Quote:
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.
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I think this is probably more due to the thickness and softness of the material, and not necessarily the material itself. Case in point: insulation is basically 100% absorptive of most frequencies (except obviously lows depending on thickness). But in any case I totally agree that a thicker, more permeable rug would likely be an improvement to even 'regular' carpet in a room.