating floors. If you want to improve the sound of your room, you'd be better off treating the walls and probably the low ceiling of yours first in that control room. Timber floor will probably "sound" better than cocnrete, but floating floors are used mostly for sound isolation (I think )
Maybe just put carpet in the control room and treat the walls...

good luck

[raindog]

I live in Australia and floating timber floors is a common term here for style of timber based floor covering that is becoming popular in a lot of peoples homes. They can come in kit form and are either a laminate or solid timber and are usually added to places like the one I described that have a concrete base and you want something other than carpet.

http://www.tfasa.com.au/page/floor3.htm thats the first link I pulled when I did a search www.vivisimo.com

Basically I,m geussing the name comes from the idea that you lay a base and the timber sits on that but is not permanently attached to the floor.

Typically carpet stores sell these types of floorings here in Australia. And typically you would get it installed by a pro-although there its D.I.Y as well.

I,m l0oking at this from an aesthetic appeal value to the place where I record- I'm just hoping that there would also be some kind of accoustic improvement to the room-otherwise carpet would most probably be the cheaper option.


will have a good read through the site when I get a chance>this place is a goldmine of info..


cheers

[raindog]

heres a better definition..
WHAT IS A FLOATING FLOOR ?
The term "Floating Timber Floor" relates to a Timber floor that is not vertically adhered to a sub-floor but floats, interlocked by a tongue and groove on the top of the sub-floor in a constructed sheet. Like all Timber floors Floating Timber floors require an expansion gap at all vertical fixtures such as walls, columns and kitchen kick boards. Skirting boards, timber quad, kickboards cover this gap or trims made especially for this purpose.

[knightfly]

I see now what the confusion has been - the term "floating floor" in studio builders terms means a totally different thing than a home-owner's self-installed wood panel flooring. From a studio building standpoint, a floating or floated floor is actually a second floor with high mass, supported on cushioning of some sort, so that sound vibrations from/to the floated floor are dampened . The main purpose of this is either or both isolation from difficult outside noise/vibration sources, such as railways/airports being too close to the studio, or in some cases they are built in order to increase isolation between rooms of the studio.

As far as carpet is concerned, if you think your rooms are dead now, just add carpet. If you dig deep enough into the links I posted above, you'll see that carpet only attenuates high frequencies - that tends to make the other "warts" of the room stand out more, because any "shimmer" you might have caught will be sucked up by the carpet. Most rooms, when carpet is added, just get kind of "boxy" sounding.

Aesthetically, the wood on the floor will be an improvement on concrete - as far as acoustically, it won't be a lot of change - maybe slightly less high frequencies with the wood, but not much... Steve

[raindog]

OK mate -thanks for the info. Also followed that earlier link to SAE where I found plenty of info. Couldn't beleive thats the same SAE who had little studio/college in my home town of Brisbane back in the early eighties. They sure have gone International. Another great aussie product
cheers

[John Sayers]

that stuff at the SAE was written by a good old aussie product - me - I'm justy down the road in Murwillumbah :)

cheers
john