Thanks Pete
Out of interests I have tried other means of isolating my speakers, but none with any success.
1. Hockey pucks
2. PTFE feet
3. Rubber mats
4. Oak cones
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Thanks Pete
Out of interests I have tried other means of isolating my speakers, but none with any success.
1. Hockey pucks
2. PTFE feet
3. Rubber mats
4. Oak cones
concrete floor ...standard plaster board type walls.
my journey includes-
spikes- never happy with the sound even when proposed in the late 70's, tried wide ones, small ones, long ones, brass, aluminum, steel etc
hard wooden door knobs threaded for spike holes- instantly better than spikes
folded carpet - interesting but not right
rubber door stops - no horrid
sorbothane - ok but not right !
bike inner tubes partly inflated- good but too unstable ..with cats
dense foam packing- interesting getting somewhere
Auralex mopads - rather good for a low cost solution now used routinely under computer speakers
isoacoustic stands- excellent best solution to that point
townshend seismic bars- so far out in front of the rest its ridiculous
AV room services EVP - these get to 80% of the seismic bars at a fraction of the cost [https://avroomservice.com/store-evp/]
that journey started in the late 70's and I tried the evp's in 2019.. the seismic bars have been in place for about four years and have transformed the imaging and presentation to a true three dimensional sound image.
Speakers mainly involved from the "door knobs" forward, are a pair of Martin Logan Aerius i's
sorbothane - ok but not right !
Interesting that you should give a qualified response to sorbothane. Can you say why this is and in what ways do the Townsend Seismic bars improve on it.
Thanks for summarising all you experiments :)
yes it was better than the prvious iterations ...but I had a nagging feeling it wasn't the end of my journey ....unlike the evp's or siesmic bars
I and a friend have gone through a similar journey with speaker isolation, he has ended up using Townshend Seismic bars with his Tannoy Legacy Kensington's, prior to that he had them on 40mm oak platforms(sitting directly on the carpet over a suspended wooden flow) with rubber blocks under the speaker feet. My speakers sit on 40mm oak, with spike and the oak sits on top of 4 Hudson silicone/sorbothane feet onto a marque floor onto concrete.
So having heard my friends before the Townshend and after I would say the improvement with them is better isolation and improved detail and definition in the soundstage, bass is more controlled. The difference between his and my system is not that great with respect to what I have described, apart from some tonal differences. I presume I get away with it because of a solid floor.
Hope that helps.
A solid floor solves a lot of these problems from the get-go. It was an absolute deal-breaker for me when I was buying a house.
nope ......! I've always had a solid floor. As Ive said the spiked speakers sound and the sound with the seismic bars you would not believe it was from the same speaker.
I didn't give it a thought when I bought my house. It has a solid floor with floorboards on top, with a gap between them of a couple of inches. Probably a worse case combination, but it did mean when I had a dedicated ring main installed for the audio, I could also run the audio cables under the floor. My speakers are 6m from the audio sources, preamps etc. I dislike seeing cables snaking around the room.
Regarding speaker isolation, I have never been disappointed with the soundstage my speakers create: the soundstage width extends beyond the outer dimensions of the speakers with excellent depth. I'm not a bass freak and have to have the volume turned up to very loud levels before I can feel the vibrations through the floor.
If the bars place the speakers at a different height from the spikes that alone will make a significant change. Firstly your listening on a different axis and secondly your altering the distance of the speaker from a room boundary (the floor) which will change the low frequency response.
That's before you get onto whatever effect the isolation provided by the spring system is doing. So yes it's going to sound quite different with bars instead of spikes.
Spikes are the worst option with a solid floor - IMO - I never use them.
My current speakers have rubber feet that have the thread for the spikes inside them. So they just sit on those feet, on the carpet. Maybe I would prefer the presentation with the Townsend bars but the price puts me off trying them, plus I don't have a problem to fix so not really got any incentive to.