Carpet?
 

Had a home built and finally have a dedicated audio room. :banana:

The room has cheap carpet now, I'm trying to decide if I should go with hardwood and a really nice large rug or perhaps go with plush carpet, something dark. I think the hardwood would look great and allow easy speaker positioning. I believe the carpet will help with acoustics and feel nice under the feet.

Any thoughts here, or wish you went a different direction afterwards?

+1 for carpet.

I have hardwood in my new room and plan on having a plush carpet cut into a rug to cover the "audio area". Best of both worlds.

I have a hardwood floor with an oriental wool carpet covering most of the floor. The stereo racks sit on the hardwood floor. I use metal disks under the spikes to protect the floor.

Another important consideration is what type of floor is it. Is it a suspended floor or is it a cement floor? If it is a suspended floor you may want to reinforce it in some way.

I have a suspended hardwood floor so I placed my turntable stand in the farthest corner from the speakers. The corners are the most rigid part of a suspended floor.

Carpet?
 

I had wall to wall carpet in my dedicated room and switched to hardwood with an area rug. I find wall to wall carpet is to deadening to the sound. I have played around with different sized area rugs to try and get the perfect balance of absorption vs reflection. Personally I found that if the rug covers maybe around 70% of the hardwood, you get a nice balance. The music sounds more lively. You can't do any customization with wall to wall carpet. At least with hardwood you have the options of rug size and rug material to play around with.