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How much difference do Speaker Stands make?

wylton said:
I absolutely agree with that; it's been my personal experience too.
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If they did, stand mount speaker manufacturers would make their own. Can't think of many that do.

I use stand mount, used Something Solid and Hifi Racks, no difference except looks.

I'd like to know what stand has destroyed the performance of which speaker.
 
Atacama HMS 1.1 is the answer to that in my circumstances, good grief, the sound just died a very slow, & i mean slow, death. Akin to ripping out the top end & turning the bottom end into a slow, undefined sludge.
 
murphythecat said:
who wants to couple speakers to stand?




do you know what decoupling means?
once a speaker is well decouple from the stands meaning that the stand very barely vibrate at all, as long as the stand is solid, stands wont affect SQ at all.
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You are right that you don't want the stand to vibrate at all. But there is a school of thought that says you want the speaker well-coupled to it, so that it can serve as a sink for unwanted vibrations transferred to it from the speaker, thereby minimizing spurious noise cause by reverb in the speaker.

Ideally any such vibrations should be buried in the damping mass of the speaker stands, converted to heat and never heard from again.

One way this can happen is if the 'decoupling' is accomplished by putting a vibration sink between the speaker and the stand. The speaker will be well-coupled to this mass.
 
Lot's of theories, another says coupling to the stand to send any vibrational energy through the stand into the floor spike to ground, sort of locking everything together as in a camera tripod, lot's of ideas, best thing to do is try everything (if you can be bothered to) & decide what suits best as far as sound quality is concerned, it's all that matters at the end of the day, there is no right or wrong, otherwise everyone would be doing the same, clearly this doesn't happen.
 
I am not one to argue, normally. I have always preferred Standmounts speakers as I think that that they are easier to place in a room, are more room tolerant and give a better balance. I have no problem with people that like floorstanders, but I have tried them twice before and they give a different kind of presentation but I found them fatiguing. If you have Standmounts then the stand becomes a vital part of the system. It has to be rigid, and you can then couple or isolate the speaker according to taste. In my experience, the bass will be tighter if you get the stand really stiff, and that is a function of design and materials. Thus some stands will be better than others.
My new hardwood stands are far better than my old ones. They are one piece, so no joints, screws and other sources of movement. The result is that the speakers are sounding far better, more punch and more detail. I am astounded at the difference.
 
Ragaman said:
Atacama HMS 1.1 is the answer to that in my circumstances, good grief, the sound just died a very slow, & i mean slow, death. Akin to ripping out the top end & turning the bottom end into a slow, undefined sludge.
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Those are rather tall and narrow, so I can imagine they are virtually impossible to get rock solid.

My stands are 19" high and about 14" across the bass, fairly typical for a BBC type speaker, and very easy to get rock solid.

A key issue to stability is, I think, that the spikes should be further apart than the width and depth of the speaker. That may be common sense, but I suppose someone will put a speaker on a stand that is too small.

I found with PMC Fact8 that because they are so narrow and tall, even though they have feet protruding, I found them very difficult to get rock solid. I would not like to have them on carpets.

Harbeth put P3ESR on tall narrow Hifi Racks stands with no problems.
http://www.hifiracks.co.uk/products/speaker-stands/Harbeth-and-Similar-Monitor
 
One thing they are is rock solid, if you have problems making a stand this size, stable, then your doing something very wrong imo, they are designed for smaller standmounts, as i own, narrow cabinets, i had them filled & unfilled, either was a problem, dull is about the best description, compared to my oak stands, it was honestly like listening to a different speaker, my speakers come alive on my oak stands, nothing seems added ,as i have always felt with metal jobs, as though the music is being forced forward, rather than letting the music do the talking, that bass never sounded so wrong on the metal, once i heard it on the oak, the top end sounds clear as a bell & clean as a whistle & they are rock solid yet half the weight of the atacama, the mids have broken free from the mud i never new was there until i tried them, it was quite an experience changing from years of metal stands to wood, best change i have made, no doubt, along with room damping.
I am unfortunately stuck with metal in one room, but have tinkered a little, so not too bad.
 
I'd very much like to try wood stands at some point, though I think it is very wrong to judge all metal stands as one thing. I'd actually go as far as saying I only like three metal stands; light open-frame like Kan II or Heybrook HBS1, Something Solid XF, which are their own thing, and Target R Series, which are high mass done right (I find most mass loaded stands awful, but the Targets play by different rules as they weigh about three times more and really are rigid!). I've found little to generalise about beyond this, some speakers like some stands, others like others.
 
I can only go on what i have tried, lots over the years, all gave differing characteristics, this is where i have the problem, character, they all added a sort of forced nature to the proceedings, i didn't even realise this until i changed, i then heard music, unaltered by that forced presentation that has been evident , to some degree, in every metal stand i tried, my wood stands just seem to get out the way, more relaxed, natural, yet at the same time, tighter & more agile, with a much more expressive sound, as though the speakers are hanging in free space, being able to work without artifice, i would never return, i did try a little while back due to room problems (not my doing), no chance, once you have been there, no going back in my circumstances.
 
sls4321 said:
I'd like to know what stand has destroyed the performance of which speaker.
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Well, I could cite many for instances, but one in particular always sticks in my mind.

I was an SBL user at the time, and they had to go back to Naim for an update. The dealer loaned me a pair of Royd Coniston Rs with a pair of Kan stands, but about half way through the loan period, he had to collect the stands, because they were the last pair in the shop and another customer wanted them. So, in their place, he brought round a pair of Sound Org stands, but the previous magic of these wonderful little speakers completely disappeared.

Similarly, at home, I use a pair of MK1 Kans upstairs, mounted on the rather good Sound Org wall brackets, and the SQ is so good that I have picked up another pair of the SO wall brackets to try on the active Kans downstairs.

I just think that the loudspeaker and the stand/bracket form a symbiotic relationship. I'm sure that loudspeakers vary in their sensitivity to the mounting arrangements, but my experience, admittedly limited to the models that I tried at home, is that the stands are important.
 
This is the beauty of it, there is no, one solution, we all go with what suits us personally & more importantly, the speaker in question, anything that brings out the best in it has to be the best way forward regardless of coupling, decoupling, spikes, rubber, felt, whatever.
 
Well i've previously convinced myself that stands are very important, but now i'm using Obelisks which are on cheap plastic castors, and these sound excellent to my ears. My conclusion is that it may be very dependent on the speaker design as to whether the stand construction is important or not.
 
Purite Audio said:
How do you propose the type of stand affects sound quality?
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Height (Allison effect), baffle-step (thick ones and thin ones will sound different), physically anchoring the speaker in space (or not), resonance (some ring!), sinking energy, cabinet damping, floor interface etc etc.

How do you propose they don't have an effect?
 
Tony L said:
Height (Allison effect), baffle-step (thick ones and thin ones will sound different), physically anchoring the speaker in space (or not), resonance (some ring!), sinking energy, cabinet damping, floor interface etc etc.

How do you propose they don't have an effect?
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Much better question

The perfect stand does exist, your probably using it.
 
Ragaman said:
Much better question

The perfect stand does exist, your probably using it.
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Perfect answer. Hopefully will bring this rather futile discussion to an end. Anything that is dependent on subjective listening is unlikely to be resolved. Perhaps a speaker stand bake off could be arranged.

All said and done, the ones picked up in a market win it for me as they look great.
 
sls4321 said:
Perfect answer. Hopefully will bring this rather futile discussion to an end. Anything that is dependent on subjective listening is unlikely to be resolved. Perhaps a speaker stand bake off could be arranged.
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The problem is that so much is about the interface of a particular speaker to a particular room. Say you compare speaker X on say a typical open frame stand and a typical high-mass stand. Chances are the two stands you have to hand differ in height by an inch or just due to being from different manufacturers and aimed at different speakers. Just by doing that you have altered the Allison effect (floor bounce). The two stands will likely differ in surface area below the speaker too, the open frame stand having a thin frame towards the edges of the speaker, the high-mass stand will have one or four fat columns. Both stands will have a different effect on baffle-step/dispersion. As such two very significant and audible things have changed before one even thinks about the actual constructional details and how the speaker cabinet interface/floor interface works, or what type of stand the speaker in question was designed/voiced with. No right answers with this one; what works for you works, what doesn't doesn't!
 
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