Hardwood VS Laminate

Flooring; Is one better than the other for recording? Thanks.

Nope - and before you ask - for all intent and purpose - neither is: bare concrete Coloured Concrete Vinyl Floor Tile Any Hardwood flooring Bare Plywood Finished Plywood, etc., etc., etc. They all have pretty much the same results in a room......... Rod

The one thing I would add to that is when installing the laminate flooring, it sometimes comes with a thin layer of foam-like padding. Perhaps a few mm thick. I have this installed over a concrete floor and it actually made the noise transmission from a printing press in the next room louder than just the plain concrete in the center midrange area, 1-3kHz or so it sound like. I guess that the very small amount of padding changed the resonant frequency of the flooring system. You can tap your foot on the floor and hear this plainly. If possible, I would install that stuff glued directly to the floor as stiff as possible. -ashley

Thanks, I ordered laminate. i wonder if "Green Glue" will work for laminate to concrete?

i think gg would be a waste of money mate.

natas wrote:

Thanks, I ordered laminate. i wonder if "Green Glue" will work for laminate to concrete?

joey is right. That should be waste of money, and further Green Glue isn't meant as glue. You can't damp a concrete floor with laminate.

Hi natas, I have laminate flooring installed in my live room and at first when I just layed it, it sounded uglier than the bare concrete slab.It has an ugly resonance to it (8mm laminate +2mm foam/plastic underlay).But after I put down a rug which covered about 60-70% of floor area, the sound improved.So if you're planning on having just the bare floor, I wouldn't recommend laminate. I didn't have money for timber, but with rugs it's not bad. good luck

i used laminate, haven't done any mixing yet (not done) but just playin some instruments sounds fine. one thing to consider, if you choose NOT to use the underlayment is the noise of the two rubbing. i put my laminate over commercial tile (like supermarket flooring) and in the vocal booth i tried to rush it and not use the underlayment. the tiniest speck of dirt, wood shaving, or whatever made a terribly loud crack/crunch sound every time i stepped on it. luckily it was only the small vocal booth, i ripped it up, put the foam down and put the flooring back on. sounds great now. my guess would be the expensive cork underlayment might be a good solution? just a thought. i'm happy with mine where its at though.