Speakers: spikes vs ball bearings

Adding mass to any structure helps reduce its tendency to vibrate but also adds cost. Building the speaker cabinets from very dense material like cast iron, cast aluminum, or concrete would be best.
Or you can do what Elac does and use the resonant frequencies to help the performance of the speaker.
I personally think adding mass to the speaker and then isolating it from the floor is best. Then you are only listening to the speaker and not the speaker and floor combination.If the floor is non resonant like concrete then it may be best to couple the speakers to the floor but i have no experience with that combo.

Suggestion: Suspend the speakers from the ceiling with bungee cords :crazy_face:

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I’m about as far from expert status on methods to couple speakers to floors as you can get, but it seems to me one needs to decide first whether coupling is even desired. Depending on the nature of the floor system, isolation might be the better sounding alternative. I suspect spikes became popular among the masses because they look technical, cool and dangerous. :wink:

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I think that’s spot on in a humorous way. They sure as hell didn’t become popular because of special technical merit, but an image of that.

That is probably the best solution. A little difficult in practice for me though.

I have an idea for a possible hitech solution that avoids even the resonance of the ceiling and the impracticality of the bungee cords - have a stably magnetically levitated heavy mass attached straight to the speaker’s top, with enough field strength to keep the speaker from touching the floor. The field can easily be concentrated such that it doesn’t interfere with the drivers.
Actually, that was stupid. It should be attached to the speaker’s bottom to levitate the speaker, unless we want an electromagnet shaft extending from the ceiling…
The cost of a liquid helium cooling system and a large enough specialized electromagnet is huge but that way we could actually have the speaker not making contact with anything, so coupling solely to the air. The enclosure should also be very inert so there’d even be no need to couple it with contact.

I’m only half joking, I’m an idealist.
Maybe the CERN Audiophile Society might accomplish this? (I’ve been to CERN, seen it all, it’s quite something. Levitating a speaker would be like… pocket change for CERN. Less even. A penny.)

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I’m sure that with a will, there is a way to accomplish it. But, it makes positioning the speakers along the lines of Paul’s book very difficult. Could you imagine having to dismount and remount the speakers a few inches away from the current position to achieve sound perfection?

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This is definitely much better than the bungee cord idea and if it is floor-based, it would be much easier to tweak the speaker placement. If it can be done for a turntable, I see no reason why it can’t be done with loudspeakers.

If it’s a lightweight speaker, let’s say a rounded magnesium alloy enclosure with a four inch woofer, it won’t take THAT much power to make it hover. Still, pretty much.
But hey… we have electrostatic speakers. Now that wouldn’t be hard to levitate. Not to mention that an electrostatic speaker won’t take harm from the levitation field. I might be wrong but I think it depends on the material of the diaphragm. If the speaker has no affinity for magnetic fields in terms of the diaphragm and its circuit, it won’t budge. But yeah, it has a circuit…, so probably the electromagnet should just be calibrated to concentrate field lines onto a dedicated magnetic coupling section of the speaker.

I admit that was just rambling, but I think there’s a point here.

Spiking Your Speakers: What’s the Point? – PS Audio

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That is baseline Iso acoustic used to develop an test their footers. Completely not that far fetched.

Maglev speaker isolation is indeed available:

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How… without strong electromagnets or huge Nd-Fe-B blocks…
Speakers are generally really massive.

The website claims up to a 33 lb capacity (15 kg) for their largest maglev foot, so 4 of them would support a 132 lb speaker…

… in theory.

I have a set of 4 similar feet that I have used under a source.

I can attest to the strength of the magnets in the smaller-sized set I have (different brand). I don’t doubt that the approach Solidair Audio audio is using will allow for the “suspension” of some pretty heavy kit.

FWIW.

I’ve had the house to myself and been playing music louder than normal. Realising that having my 96lb speakers coupled to the suspended floor is an issue.

I have consumer and professional Isoacoustic dealers within 10 minutes of me here in London, so called Isoacoustics in Canada on Friday. On their advice I’ve gone for the Puck-76 professional units. They told me the smarter Gaia finish was purely for the consumer market, who like bling, but I live in a no-bling house. He said the Gaia were slightly better performance, but could not say why and the 76 would decouple just as well. Given they cost £252 and the Gaia £598, not a difficult decision.

Will find out how they work tomorrow.

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It’s now tomorrow. Obviously professional users don’t care about packaging. Thankfully nor do I. 2 cents of vacuform plastic. Maybe 1 cent.

As against:

One issue with Gaia is that the threads don’t fit Wilson, so you need a special order.

Cosmetically ideal.

More to the point, these pucks work. I was getting a 100% repeatable thump 4 seconds into Mira (Melody Bardot) and it was driving me nuts. Obviously there was a resonance with my suspended floor. It is now 95% gone, you have to listen very carefully to notice it, and if I didn’t know it was there in the first place, I wouldn’t hear it at all.

The maximum load is 72kg, in reality 65kg, and each speaker is 45kg. So very stable and effective decoupling at the same time.

A result.

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When you order the GAIA’s they will include whatever size threaded studs you need. I just ordered a set for my 1000-40 Carbons and they needed to be M10 x 1.5 which wasn’t in the standard kit but they sent a set along no charge.

When I ordered a set for my KEFLS50 stands they needed to be M8 x 1.0 which also wasn’t a standard but they sent a set along also no charge.

It never hurts to ask.

They look perfectly fine.