Tile vs Carpet / Isolation Feet vs Spikes

[watchnerd]

Moved to a new house last week and finally set up the stereo.

The primary listening / living room has carpet.

Last house had tile.

Speaker stands have Iso Acoustics 'de-coupling' feet with an soft rubbery compound that acted like a suction cup on tile floors and dampened vibration.

New house is carpet.

Conventional wisdom says I should ditch the isolation feet and use spikes on carpet.

But isolation feet + carpet sound pretty good to me.

Of course, I don't have spikes to A/B test against.

Is the conventional wisdom about needing to use spikes with carpet just wrong?

Instead of coupling the spikes to the floor through the carpet, is double-isolating via feet + carpet just fine?

 

[jhaider]

After the complete scams (power cords, cable lifters, etc.) spikes may be the stupidest audiophool affectation around.

Do not bother. Any feet just change the sound primarily by altering the height of the speaker.

 

[DVDdoug]

Is the conventional wisdom about needing to use spikes with carpet just wrong?

Yeah, I'd say "mostly wrong".

Almost all of the sound comes out of the speaker driver (and the port if there is one). Not much sound comes from the cabinet vibrations so you usually don't need any kind of isolation (or spikes, etc.) unless you have speakers on a desk/shelf and something on the desk/shelf is vibrating and making a buzzing or rattling noise. Most noise/sound that comes through the floor or walls also comes from soundwaves.