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Speaker stands - is there objectivist evidence?

DLS79

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I’m lucky enough to live in a city with an acoustic panel manufacturer. They do installations for major corporations mostly, but have an annual garage sale. I was able to pick up a desk sized piece of thick felt for cheap to knock down reflections. There might be something like that in your corner of the world.

these aren't cheap but they come in a range of sizes (up to 49" x 26-1/2"), and colors.

Edit:
I should mention you can get felt desk mats far cheaper on Etsy, but you have to do a lot more due diligence to ensure you get a good product!
 
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617

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Vibration mitigation is an actual thing and off the shelf solutions are not likely to be effective. Notice the ratio of conjecture and common sense to measurements here. People can't even agree on what these products should be doing much less if they're doing it.
 

Zapper

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It isn’t “audiophile theory” at all. It’s Acoustical fact. For the record I’m not an audiophile I’m a Sound Engineer and Acoustical Consultant (professionally).

Decoupling from the stand is ideal but incredibly difficult to do entirely. This is why many stands are instead coupled directly to the structure because if you decouple the stand from the floor but can’t decouple the speaker from the stand, it is ideal to increase the entire mass of the system.
I'll happily accept it as acoustical fact if you show the objective data that proves it. The data that's shown in this thread so far isn't conclusive by any means, but it seems to support the idea that it's best to decouple the speaker from the stand, and the stand from the floor. And that highly lossy isolation like silicone rubber is preferable.
 

Zapper

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Vibration mitigation is an actual thing and off the shelf solutions are not likely to be effective.
There is data shown in the links in this thread that demonstrates it can do something. Whether that's enough to be considered "effective" is unclear and subjective.
Notice the ratio of conjecture and common sense to measurements here.
People can't even agree on what these products should be doing much less if they're doing it.
Well, that's the problem with all things audio. Data is insufficient to resolve many of these questions.
 

Sokel

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Height is really a thing and it's nice to be in the acoustic center as much as possible (depending on the speaker I guess) :

1m 1-24.PNG 1m 1-6.PNG

Measuring and having a way to adjust height would be the best.
 

DLS79

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I'll happily accept it as acoustical fact if you show the objective data that proves it.

That's because its damn hard to find objective data that proves it. Like I mentioned earlier The stand/desk, the speakers, the position of the speakers, and the sound coming out of the speakers all play a part. With so many variables at play a very low percentage of people are likely to ever encounter the phenomena in a way that they notice.


For the record I was trained as a physicist, and this falls into the common sense category. Dealing with vibrations is a wide ranging topic. For example conformal coatings on electronic circuitry, and special washers help mitigate vibration issues!
 

Thomas_A

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617

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The reason why I said it is a thing but that off the shelf products don't work is that, as any vibration consultant will tell you, vibration is resistant to simple or brute force intuitive solutions. It isn't your speakers vibrating, it is parts of your speakers vibrating at certain frequencies in a soup of other vibrations including your room modes, floor flexure, other things in the room, etc.

In my field when we need to create a vibration solution it is 1. Defined ('microscope is blurry' 'microtome isnt working') and 2. Engineered and tested.

It's not all always complex or even expensive. Sometimes it's a matter of moving equipment closer to a column where a building is stiffer. Sometimes it's a matter of a suspended air isolation platform. In any case it is tested and measured. Fortunately there is no Harman preference score for electron microscope imagery, I think they can actually measure it.

Maybe the pucks work, who knows, but their own marketing materials have purely subjective conclusions.

Basically the answer to the question is, there is no convincing data, and you might as well just experiment to see what works. Expensive stands also look cool, which is as good a reason as any to use them.

We all wish we knew but we don't know.
 

Purité Audio

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Thomas_A

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One of the reasons why speakers have enclosures.
Keith
Yes of course this is just an example to show vibration transfer. As I've shown it happens with speakers as well, and it may sometimes be audible.
 

MattHooper

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The reason why I said it is a thing but that off the shelf products don't work is that, as any vibration consultant will tell you, vibration is resistant to simple or brute force intuitive solutions. It isn't your speakers vibrating, it is parts of your speakers vibrating at certain frequencies in a soup of other vibrations including your room modes, floor flexure, other things in the room, etc.

In my field when we need to create a vibration solution it is 1. Defined ('microscope is blurry' 'microtome isnt working') and 2. Engineered and tested.

It's not all always complex or even expensive. Sometimes it's a matter of moving equipment closer to a column where a building is stiffer. Sometimes it's a matter of a suspended air isolation platform. In any case it is tested and measured. Fortunately there is no Harman preference score for electron microscope imagery, I think they can actually measure it.

Maybe the pucks work, who knows, but their own marketing materials have purely subjective conclusions.

Basically the answer to the question is, there is no convincing data, and you might as well just experiment to see what works. Expensive stands also look cool, which is as good a reason as any to use them.

We all wish we knew but we don't know.

This is generally what I gathered, from my own fooling around with materials under my speakers, and the input of some ASR members knowledgeable about vibration control.

My speakers sit on a obviously springy wood floor. I tried a ton of different materials underneath them from springs to sorbothane based stuff to isoacoustics, to wood caps, MDF shelves, spikes, sliders, hockey pucks, and finally a thick granite slab. Only the springs essentially fully decoupled the speaker vibrations from the floor (which I didn't want). Since, as you say, truly predicting the different effects of various materials in terms of vibration changes is very complex, and often even "heroic" high mass attempts can just be moving resonances, not getting rid of them (even on a thick slab of granite I can feel music through my speaker vibrating the floor!)

So I just figured in playing with all those materials I was moving around resonances, and I played with it until I hit upon a combination I liked. Worked for me :)
 

Somafunk

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IsoAcoustics Iso-Stand Series Speaker Isolation Stands with Height & Tilt Adjustment: Iso-200

I use the IsoAcoustics ISO-155 Pro under my monitors and ISO-200 Pro subwoofer stand @ £140 for the pair, I like them as they raise and slightly tilt my monitors to the perfect height, as for measurements and all that I dunno? - not interested. I probably could have done something similar with some books and squash balls but a mate advised me to get them for my set-up. They weren’t stupidly expensive so I consider them worth it, I wouldn’t spend £500 for the home audio versions of what I have though - that’s just daft

51724319233_a597d2d68e_b.jpg
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He gave a tip when setting them up, use silicone on the rubbers so they fit together easily.

51724523315_713ee53d5a_b.jpg
 

Somafunk

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Quality stands will have enough mass to minimize resonances. They will also have spikes to couple to the foundation.

There is a misconception that spikes somehow “decouple” the speaker, but it’s the opposite. By directly coupling the stand to the foundation with spikes, you share the load and dissipate the energy more efficiently.

Nope…..nope…..nope…..nope……nope……nope…….nope….. etc….etc…..
 

Somafunk

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Weirdly confident response. It’s misplaced.

Nah I worked for Gates Power Transmissions for a few years, did a fair amount of work developing knock sensors and using vibration monitoring equipment for very safety critical engineering applications with highly accurate monitoring systems from Adash. At no point when isolating a gas turbine (insert practically anything here) did we stand back and say “you know what this needs?……..a set of spikes to share the load and dissipate the energy into the structure“

There you go, my rule is not to argue, I’ve said my piece so bye ;)
 
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There is a difference between arguing and debating. If you unwilling to debate then you are limiting yourself.
There you go, my rule is not to argue, I’ve said my piece so bye ;)

You’re “argument” in your reply is simply stating where you worked. Not your qualifying of your opinion. You gave an opinion by stating that in your experience working with turbines you didn’t feel at any point “this could use coupling”. You didn’t bother with objective measurements (more like your company) because as you said, you didn’t even consider it.

Here for a debate.
 

DonR

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Nah I worked for Gates Power Transmissions for a few years, did a fair amount of work developing knock sensors and using vibration monitoring equipment for very safety critical engineering applications with highly accurate monitoring systems from Adash. At no point when isolating a gas turbine (insert practically anything here) did we stand back and say “you know what this needs?……..a set of spikes to share the load and dissipate the energy into the structure“

There you go, my rule is not to argue, I’ve said my piece so bye ;)
But did you listen to them? :p
 

Platypus20

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I worked in vibration analysis program for 2-3 yrs, measuring the vibration and on what axis is easy enough, the root cause of the vibration can be incredibly complex and very intertwined in structures, sub-structures and individual parts
 
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mcdn

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There is a misconception that spikes somehow “decouple” the speaker, but it’s the opposite. By directly coupling the stand to the foundation with spikes, you share the load and dissipate the energy more efficiently.
I'm sure it's not intended, but this comment is the typical "word salad" we hear all the time around speaker stands/feet/spikes. "decouple" means what? "share the load" means what? "dissipate the energy" means what?
 
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