(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?
The cones did nothing to the sound, the listening did everything for the sale.
