Springs Under My Speakers: What's Happening?

[MattHooper]

(Sorry I don't have speaker measuring equipment to post data. For now I just have to say "this is what I heard...any explanation"?)


I recently tried a "tweak" for footers under my speakers that has had fascinating results. And I'm wondering about the explanation.

I've never been big on trying out tweaks and footers for my speakers, only once in a very-long-while throwing something in to the mix.

But my experience building my turntable isolation platform, and employing the Townshend spring-based isolation pods under the platform did pique my curiosity about springs used in other "vibration environment" cases, like speakers. I ordered and tried a huge number of isolation/vibration reduction materials and footers to test out when doing the turntable platform, and nothing came remotely close to the spring-based design of the Townshend pods. Without them under the turntable base, if I stomped around the floor big vibrations were easily felt with a hand on the base, and easily measured as huge ringing spikes with a seismometer vibration measuring app on my ipad and iphone. With the springs under the base, it just killed these vibrations. Stomping around yielded virtually imperceptible results hand on the base, and showed almost nothing on the measurement app.

I was intrigued therefore that Townshend also makes spring-based isolation bases for speakers to sit on, to decouple them from the floor. They are pricey so didn't want to just roll that dice (yet). I noticed some relatively cheap versions of the idea on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08DFHS7QT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So I thought what the heck and bought 8 of them.

To back up: I've tried spikes under my Thiel speakers and, when I had all that material around from making my turntable base, I tried throwing in a few things under my speakers, including some Isoacoustics pucks I had on hand. Frankly I didn't notice anything remarkable or too compelling in any case and preferred the speakers sitting on the floor, except that I had to add some Herbies Fat Glider footers to the bottom to help me slide around the speakers on my rug.

With loud, bass-heavy music the floor around my speakers is easily felt to vibrate quite a bit. First thing I did was put 4 spring footers under only my left speaker. With loud music, the floor vibrated as normal by my R speaker. But around my L speaker with the springs, vibration was gone in the floor. Couldn't feel a thing around the speaker. Plus, the spring-speaker did sound "different" when music was playing through both.

Anyway...replaced the footers on both speakers and slipped those spring devices under the speakers (making them a bit wobbly).

Whoah!

Basically it was like the entire sonic range "tightened and cleaned up." Bass instruments tightened, bass instruments became more holographically located in the sound field, the entire soundstage expanded, imaging more 3D, instruments and voices became smoother, more clearly defined, with distinctly finer resolution and nuance.

My Thiel 2.7 speakers replaced my earlier larger flagship Thiel 3.7s. The 2.7s are a slightly scaled down more budget friendly version and one thing the 2.7s never did was "disappear" quite to the extent of the 3.7s. Maybe it was due to the more heroic bracing and aluminum front baffle of the 3.7s I don't know. But all instruments floated free of the 3.7s, even hard panned instruments. But hard panned instruments have been more "stuck" to the 2.7s, making the soundstage a bit more triangular or curve shaped - good depth the more you move to the middle, less so, converging towards the speakers to the sides.

With the springs under the speakers this "triangle-shaped" soundstage completely went away! It was like the soundstage simply opened up width-wise, like one of those Cinerama screens opening up in the old theaters. That, with the increased soundstage depth, has me hearing a scale of soundstage I'm not sure I've experienced before (except possibly my MBL omnis).

To dial it back: all these are somewhat subtle, but the improvement in every area makes for a very significant change in the character of the sound. It's like a level of "blur" has been removed.

When I went back and re-read reviews of the Townshend speaker isolators, it was like word-for-word the type of sonic changes I have experienced. I'm not trying to pimp for Townshend audio so won't post videos for now, but he's done some interesting videos explaining the purported benefits of spring decoupling. I'm somewhat more skeptical about the Isoacoustics explanations for their products in that it's hard to see how it would work. But the very fact that I can so obviously feel (and measure) the decoupling effects of springs makes me think it's entirely plausible they may be doing something.

Does anyone have a good idea as to what may explain this effect?

Would the floor vibration have been adding some sort of "burr" to the sound, that is now removed? Or would the vibration of the speaker somehow interacted with the floor, the vibrations going back in to the speaker, when not decoupled?

The speakers are a teeny bit higher on the springs than on the footers, and I adjusted my seating height. But no matter how high or low my head, the overall change in sound was there.

Thoughts?

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Mesanovic RTM10's are marketed with a spring loaded speaker stand. Would be interesting for anyone who has them to comment on how they sound both with and without.

 

[Balle Clorin]

Audio vector speakers have spring dampened feet on some of their speakers. Kind of wobbly .

 

[Blumlein 88]

You decoupled from the floor. So that energy doesn't get stored in the floor to be released haphazardly a fraction of a second later.

 

[dougi]

If the support devices are absorbing energy and not reflecting it back to the speakers then they may be reducing the doppler effect of low frequency micro movements of the speakers due to vibrations affecting the high frequencies.

 

[noobie1]

(Sorry I don't have speaker measuring equipment to post data. For now I just have to say "this is what I heard...any explanation"?)


I recently tried a "tweak" for footers under my speakers that has had fascinating results. And I'm wondering about the explanation.

I've never been big on trying out tweaks and footers for my speakers, only once in a very-long-while throwing something in to the mix.

But my experience building my turntable isolation platform, and employing the Townshend spring-based isolation pods under the platform did pique my curiosity about springs used in other "vibration environment" cases, like speakers. I ordered and tried a huge number of isolation/vibration reduction materials and footers to test out when doing the turntable platform, and nothing came remotely close to the spring-based design of the Townshend pods. Without them under the turntable base, if I stomped around the floor big vibrations were easily felt with a hand on the base, and easily measured as huge ringing spikes with a seismometer vibration measuring app on my ipad and iphone. With the springs under the base, it just killed these vibrations. Stomping around yielded virtually imperceptible results hand on the base, and showed almost nothing on the measurement app.

I was intrigued therefore that Townshend also makes spring-based isolation bases for speakers to sit on, to decouple them from the floor. They are pricey so didn't want to just roll that dice (yet). I noticed some relatively cheap versions of the idea on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08DFHS7QT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So I thought what the heck and bought 8 of them.

To back up: I've tried spikes under my Thiel speakers and, when I had all that material around from making my turntable base, I tried throwing in a few things under my speakers, including some Isoacoustics pucks I had on hand. Frankly I didn't notice anything remarkable or too compelling in any case and preferred the speakers sitting on the floor, except that I had to add some Herbies Fat Glider footers to the bottom to help me slide around the speakers on my rug.

With loud, bass-heavy music the floor around my speakers is easily felt to vibrate quite a bit. First thing I did was put 4 spring footers under only my left speaker. With loud music, the floor vibrated as normal by my R speaker. But around my L speaker with the springs, vibration was gone in the floor. Couldn't feel a thing around the speaker. Plus, the spring-speaker did sound "different" when music was playing through both.

Anyway...replaced the footers on both speakers and slipped those spring devices under the speakers (making them a bit wobbly).

Whoah!

Basically it was like the entire sonic range "tightened and cleaned up." Bass instruments tightened, bass instruments became more holographically located in the sound field, the entire soundstage expanded, imaging more 3D, instruments and voices became smoother, more clearly defined, with distinctly finer resolution and nuance.

My Thiel 2.7 speakers replaced my earlier larger flagship Thiel 3.7s. The 2.7s are a slightly scaled down more budget friendly version and one thing the 2.7s never did was "disappear" quite to the extent of the 3.7s. Maybe it was due to the more heroic bracing and aluminum front baffle of the 3.7s I don't know. But all instruments floated free of the 3.7s, even hard panned instruments. But hard panned instruments have been more "stuck" to the 2.7s, making the soundstage a bit more triangular or curve shaped - good depth the more you move to the middle, less so, converging towards the speakers to the sides.

With the springs under the speakers this "triangle-shaped" soundstage completely went away! It was like the soundstage simply opened up width-wise, like one of those Cinerama screens opening up in the old theaters. That, with the increased soundstage depth, has me hearing a scale of soundstage I'm not sure I've experienced before (except possibly my MBL omnis).

To dial it back: all these are somewhat subtle, but the improvement in every area makes for a very significant change in the character of the sound. It's like a level of "blur" has been removed.

When I went back and re-read reviews of the Townshend speaker isolators, it was like word-for-word the type of sonic changes I have experienced. I'm not trying to pimp for Townshend audio so won't post videos for now, but he's done some interesting videos explaining the purported benefits of spring decoupling. I'm somewhat more skeptical about the Isoacoustics explanations for their products in that it's hard to see how it would work. But the very fact that I can so obviously feel (and measure) the decoupling effects of springs makes me think it's entirely plausible they may be doing something.

Does anyone have a good idea as to what may explain this effect?

Would the floor vibration have been adding some sort of "burr" to the sound, that is now removed? Or would the vibration of the speaker somehow interacted with the floor, the vibrations going back in to the speaker, when not decoupled?

The speakers are a teeny bit higher on the springs than on the footers, and I adjusted my seating height. But no matter how high or low my head, the overall change in sound was there.

Thoughts?

What kind of flooring are the speakers on? Wooden? Suspended?

 

[pjug]

I would bet it isn't really affecting the speaker sound. Why don't you try to measure the difference?

 

[MattHooper]

What kind of flooring are the speakers on? Wooden? Suspended?

Suspended wood floors

 

[Inner Space]

Would the floor vibration have been adding some sort of "burr" to the sound, that is now removed?

Yes, I'm sure that's what was happening. A suspended wooden floor will re-radiate late and spectrally incoherent - a temporally and harmonically unrelated growl, all the time. Your solution is a classic case of two wrongs making a right - ideally the speakers should have a solid mechanical ground, not lossy mounting, but short of inserting twin concrete columns into the bedrock under your house, you're doing the next best thing.

But ...

When I went back and re-read reviews of the Townshend speaker isolators, it was like word-for-word the type of sonic changes I have experienced.

You should have left this part out. It hints at classic expectation bias - emphasis on re-read, i.e. you were primed.

 

[MattHooper]

You decoupled from the floor. So that energy doesn't get stored in the floor to be released haphazardly a fraction of a second later.

Yes, I'm sure that's what was happening. A suspended wooden floor will re-radiate late and spectrally incoherent - a temporally and harmonically unrelated growl, all the time. Your solution is a classic case of two wrongs making a right - ideally the speakers should have a solid mechanical ground, not lossy mounting, but short of inserting twin concrete columns into the bedrock under your house, you're doing the next best thing.

Yes that all makes sense to me, and it's certainly the obvious intuition. I'm just cautious about my intuitions. The effect seems so obviously beneficial in most ways, and so many speakers are mounted on wood floors, it makes me wonder at the moment why this decoupling method isn't more popular, or even provided with many speakers (if, again, my experience is anything to go by).

As to ideally giving a solid mechanical ground to the speakers - e.g. spiked on something solid like bedrock or whatever - again that makes intuitive sense too. The whole spiking thing has always invoked the idea that keeping the speakers "unmoving" while allowing only the drivers to move, makes sense as a way of not introducing distortion. And yet I've seen a number of reports of similar sonic effects when using springs under speakers sitting on solid floors, e.g. basements and the like. If that's the case, I wonder if there is something else going on aside from only stopping vibrating wood floors - e.g. is the vibration of a speaker better dissipated when uncoupled vs sitting on something hard?

But ...



You should have left this part out. It hints at classic expectation bias - emphasis on re-read, i.e. you were primed.

Oh I thought that was a given around here. Which is why I started right off bemoaning that I can't show any measurements. Even if I'd never read a thing about such tweaks, merely putting something new under my speakers could prime me to hear a difference.

So I was just proceeding on the "On the assumption I'm hearing what I'm describing" what could account for it. The effect is very distinct, not remotely in the "strain to hear it" and given the pronounced difference the springs make to floor born energy in the room, it seems like a plausible
intervention.

 

[Inner Space]

And yet I've seen a number of reports of similar sonic effects when using springs under speakers sitting on solid floors, e.g. basements and the like. If that's the case, I wonder if there is something else going on aside from only stopping vibrating wood floors - e.g. is the vibration of a speaker better dissipated when uncoupled vs sitting on something hard?

I would expect differences in that case, which might (by luck, basically) amount to the improvements you have experienced. If, for instance, you had old-style big, unbraced cabinets, then their generated vibrations can go to the suspended floor, if coupled, which would be worst-case; or remain in the cabinet and radiate as panel resonances, if solidly grounded, which would be a bad case; or (partially) waste as heat in the compliant coupling, which might sound better overall.

But if the cabinet is dead and rigid, then theory says best results will always come from a solid mechanical ground. But as always, whether the theoretical ideal is audible is an open question.

 

[Purité Audio]

Why don’t you acoustically measure with and without the springs?
Keith

 

[MattHooper]

Why don’t you acoustically measure with and without the springs?
Keith

From the opening of my OP: "(Sorry I don't have speaker measuring equipment to post data. For now I just have to say "this is what I heard...any explanation"?)"

 

[Blumlein 88]

Can you use the ipad or phone accelerometer laying on top to see with a sweep if there is a difference?

The reason I think such is not more popular is you get wobbly speakers and especially for floor standers or monitors on tall stands people don't trust it.

 

[MattHooper]

Can you use the ipad or phone accelerometer laying on top to see with a sweep if there is a difference?

The reason I think such is not more popular is you get wobbly speakers and especially for floor standers or monitors on tall stands people don't trust it.

Interesting...I could try that!

But do you mean I should measure the vibration of the speaker (iphone on top of the speaker) or the floor next to the speaker? It's the floor that stops vibrating with the springs in use. But perhaps the decoupling effect is also changing the vibration level or character in the speaker?

 

[CTRLM]

My speakers have been decoupled from the floor of my apartment for years but it wasn't done for SQ (old photo):

When I moved in they were spiked to the cavity concrete floor but I got numerous complaints from the apartment below me about the bass/noise. I had read quite a bit about de-coupling and reasoned that it might be a fix for my problem, out of desperation I ordered the above at a ridiculous price.

The effect was as I hoped.....it stopped the issue dead in it's tracks. I can't really comment on any sort of change in the sound as it wasn't my main focus, other than there was no noticeable degradation or side effect.

 

[MattHooper]

My speakers have been decoupled from the floor of my apartment for years but it wasn't done for SQ (old photo):

View attachment 113023

When I moved in they were spiked to the cavity concrete floor but I got numerous complaints from the apartment below me about the bass/noise. I had read quite a bit about de-coupling and reasoned that it might be a fix for my problem, out of desperation I ordered the above at a ridiculous price.

The effect was as I hoped.....it stopped the issue dead in it's tracks. I can't really comment on any sort of change in the sound as it wasn't my main focus, other than there was no noticeable degradation or side effect.

Those are exactly the Townshend isolation bars I'm intending to try! (More stable than the cheap springs I have now, and more purpose-designed. I like the way they don't really raise the height of the speakers much at all).

 

[restorer-john]

Those are exactly the Townshend isolation bars I'm intending to try! (More stable than the cheap springs I have now, and more purpose-designed. I like the way they don't really raise the height of the speakers much at all).

How much do they cost? I have the same problem. Elevated pole home, timber floor and my speakers actually sound better when I remove the spikes and decouple them through thick carpet pieces.

 

[Steve Dallas]

I have no direct thoughts on that product and the effect you experienced. But I do have a SQUIRREL!

Unfortunately, I lost the mesasurement data for the following:

I have a pair of KEF Q100 speakers sitting on the top of a built-in cabinet base in my living room. The speakers resonated that cabinet, creating a huge wall of muddy bass. This presented the perfect opportunity to measure different affordable isolation products.

The methodology was to place my UMIK-1 inside the cabinet, play a series of test tones while recording with the RTA, and capture the results for each set of isolators. The isolators were:

1. Little gray sticky feet included with the Q100s
2. Harry's Square Fat Dots
3. IsolateIt! Sorbothane hemispheres
4. Gray foam pads

The results were that the foam pads made the most difference with near complete isolation, and all the other isolaters performed similarly and poorly. The more expensive isolators were no better than the free feet that came with the speakers.

The curve ball is that treating the bottom of the cabinet base top with a double layer of the extreme version of that aluminum backed asphalt product made more difference than any of those isolators alone, save the foam pads.

Since the foam pads are ugly and not flat, the speakers currently sit on the Sorbothane hemispheres. Why? They were the last things stuck on the speakers, and there was no point in pulling them off for one of the other three.

I would re-run the test to get the data to post, but that would require me to pull the asphalt off, and I don't want to do that.

 

[MattHooper]

How much do they cost? I have the same problem. Elevated pole home, timber floor and my speakers actually sound better when I remove the spikes and decouple them through thick carpet pieces.

I've seen them for $1,200.

Obviously very pricey and probably little appeal to hand-types. But though I've done a fair amount of my own little additions to my system, I'm fine with paying more for a finished, purpose built product, even if it's on the expensive side.