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- Mar 6, 2021
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I looked before on this site for discussions about securing audio gear for earthquakes, but didn't find anything. There may not be many of you living in earthquake prone regions, but for those who do it might be useful to have a thread to share ideas with one another. Ideally we want to keep ourselves and our precious gear safe, while not sacrificing sound quality...a worthy pair of goals.
I'll start with a trick I figured out recently. I have an audio setup that I really like now, including a pair of LS50 Metas placed at the ends of a 6' wide entertainment center, perched on a set of isoacoustics stands to lift the tweeters up to ear level. However, a couple months ago we had a decent shake and I noticed the speakers dancing and swaying a bit on the stands...since my wife just happened to be standing next to them, I said "hold the speaker to keep it falling" and she corralled one while I grabbed the other. This wasn't a big earthquake by Tokyo standards, and I knew we could expect worse...it was time to do something to save these speakers from a big fall the next time. I wasn't keen on screwing the speakers down to a board, so I thought a while and came up with a relatively simple fix that cost me only 10 bucks, and is very easy to implement. Each speaker got a couple of straps, one to secure the stand to the entertainment center, and another to secure the speaker to the stand....
The straps are crossed so that the speaker strap goes under the lowest rungs of the stand while the base strap goes over the top rungs of the stand...
I didn't tighten the straps fully, there is a little slack in them but this is ok. In an earthquake the speaker/stand will lift from the top/base and this will naturally tighten the tension on the strap, and the amount of leaning will be limited. Even in the worst case, they should not be able to fall off the entertainment center onto the hard floor.
...I hope this is useful for somebody. I hope others can post any tricks they've used, or strategies to achieve the dual goals of safety and high fidelity.
I'll start with a trick I figured out recently. I have an audio setup that I really like now, including a pair of LS50 Metas placed at the ends of a 6' wide entertainment center, perched on a set of isoacoustics stands to lift the tweeters up to ear level. However, a couple months ago we had a decent shake and I noticed the speakers dancing and swaying a bit on the stands...since my wife just happened to be standing next to them, I said "hold the speaker to keep it falling" and she corralled one while I grabbed the other. This wasn't a big earthquake by Tokyo standards, and I knew we could expect worse...it was time to do something to save these speakers from a big fall the next time. I wasn't keen on screwing the speakers down to a board, so I thought a while and came up with a relatively simple fix that cost me only 10 bucks, and is very easy to implement. Each speaker got a couple of straps, one to secure the stand to the entertainment center, and another to secure the speaker to the stand....
The straps are crossed so that the speaker strap goes under the lowest rungs of the stand while the base strap goes over the top rungs of the stand...
I didn't tighten the straps fully, there is a little slack in them but this is ok. In an earthquake the speaker/stand will lift from the top/base and this will naturally tighten the tension on the strap, and the amount of leaning will be limited. Even in the worst case, they should not be able to fall off the entertainment center onto the hard floor.
...I hope this is useful for somebody. I hope others can post any tricks they've used, or strategies to achieve the dual goals of safety and high fidelity.