Will filling my speaker stands really improve sound?

[JustJones]

I used unscented kitty litter, mainly to help weight distribution. I think I need something denser.

 

[Chromatischism]

The best performer was... Auralex, followed by the little rubber feet from the hardware store, followed by Blue-Tack, followed by Sorbothane, followed by Harry's Fat Dots.

Did you use the correct duro and thickness of sorbothane for your speaker's weight?

 

[Thomas savage]

Freeze dry the corpse of our enemy and crumble that into our speaker stands . , By enemy I mean ' first wife ' . Or of your a audiophile, your step dad.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Did you use the correct duro and thickness of sorbothane for your speaker's weight?

Yes. I called IsolateIt! with the info, and they recommended the size and durometer hemispheres I purchased. I believe they were 1" x 0.5" and 50 duro. An LS50 weighs 15.8 Lbs, which is right on the line of 50 and 70 duro, and they said 50 duro would isolate better. Maybe 70 duro would have actually worked better, but I did not purchase nor test that hardness.

To me, the lesson was not to spend more than what Blue-Tack costs, and that well-built cabinets DO transmit vibrations to their bases.

 

[Steve Dallas]

I used unscented kitty litter, mainly to help weight distribution. I think I need something denser.

It just needs to be dense enough to deaden the ring of the stand columns. If you rap the stand with your knuckles, and it sounds dead, you are good to go. An exception would be if you need to make the stands bottom-heavy due to having kids, animals, a crazy spouse, unmentionable hobbies, etc.

A lot of people use kitty litter successfully.

 

[muslhead]

I use kitty litter.

New or used?

 

[cistercian]

If you don't want to add weight try expanding urethane foam. I have used it for sound deadening before with great results.
IE: Great Stuff sold at home improvement stores etc.

 

[SIY]

New or used?

Remember, you want damping.

 

[Wes]

since this made it to p. 3, I suggest selling the speakers and getting some nice Electrostatic panels...

 

[Chromatischism]

Yes. I called IsolateIt! with the info, and they recommended the size and durometer hemispheres I purchased. I believe they were 1" x 0.5" and 50 duro. An LS50 weighs 15.8 Lbs, which is right on the line of 50 and 70 duro, and they said 50 duro would isolate better. Maybe 70 duro would have actually worked better, but I did not purchase nor test that hardness.

To me, the lesson was not to spend more than what Blue-Tack costs, and that well-built cabinets DO transmit vibrations to their bases.

That's on the stiff side - you should always go for 30 duro, a number of them that puts you right in the middle of their load range (4 or 5), and a thickness that ends up with 10-15% compression.

 

[KaiserSoze]

This is a new one on me. The mere fact that metal has poor intrinsic damping does not, in and of itself, mean that it happens to an extent that would be audible. Maybe it does audibly affect the sound, but this cannot be demonstrated by hitting it with another piece of metal or a wooden drumstick or anything else. If I bought a pair of speaker stands and I believed that this was occurring to an extent that audibly affected the sound, I would be inclined to return them and get something else, something made out of, oh, I dunno, maybe wood. But if I owned a pair of metal stands and was convinced that I was hearing the stands ringing but wanted to keep them for whatever reason, one possible solution that I might try would be to get some vinyl tubing and pack it in as tightly as I could. The total cost would be less using larger diameter tubing, so long as it isn't so large that you can't get enough of it in there.

If you have an urge to rap on it with your knuckle (or with a wooden stick or whatever) to decide whether the material you used has solved the problem, then it is likely that you didn't have a genuine reason to think there was a problem. If you had actually heard the ringing, then you should be able to tell whether it is fixed just by listening, without having to rap on it with your knuckles or anything else. I would wager that the majority of people who do this will find it impossible to refrain from rapping on it to tell whether the problem is fixed.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Actually as I thought about it again, it occurred to that the ideal would be recycled breast implants. Recycled would be best because the break-in period for new breast implants is incredibly long.

 

[Chromatischism]

Actually as I thought about it again, it occurred to that the ideal would recycled breast implants. Recycled would be best because the break-in period for a new pair of breast implants is incredibly long.

What in the world made you think of this.

 

[Sal1950]

Everyone seems to be focused on the reduction of ringing or production of resonances in the stands structure, but there is at least one more area of consern that can effect the sound, the importance of keeping the speaker as still during playback as possible.
As the driver cones move forward in the air and attempts to cause a positive pressure in the room, the reverse force is affected on the speaker. If the speaker moves backward from this force the spl becomes somewhat neutralized. This speaker movement will also modulate the sources wavefront causing various distortions.
I'm without the gear or skill to do proper measurements to compare the actual changes wroth by the two approaches but it is my opinion that using whatever measures are available to you to solidify your speaker in 3d space can be as effective if not more so than the ringing of the speakers mounting.

 

[restorer-john]

My various stands and most of the floorstanding speakers are spiked (long, slim, adjustable spikes) through the carpet and underlay to the timber floor below, so they effectively sit above the carpet. They don't move at all once correctly levelled and although some stands can be filled with sand/shot/whatever, they are all pretty inert and dont ring or vibrate.

I can see that some of the hollow thin walled metal stands might benefit, but small square section or multi pole round steel tube stands it would be pointless IMO.

I even have a pair of Mission floor standing speakers that have a separate cap on the lower rear panel with a sealed sub cavity to place leadshot if you want to. The speakers are already 26kg each and really solid. So I used to hide cash in there back when I had some...

 

[Sal1950]

I even have a pair of Mission floor standing speakers that have a separate cap on the lower rear panel with a sealed sub cavity to place leadshot if you want to

IMHO, lead shot has to be the best available material. Not only will it's density add about as much weight as possible to your stand, when the schitt hits the fan you can always use it to load ammo.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Everyone seems to be focused on the reduction of ringing or production of resonances in the stands structure, but there is at least one more area of consern that can effect the sound, the importance of keeping the speaker as still during playback as possible.
As the driver cones move forward in the air and attempts to cause a positive pressure in the room, the reverse force is affected on the speaker. If the speaker moves backward from this force the spl becomes somewhat neutralized. This speaker movement will also modulate the sources wavefront causing various distortions.
I'm without the gear or skill to do proper measurements to compare the actual changes wroth by the two approaches but it is my opinion that using whatever measures are available to you to solidify your speaker in 3d space can be as effective if not more so than the ringing of the speakers mounting.

This falls under the same sort of heading, things consistent with the laws of physics but that might or might not yield any audible effect. According to the law of conservation of momentum, the product of mass and velocity will be the same for both directions at each instant in time. (Okay, to be correct, the product is positive for one direction and negative for the other, because momentum, like velocity, is a vector that has direction and can therefore be negative.) To figure the mass in one direction you have to use the acoustically loaded mass of the driver, which is typically from 10% to 20% greater than the moving mass of the diaphragm/VC assembly itself. The values vary substantially like all driver parameters, but for an 8" driver a typical value would be maybe about 30 gm. Speaker mass likewise varies substantially, but for the sake of illustration let us suppose 10 kg. Since the mass of the speaker in this case will be 333 x greater than the loaded mass of the diaphragm/VC, the velocity of the diaphragm/VC will 333 x greater than the velocity of speaker. Since kinetic energy scales as the square of velocity, and since the square of 333 is greater than 100,000, it follows that the energy content of the vibratory motion of the speaker itself will be .1% of the energy content of the vibratory motion of the diaphragm/VC assembly. But this depends greatly on the ratio of the speaker mass to the loaded mass of the diaphragm. For subwoofers where the loaded mass of diaphragm is much greater, in relation to the mass of the speaker itself, it is probably more like 1%.

 

[Mnyb]

My practice for standmounth speakers has been , get cheap stand's that specifically use metal tubes use the fine aquarium sand not the big pebels ,fine grains and fill it upp . There are aquarium sand with very fine and consistent grain size and it's cleaned and dry.
And then some rubber feet or sd acoustic feets (dense acustic foam tuned to the speakers mass ) or similar between the stand and the speaker.
Then we wont have to much high frequency vibration going down to the stand and excite the stand in the firt place .

I never had the reasources to measure what it does , but subjectively it kills the need to spend money on very fancy super expensive stands

 

[Chrispy]

Meh. Filled some stands with sand noticed no difference. Moved, still use the stands don't bother filling them. YMMV.

 

[Sal1950]

This time I just bought floor standing. Thought about filling them with sand but I don't think that's a good idea ???