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Feet (not Spikes) for Speaker Stands

droodzilla

pfm Member
Any idea where I can find a decent set of these?

I'm talking about feet that screw into the base of speaker stands, rather than isolation pads that sit under the speakers themsleves. I know I can buy spike shoes but, if possible, I'd prefer feet.

I think one of the Hi-Fi Wigwam crowd (Earl of Sodbury?) turned dealer used to sell the kind of thing I'm looking for.

I'm not looking for foo - just a sound, well engineered solution.The price should be well under £100.

Any ideas?
 
As with everything, eBay is your friend, here are some with an 8mm thread: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-5...0001&campid=5338728743&icep_item=184492584753

Check your stand thread size as some might be M6.
Thanks, that's the sort of thing. Nice and cheap too, as it's not marketed as a "hi-fi solution". Thread size is indeed a slight concern as the speaker stands in question are from Skylan in Canada, and I'm not sure if the thread they use is standard in the UK.
 
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I’m sure it will be either M8 or M6, I’ve not seen a speaker stand or equipment support that isn’t one or the other. It’s just a standard equipment fitting that you’ll find everywhere, i.e. way beyond the world of home audio. Just measure the hole diameter or old spike, it will be one or the other!
 
Over the years I have grown to hate the sight of spikes and holes in the wooden floor, various ppierced hands, fingers etc. so I just bought some conical silentblocs of the type used under lathes etc. in machine shops. If you get the right ones they will even wobble a la Townsend. I will never ever go back to spikes under my speakers. Biggest BS in the history of hifi.
 
Over the years I have grown to hate the sight of spikes and holes in the wooden floor, various ppierced hands, fingers etc.

I tend to agree. I abandoned them a good decade or more ago with the exception of small speaker stands on carpeted floor as it does make them more stable and actually does less damage to the carpet. There are no spikes or cones at all in my main system and only the speaker stands in the upstairs one. Spikes certainly push a hi-fi sound in one direction which I seemed to like earlier in life but have abandoned entirely since after trying other approaches.

PS IIRC the late Art Dudley said removing all the spikes from a system was about the best thing you can do for the sound! Tom Fletcher from NAS had the same view.
 
As with everything, eBay is your friend, here are some with an 8mm thread: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-5...0001&campid=5338728743&icep_item=184492584753

Thanks: I was looking for something exactly like that a while back but couldn't find them.

I abandoned spikes some time ago, but I've just gone back to them! I did have vibrapod cones under the stands and between the stands and the speakers, but I found that the bass was looser than I'd like. With 10" HPDs I could see the cabinet wobble when I pushed the drivers in and that didn't seem like a good thing.

My current working theory is to couple the stands to the floor but decouple the speakers from the stands, but I might change my mind again before Christmas.
 
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My current working theory is to couple the stands to the floor but decouple the speakers from the stands, but I might change my mind again before Christmas.

My emerging theory over the past decade or so is to avoid anything that is rigid to the point it can ring in any way. This goes for many things, e.g. bolting an arm to an armboard, a driver to a baffle, pretty much anything. I no longer have any low-mass speaker stands to play about with, but my feeling with high-mass ones is not to over-tighten the bolts, do them up to the point they neither rattle nor ring. Basically always avoid turning your hi-fi into percussion instruments. With my speaker stands for the LA3/5As or JR149s the spikes just push through the carpet under their own weight (heavy stands) and are then levelled, I don’t use a spanner, just finger-tight is fine. The stands themselves are tightened by ear, i.e. no rattles or resonances.

The idea of trying to transmit as much energy from the speakers into the floor (typical ‘80s attitude) is hugely flawed IMO as a floor itself is a resonant structure, and an unpredictable one at that. Far better to try and lose energy wherever you can do so without generating resonance. A 5kg speaker on a 20kg stand is not going to be moving about much anyway at audio frequencies, it is just too high a mass for a little driver moving at say 50Hz to 20kHz to set in motion, so I’m pretty convinced what you want to do is to stop it either having an audio frequency resonance of its own or moving a hollow and potentially resonant floor. If I was in a non-carpeted room (a disaster sonically IMHO, so I never would be) I’d certainly try experimenting with compliant interfaces. No way in hell would I pay Townsend or equivalent prices, but I suspect there is something to that logic that is worthy of exploring. There will certainly be industrial equivalents.
 
I've no experience of these, but they are from the pro-audio side: https://isoacoustics.com/iso-puck-series/. I thought I'd seen versions with threads but these don't seem to have them, and this may make them unsuitable for under stands. They are sold here https://www.juno.co.uk/labels/IsoAcoustics/ as a pack of 8 for <£100.
Thanks. I saw those but the threads are essential for stability. I'm hoping a Hi-Fi Wigwam veteran can remember what Paul (Earl of Sodbury) used to sell - from a Swedish company, I think.
 
I've no experience of these, but they are from the pro-audio side: https://isoacoustics.com/iso-puck-series/. I thought I'd seen versions with threads but these don't seem to have them, and this may make them unsuitable for under stands. They are sold here https://www.juno.co.uk/labels/IsoAcoustics/ as a pack of 8 for <£100.
Not sure about under stands, but they are very good directly under bookshelf speakers. I use them between my speakers and subwoofers used as stands.
 
I suspect, like many, that this is a subject with many ideas and solutions. I have had spiked feet under stand mounted speakers on floor boards, and not liked the result. Currently, I have a pair of floor standing speakers, with spikes (came as part of the speaker), and these pierce a shag pile carpet, which sits on a concrete floor. This still produced a rather resonant box (mdf, I think) which was detected by hand, not an accelerometer. Just by a happy coincidence, I manged to pick up a couple of pieces oak veneered mdf slabs, and out of curiosity put one under a speaker, the spikes dug into the mdf, the mdf just sat on the carpet. This resulted in a box which felt appreciably less vibrant, the bass was much improved and dynamics, too.

Pondering why this should be, I hypothesised that spikes into concrete do not do a good job, and that many things may be a problem. One is that spikes sit on top of the concrete, so the contact area is minute. So transfer of energy from spike to floor is very difficult. Secondly is a problem with mechanical impedance, or the ease with which vibrations pass from one medium to another (or not). If one includes the wooden box, we have a wood/metal/concrete path with very dissimilar mechanical impedances, so vibration transmission is likely to be low.

However, with the veneered mdf in place, the spikes dug into the mdf, which sat on the carpet. The box vibrated much less, and SQ improved nicely. If I had used a material with more damping qualities than the mdf (which has very little) I think I would get even more improvements. And if I match the mechanical impedances, I will probably get even more improvements.

One for the future.
 
@Helen Bach I've found slabs of granite or marble placed on the carpet + underlay over a concrete floor to bring a marked improvement with various speaker & stand combinations in various rooms for the past 30 or so years.
 
@Helen Bach I've found slabs of granite or marble placed on the carpet + underlay over a concrete floor to bring a marked improvement with various speaker & stand combinations in various rooms for the past 30 or so years.

first impressions are that granite and marble are too stiff to provide any useful damping, but as I, too, have found with mdf (which has very little damping either) that the carpet/underlay does seem to confer some damping. Of course, it must also be stated that 'isolating' with spikes can have another negative effect, and that is if vibrations cannot be channeled down into the support, it will continue to be a problem, and likely the vibrations in the box walls will build over time to a larger amplitude!
 
Any idea where I can find a decent set of these?

I'm talking about feet that screw into the base of speaker stands, rather than isolation pads that sit under the speakers themsleves. I know I can buy spike shoes but, if possible, I'd prefer feet.

I think one of the Hi-Fi Wigwam crowd (Earl of Sodbury?) turned dealer used to sell the kind of thing I'm looking for.

I'm not looking for foo - just a sound, well engineered solution.The price should be well under £100.

Any ideas?

I found some outriggers from Dayton in USA
 


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