Mapleshade boards under speakers

Late, as always- but I will offer my experience with maple stands, that echoes Thorman's.
No matter what combination of maple stands, mapleshade cones, and various elastic materials I used, the results were pretty much the same- dullness, smearing, loss of dertails and dynamics.
I've also had a few conversatons with some designers/ manufacturers of the support systems, who basically confirmed my empirical findings.
All had changed, when I switched to Sistrum platforms- without going into much detail, very significant improvements across the whole spectrum of audiophile virtues.
To oversimplify this approach- speakers need to be on a kind of support system, that can drain vibrations away from the speaker, and not to "isolate" speaker from external vibrations.

Maril555,

That is the point of large thick maple or other slabs - to drain vibration away from your gear while at the same time keeping vibrations from your gear, particularly speakers, from interacting mechanically with your floor and setting up unwanted harmonics in your room. This issue has been discussed in some detail in at least one thread on this forum before:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?htech&1238883454

I think that the benefits of maple or other wood platforms for speaker and other equipment are highly ear, gear, rack and room dependent - so what works well for someone will not necessarily work well for others.

My "analytical" leaning CD player, sprung TT and less than completely rigid speakers cabinets benefit greatly from the application of wood platforms in my fairly lively listening room. While a softer or more neutral sounding source, very well designed speaker/spike system in a well tuned or dead listening room may not benefit from or actually be "harmed" by the characteristics imparted by wood platforms. YMMV.

There are definetely fans of all different kinds of support systems. In my personal experience, that I shared above, I've found maple NOT having any positive effects on my system. That is not to say it didn't change the sound, it did, and not to the better. But I can see, where someone might like that change. You are right, this issue is room and system dependent, but again, I have a distinct feeling, that maple is NOT a way to go. Hence only positive comments from the users of Sistrum, SRA and HRS support systems.

I think it would be helpful if posters mentioned what type of floor (and floor covering) they have under their speakers. To me that is a critical factor in deciding what spikes and stands to use yet most posters ignore that point. I am not surprised that opinions vary so widely. The conditions of use are not the same. Let's make posts more relevant by furnishing more background information.

In my area almost all of the new homes (including mine) are on concrete slabs. Downtown the floors are wood over basements or crawl areas. In the midwest where I grew up, basements are predominant. But not all wood floors are the same either. They vary in construction materials, methods, and age.

Ok, here goes, might be treading into deep waters, we'll see, a contrast in two systems with Mapleshade board.
My floor is suspended yellow pine, very soft.
Friends floor is deep concrete slab with hard wood, a very hard surface. (Pierre Sprey says this is a horrible combination.)
My speakers are Shahinian Arcs, four feet are some kind of hard rubber or plastic (again Pierre says this is very bad)
My friend's speakers are Rega R9's, twice as tall, have four spikes connected with some special basket.

At my house, after putting small brass cones (not Pierre's) under the maple board, nothing between cones and flooring, the sound is amazing. Best surface the speakers have sat on so far. The shahinians have always felt very wobbly, especially on my soft floor. Now they at least sit very flat with little to no wobble.

When placing the boards under the Regas, same set up, although we did put pennies between cones and flooring, his is much nicer flooring. There was instantly a height issue for one of the fellow listeners, tweeters going pretty high past ear level. Sound was tight, yet lost the bloom necessary to really sound fantastic. So in his situation, not a good thing. There was no smearing or dullness as some of you have commented, yet too lean. His speakers sit very well on his hard flooring, no wobble to speak of.
So, in his room, which Pierre states should be better, it wasn't, and I would have wanted my money back.
In my room, I'm still doing some fiddling, but you couldn't wrestle them out of my arms without loosing one of yours. I truly love what they do here.
My listening panel is coming over later to judge me, and the boards. We'll see....

Maril, could you give more info on the product you mention? website?

Don, Mapleshade does make custom sizes, and in his catalog has I saw a 24" listed.

In summary, in my softfloored room the boards bring such a new level of clarity I'm totally gobsmacked.

Oh, to answer earlier about birch, it was nice, but had a grainier quality to it. Perhaps it was just the type I used, Lowe's 2by2 by 3/4.