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Wood speaker stands; anyone compared them to metal?

Russ Andrews ‘Torlite’

Dealt with a few posts upthread. I think he’s barking up something like the right tree, at least as far as mass goes, but I part company with the cone tops and spikes.

PS Hard coupling is especially bad with 149s as the black base is only a thin hollow pressed alloy part not a million miles away from a biscuit tin. I find felt pads work the best of anything I’ve tried, and that’s what Jim Rogers provided (though I use thicker ones).
 
They do them in different heights, though if I ever went in this direction I’d custom order from scratch as I really don’t like the top-plate being wider than the JR’s black metal base. I reckon with that sized correctly and in a nice dark walnut they’d look really good. I’d prefer teak as that’s the finish of my 149s, but I assume CITES regulation has done away with that. I’d definitely not go lighter in colour than the speaker.

At this stage I’m just fishing for experiences to see if anyone has gone from a super-heavyweight stand like an R4 to a light wood support. The design makes a lot of sense to me being a fairly wide-legged tripod they are stable (unlike say the AW acrylic stuff), they are slender, so should be fairly light, and being solid wood are inherently self-damped. They are a nice piece of aesthetic design that will certainly suit a 149, and though they likely sell mainly on looks they make a lot of sense to me logically too from a structural perspective.
Plantation grown teak is available in this country https://www.brookstimber.com/news-investingforgrowth.php
some people have stocks of old teak in their workshop :)

Pete
 
Here's an idea which works visually and in terms of authenticity. Tony, you NEED tulip stands. Get someone to make a pair of wooden tulip stands to the right height. That sounds doable, it's what Jim would have wanted. You know it makes sense.

(And I may be interested in a pair too!)
 
Currently using Hifiracks duet for my small Neats.

I did a lot of switching back in the day with high mass, low mass, filled, unfilled & found heavy metal stands were not suitable so have stuck with low mass stands since.

I find wood stands to have less of an impact on the sound of any speaker i have used on them compared to false, ultra tight (no bass) heavy metal alternative.
 
Dealt with a few posts upthread. I think he’s barking up something like the right tree, at least as far as mass goes, but I part company with the cone tops and spikes.

PS Hard coupling is especially bad with 149s as the black base is only a thin hollow pressed alloy part not a million miles away from a biscuit tin. I find felt pads work the best of anything I’ve tried, and that’s what Jim Rogers provided (though I use thicker ones).

As I recall, the late Art Dudley was an advocate of ditching pointy things in favour of thick felt pads. Lavardin advise avoiding spikes etc, arguing generally in favour of wood or plywood rather than glass or metal. My K-Rak (Lavardin) has legs threaded for spikes/feet (if you must) but they consider it sounds best without.

Herb Reichert considers things sound like what they're made of, a lot of truth in that I think.


Talking of wood, saw this the other day. Regardless of your beliefs/prejudices/priorities, I just though this (the auditorium) looked wonderful : https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...wn-20-storey-wooden-skyscraper-worlds-tallest
 
I suppose it's a kind of metal/wood change but my Spendor 2/3s went from steel Target stands to sitting on a pair of subwoofers (previously in the system) with Isoacoustics minipucks between speaker and subwoofer. Substantial improvement in bass and mid clarity.
 
I suppose it's a kind of metal/wood change but my Spendor 2/3s went from steel Target stands to sitting on a pair of subwoofers (previously in the system) with Isoacoustics minipucks between speaker and subwoofer. Substantial improvement in bass and mid clarity.
Yup, mid clarity is where i found most improvement. Bass improved also but the mids sprang into life & the sound became more engaging. I would never go back to 80's heavy metal, apart from when i'm playing axe attack of course.
 
As I recall, the late Art Dudley was an advocate of ditching pointy things in favour of thick felt pads.

I hadn’t seen that, but good to see. He was also going down the bolt-tightness thing too, I remember one of his columns I think relating to his 301, though maybe the 124, where he’d stripped and cleaned it and felt it sounded like crap, and then realised it was over-tightening it to the plinth that was to blame. I’ve long felt really gentle finger-tight is right here. When my 301 was slate-mounted I could kill the sound with an extra 1/4 turn of the main mounting bolts. I learned a lot with that deck as it was so easy to get to everything. I’ve taken that knowledge with me to the 124 and really got it dialled-in now.
 
One possible cost effective improvement would be to place washing machine feet between the speakers and the stand.

I have not got around to trying this as the tops of my speaker stands are quite small. However, 8 feet will set you back about a tenner on ebay and you might find that 3 feet per speaker are better than 4.
 
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/oddvar-stool-pine-20249330/

Something like this should give you a cheap 'taste' of what wood stands may offer before spending big money on proper stands. Who knows, you may decide to keep them as is :)
@Tony L, just make sure that whatever new stands you get match the height of your existing stands exactly otherwise it will be difficult to separate out the acoustic effects of the stand from the acoustic effects of the change in height. The same applies to isolation pucks, - when I placed OREA under my Dittons I lowered the height of the stand (stacked plywood sheets) to keep the speaker at the same height.
 
I hadn’t seen that, but good to see. He was also going down the bolt-tightness thing too, I remember one of his columns I think relating to his 301, though maybe the 124, where he’d stripped and cleaned it and felt it sounded like crap, and then realised it was over-tightening it to the plinth that was to blame.

It's another example of the UK dancing to a different tune to the rest of the world. The whole 'Linn-tight' thing was pretty much unknown elsewhere. I speak as the man who managed to crack the body of what was then the only sample in the UK of a new top-of-the-line Denon MC.

Oops.

I've never learned Japanese, but I very clearly got the gist at the time that the phrase being uttered in response was essentially "what the f*** was he doing?"

They graciously wrote it off, but didn't let me within 100m of its replacement.
 
@Tony L, just make sure that whatever new stands you get match the height of your existing stands exactly otherwise it will be difficult to separate out the acoustic effects of the stand from the acoustic effects of the change in height.

That would involve buying two pairs, which is a bit more than the budget allows! As stated upthread I do feel the LS3/5A stands are a bit tall for the 149s, so part of the reason for even thinking about this is to better optimise the height, especially considering I sit low.

I’m not going to move fast on this. There is no rush as everything sounds great as-is. I’m just curious to hear the findings of others who may have tried something similar. I suspect it will happen in time as spiked metal stands is really the only remaining part of 1980s UK groupthink left in my system (the Tannoys sit flat on the carpet perfectly happily).
 
This is where audiophile thinking starts going very wrong to my mind. Even in a fairly light speaker like a JR149 there is more than enough mass to stop it moving anywhere meaningful due to broadband audio-frequency vibration. If you think of a typical music signal it contains all frequencies from low bass to high treble and even the very lowest isn’t going to be able to move the cabinet far enough to impact the highest. I suspect what is actually happening can all be put down to exciting sympathetic resonances in the cabinets themselves, in the stands, and in the floor. The drivers are as still as that given cabinet design allows them to be.

well, I'm no audiophile. If you want to pigeon hole me, put me in the 'scientist' one. Will loudspeakers move? (rock?) sure they will. Even the best of them if not prevented from doing so.

No, I certainly don’t want to damp them. I’ve come to the conclusion that low-mass cabinets that lose energy fast in a controlled way (e.g. BBC designs) are *vastly* preferable sonically to my ears to those that attempt to damp and store energy with mass. Most of the speakers I like the least are very heavy boxes. I’m on pretty much the same page with record decks. Beyond a decent rotating mass for speed stability I think weight is best avoided here too. Mass strikes me as very lazy design. Just shovel more crap on until you’ve masked the inherent design limitations!

Mass does not damp. The only way to dissipate the energy is to damp it. Whatever it is. I would assume those aluminium drums of the JR's have damping on the wall inside, as aluminium has one of the lowest damping factors (highest Q) of any material.
 
Mass does not damp. The only way to dissipate the energy is to damp it. Whatever it is. I would assume those aluminium drums of the JR's have damping on the wall inside, as aluminium has one of the lowest damping factors (highest Q) of any material.

Yes, the 149s have an internal damping layer between the alloy cylinder and the acoustic foam. The cabs seem inert and have no ‘note’ when tapped. They are also under tension from the end-caps.

FWIW I agree mass doesn’t damp, which is why I’m baffled that so many speaker and turntable manufacturers produce such absurdly high-mass products (Wilson, Focal, Sonus Fabre etc, plus countless enormous belt-drive decks etc). Rega are a fascinating outlier here, one of very few applying genuinely original thought to my eyes. Everything else is pretty much a consensus of high-mass and maybe wood-clad MDF aside from the far more traditional/retro/revival designs based on heavily state-funded BBC cabinet research from the 60s and 70s (plus the likes of Klipsch who have many of their classic ‘40s-60s designs in production). The pro-audio market is far more interesting IMO with injection-moulded metal or composite cabs etc. There is some original thought there, and much has nothing to do with throwing ever more mass at stuff.
 
So, has anyone moved from metal to wood stands?
over the years trying many different stands I have moved gradually from wood/light construction to more heavier metal stands and this is where I am staying as a preference. With a few exceptions (e.g. with Spendor SA1 or D1, or next up Spendors) heavier metal stands have performed clearly better for me.
I’ve tried the Oddvar too but have found them not very rigid (or performing well tbh, but yes cheap enough to try)
More solid e.g. HiFi racks have been clearly better, with both smaller monitors and bigger (Harbeth 30s) but ultimately I’ve gone for heavier metal stands for all sizes.
May be a preference as well rather than outright advantage, especially with bass shaping and sound stage (both softer to my ears with wood but may be preferable to others)
 
Never moved from metal to wood stands other than using the One Thing wooden stands for Quad 57s (which are pretty horrible TBH).
I do tend to prefer lighter metal stands though such as the Solid Steel tripods. I have a pair of old Target HRs high mass stands knocking around but rarely use them.

Must admit I dislike the look of most wood stands and can't think of any I'd find visually appealing.
 
Constrained layer damping will do everything the BBC cabinets do, but better.

I suspect everything is not as it seems in the video. [I can't hear the sound on my computer ATM]
The first piece of wood he hits has a resonance frequency of about 250 Hz, and a damping factor of 0.032, typical for low damping wood. The two bits of wood separated by the rubbery stuff has a resonance frequency of 225 Hz and a damping factor of 0.11. The two bits of wood with 'Densodamp' in between has a resonance frequency of about 300 Hz and a damping factor of 0.46.

If one is adding thickness, and everything else remains the same, then the resonance frequency will go up, not down. So the one with the rubber looks as though it is acting as it has extensional damping, The one with 'Densodamp' has only a tiny amount more damping than the first lump of stuff without anything added.

These figures suggest that having 'Densodamp' between two pieces of low damping factor wood provides only a very slight increase in damping. The one with rubber provides a little damping, but way below what is required, and can be bettered by several materials, some of them natural woods.
 


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