I am debating about tearing up carpet and having old oak boards made into flooring for my dining room.
Before that carpet was laid several years ago, I left the original oak floor that is already there stay exposed for a couple weeks in order to get estimates to refinish it. (it wasn't worth it)
But I did notice in that time how much quieter carpet made that room. So my question is.....is there any underlayment that works well to dampen noise under new hardwood? I know there are for floating floors.
Are there any pros/cons in doing this?

There may not be much you can do about the clicking of shoes on the floor; I'll leave that answer to the experts on this board.

On the other hand, without carpet, the room will be much more alive, acoustically speaking. Every little noise will bounce around off of all the hard surfaces in the room. With no absorbtive surfaces to speak of, it can sound like an indoor racquetball court pretty quickly. If you want to kill those sound reflections, you can use any of about a thousand different acoustic treatments, most of which are designed for home theater use. I have heard good things about these guys: http://www.realtraps.com/, and you can find tons of others by searching "home theater acoustic panels" on Google (you can even find instructions on how to make your own). It is amazing how much a couple of panels can damp the sound in the room. You will want to look at high-frequency panels, and maybe start with two or three. Sound moves at something like 700+ mph, so even if it bounces off several walls before "finding" a panel, it will still make a giant difference.

If it suits your style, a hanging oriental rug or tapestry will also help.

Good luck!

-Chris

How about an area rug? Will that help much?

An area rug will most certainly help damp high-frequency sounds. It's amazing what even a little bit of a soft surface will do. I went in my downstairs bathroom last night and the sound of the door clicking shut seemed noticably louder than normal. The only difference was that the one little hand towel was missing (it was in the wash). Since the bathroom was otherwise hard surfaces (ceramic tile, mirror, corian counter, etc.), the sound just bounced around until it hit my ears.

Really, the only problem with an area rug is that it covers up part of that beautiful wood floor!

-Chris

FloorMuffler?

http://www.ntlfloortrends.com/CDA/Archi ... 32a8c0____