Julf
Facts are our friends
Any material that exhibits elasticity decouples to some degree.
Isolating Feet for bookshelf speakers worth it ?
- Thread starter eddie1
- Start date
Any material that exhibits elasticity decouples to some degree.
Ayya Khema
pfm Member
goal is full decoupling, not to some degree
decoupling down to 20hz effectively, very few material can do it.
Julf
Facts are our friends
Sure, but you wrote "squidgy feet doesnt decouple", not "squidgy feet don't decouple enough".
Ayya Khema
pfm Member
yes, because under a certain frequency (probably around 60hz and under), the little squidgy feet do not decouple at all
Lee T
pfm Member
I should have been clear, I did mean sorbothane, speakers rock with this placed underneath them, even the Atacama gel pads, which are quite firm compared to some I have encountered, the speaker still moves which IMO is bad for SQ, they work well on a wall shelf as placing cones will do little if the shelf can move up & down with the music but I feel stability is key to get the best from speakers, choosing a stand that will resonate least is the path I have taken, Oak, if designed correctly & assembled correctly, seems to work, it's lighter than metal so will store less vibrational energy, allowing vibration to travel more quickly through it, as opposed to steel, which will store the vibration for longer, it's stiff & stable once sited, the sound is far better with my speakers with my Oak stands than any metal stand I have tried, much cleaner & open with less artifice that I find with metal stands, I find metal stands are more akin to tone controls, they all have such a varied effect on a given speaker, it seems pointless, I prefer the sound more natural, without the mass that isn't needed if the stand is designed correctly in the first place, my Oak stands are around a third of the weight of my, already lightweight, Soundstyle stands, yet are more stable with a speaker atop them, I have tried some that you would need a crane to shift, it killed the sound to a dull thud.
https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/HighSchool/Sound/Popup/discussion004.htm
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-bells-made-of-metal-and-not-wood-or-other-material
Julf
Facts are our friends
There you go with your absolutes again. Even at 60hz and under, the little squidgy feet do decouple to some (but very small) degree, just like any elastic material. Not that it makes a difference in practice, but "not at all" is not accurate.
Ayya Khema
pfm Member
actually, some squidgy feet might transmit more vibration at certain frequencies
squidgy feet under weight can become quite rigid.
i know that spike acts as very rigid springs hence actually increase the trasmition
in any case squidgy feet is s very poor choice to decouple compared to sylomer or hemishpere sorbothate well matched for optimal weight
Lee T
pfm Member
If you need to fill metal stands with ballast to tighten bass, I would suggest changing your speakers to something with a little more control & get hold of some stands that have no need to be filled to eliminate ringing tones.
If you need squidgy feet to eliminate vibration, get something that doesn't vibrate along with the speaker instead
It's all back to front thinking I feel, all that matters is stability with speakers, the rest can be avoided from the outset, with no need for tone controlling the speaker & stand.
Choose a stand that needs nothing added or taken away to allow the speaker to perform as it should, without artifice in the first place.
I would say, by far the worst experience i have encountered with speaker stands has to be a set of Target R4, these beasts destroyed the sound to such an extend I considered packing it all in if this was the "way to go" with hifi.
The sound became hard, bright yet rhythmically dull as dishwater after a 3 hour soak, the top end could have removed a filling, the bass all but disappeared & blended in with everything else, the mids flattened out & became recessed.
Bloody awful things.
If you need squidgy feet to eliminate vibration, get something that doesn't vibrate along with the speaker instead
It's all back to front thinking I feel, all that matters is stability with speakers, the rest can be avoided from the outset, with no need for tone controlling the speaker & stand.
Choose a stand that needs nothing added or taken away to allow the speaker to perform as it should, without artifice in the first place.
I would say, by far the worst experience i have encountered with speaker stands has to be a set of Target R4, these beasts destroyed the sound to such an extend I considered packing it all in if this was the "way to go" with hifi.
The sound became hard, bright yet rhythmically dull as dishwater after a 3 hour soak, the top end could have removed a filling, the bass all but disappeared & blended in with everything else, the mids flattened out & became recessed.
Bloody awful things.
Tony L
Administrator
There is no ‘one way’ with stands, e.g. the heavy Targets are the best I’ve heard in certain speaker contexts and can make open frame stands sound defuse and gutless. The ideological chants of some here have no place in audio IMO. It is just too complex and nuanced a subject for a simplistic single answer. What works under say a ProAc or LS3/5A in one system doesn’t work under a Kan or Royd in another. Change the room and again the speaker/stand interface may change beyond recognition. I’ve been lucky/unlucky enough to have moved house/flat many, many times over the years so have rather a lot ofexperience of this particular aspect (and I’m someone who rejects any house or flat with a poor shaped/sounding listening room, I just won’t live there)! Preconceptions mark out the fool, that much I do know!
Basically there is no ‘right’ between high mass & low mass, spikes, cones, Blu-Tac, felt, sorbothane etc. Only what works in any given system to the particular owner’s priorities. The rest is just noise.
Basically there is no ‘right’ between high mass & low mass, spikes, cones, Blu-Tac, felt, sorbothane etc. Only what works in any given system to the particular owner’s priorities. The rest is just noise.
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
I've not heard negatives (apart from cost!) about the Townshend supports. I'm not saying there aren't any, and of course you need different springs for different weights, they won't fit on shelves, etc, but otherwise are there downsides, acoustically? Does anyone here know?
Lee T
pfm Member
Just playing with tone controls as far as I can see.
Buy a speaker you enjoy, then place it on a surface that will not add to or take away from, to the least degree, the initial sound, place it at the height you need, job done
The speaker cannot be improved upon by placing it on any surface, it can only degrade, best to keep it simple & use common sense.
You need to ask why a speaker sounds gutless on open frame stands, not, how do I fix it by placing a ton weight underneath, if the speaker sounds gutless on any stand, the speaker is a waste of time.
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
If only there was such a surface.
Tony L
Administrator
I’d love to try the Townsend type spring thing. It makes some sense logically for sure, though being somewhat pedantic I’d argue the springs were in the wrong place for the mass being supported/the source of energy, but all stands/supports are the same in this regard. I have a feeling suspending speakers from the ceiling on something with a degree of compliance might be the best approach of all.
The most ‘controversial’ stand I’ve owned were the ones for the MEG RL-904:
Very tall, not spiked and with an I’m sure very deliberate ‘spring/rock’ to them. They put nothing I could feel into the floor. I liked these speakers a lot, though the port loading and my room didn’t get along well at all (I don’t tend to get on with small-driver ported speakers) so sadly they had to go. I’d like to try a large driver MEG such as the RL-901K though as what they did well they did very well indeed.
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
I've done that, and it worked very well. The speakers (actually the HF/MF cabinets above the bass cabs) were suspended on a kind of swing, with cotton ropes. Strangely the bass improved most, more than the higher frequencies. But very little WAF.
Lee T
pfm Member
After 30 years of going down the well trodden 70's/80's path of metal/mass route, I came to the conclusion, this is killing the sound of any speaker I place on it, when a stand can make my Castles sound like a Royd Saphire on steroids, you know something is wrong.
Oak is the best way to keep speakers sounding at least close to where they should be, stiff, solid, less resonant, ligh & most importantly, if designed correctly, stable, I have tried springs (FFS) springs under a speaker makes no logical sense whatsoever but I tried it, oh dear, the worst idea I have ever come across, light metal, heavy metal filled to the hilt, all were bad ideas I felt, only hard wood allowed the speaker to keep the drive units doing as they should without all that mass & metal slowing the rhythmic drive down to a halt & adding a rock/pop setting to the midrange, mids became much more as intended, that is, clear, open & natural as opposed to tightly closed in & harsh with crisp highs & super tight lows, yep, hifi in a nutshell.
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
Were they tuned to the mass of the speakers, so the resonant frequency was 2-3 Hz? If not you missed the point.
Lee T
pfm Member
They were professionally tuned to a pair of Neat speakers I own
Luckily I didn't have to buy them, they were a design in use that were tailored for me to try out at home
Cost an absolute fortune too, what a waste of money for anyone going down this route
No need to spend such amounts to support a pair off speakers, go old school, it works.
Rock solid, if I push these from the front, they don't budge, rock, resonate or vibrate
Luckily I didn't have to buy them, they were a design in use that were tailored for me to try out at home
Cost an absolute fortune too, what a waste of money for anyone going down this route
No need to spend such amounts to support a pair off speakers, go old school, it works.
Rock solid, if I push these from the front, they don't budge, rock, resonate or vibrate
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
Sorry, no such animal.They were professionally tuned to a pair of Neat speakers I own
Luckily I didn't have to buy them, they were a design in use that were tailored for me to try out at home
Cost an absolute fortune too, what a waste of money for anyone going down this route
No need to spend such amounts to support a pair off speakers, go old school, it works.
Rock solid, if I push these from the front, they don't budge, rock, resonate or vibrate