audioBliss
Active Member
If they aren't Sorbothane I'd personally avoid them and buy the genuine product, which is also likely to be cheaper.
Here is a Sorbothane product guide which gives details of the correct weight range for their products:
https://www.sorbothane.com/Data/Sites/31/pdfs/product-guides/Sorbothane-SPG.pdf
As you correctly say, a lot of things that look like Sorbothane, aren't, and don't perform the same. It's not just any sort of rubbery material...
Ah I didn't realize that the material was called Sorbothane hehe. Well I'm not 100% exactly what material is used but reading about the properties of the SD pads as well as the Sorbothane ones it seems that both materials have very similar properties so who knows. All I know is that an independent organization in Sweden has done measurements of their performance -LTS - translates roughly to Sound Engineering Society and it checks out.
So to me it seems that two different companies have both solved the problem in a correct way but sell their products in different markets.
Imo this type of product i.e. Sorbothane and Sonic Design pads is the right approach to isolate the speakers. Before this there was only stuff like blue tack and spikes. Blue tack is more of a hack imo that might work i certain situations and spikes seem to have no valid use case at all expect ruining your floor. Nice to see that there are several places to buy correctly engineered products.
Edit: I saw now that Sorbothane seem to have an even finer granularity of the pads which is nice. They also seem to have their marketing in order. I use the SD pads here at home but I got them custom pads to the exact weight of my speakers. Seems to not be easy to get in the stores. With Sorbothane it seems it's easier to get a hold of.