[Portugal]

Originally Posted by Mike82ARP

If you really want to hear a difference, put a wool or cotton rug on the floor between the speakers and your listening position. If your wall-to-wall carpet is made synthetic fibers as most are, you will hear a more natural sound with the wool/cotton rug.

To check this out yourself on the cheap, do this:
1. Make sure your wife is out of the house for a bit.
2. Get as many bath towels (usually 100% cotton) as you can find and lay them over your w2w carpet between the speaker and listening position.
3. Listen to your favorite music.

You will notice a difference. This was demonstrated to me about 15 years ago when I was reviewing for SoundStage!, Pascal Ravach, from Mutine-importer of CEC, Audiomat, came to my home to deliver the phenomenal Arpege* integrated amp. I thought I had my room pretty well set up- treating front wall, back wall, side wall first reflection, etc. My wife was out on a business trip so I grabbed every towel we had- about 20- and covered as much of the w2w carpet as we could. Listening to my usual test discs, the sonic improvement was clearly noticeable.

*the Arpege was intro priced at the time for $1990.00 at the time. A friggin’ steal, IMO! I actually quit reviewing and opened a small boutique shop in my home because of this review. Picked up some more dealers and sold quite a few of these along with their stablemates. The Arpege now sells for about $4500., in a “reference” edition.

Interesting post and experiment.