Shocked removed spikes, used blue tack, what other non spike footer
My floor standing speakers, monitor stands always came with spikes so I used them always, it's the way they were designed at least I thought. I know everyone can't do this because of there floor type, mine is hardwood over concrete slab. Bass, more natural tone( I'm a tone junkie) gives the music a nice rhythm, may just be flavor of month but I'm really enjoying it. Highs maybe little rolled off, I just did it yesterday, maybe not as hifi, but no lose of information. Have other people experienced this.Can someone with my floor type suggest a nice reasonable priced non spiked footer, these are floorstander filled with shot so pretty heavy,maybe 70- 80 lb. thanks
Spikes go way back to some of the earliest days of realizing vibration control really does have an effect on sound. A spike, anything hard really, was better than the plastic or rubber feet then (and still) common on many components. Somehow the idea of "grounding" took root. This idea always was at best a metaphor and never did have any validity. Vibrations do not flow like electricity from one place to another, cannot be drained, etc. Whatever. As if logic or physical reality ever stood in the way of an audiophile and his drive to misunderstand.
So anyway, congratulations for actually listening. What you really want is something hard enough to not flex under rapidly changing load of a vibrating speaker, that is highly damped and non-resonant, and that will also somehow hold the speaker securely in place so that it does not shift over time - not easy given the way the cones are moving back and forth all the time.
A spike just seems the perfect solution. Except as you noticed it sure doesn’t sound perfect. Blue tack does but its not equally hard at all frequencies of vibration so as you noticed does sound better in some areas than others.
With experimentation I think you will find you are able to fine tune it a bit by the amount, location, and thickness used. Also it matters if the Blue Tack is directly between speaker and floor, or between a footer and speaker, etc.
The reason to experiment is after a while, and fairly quickly I think, you will get a feel for what works and why. Its hard to explain, but just do it and see. Probably you will come to realize some combination of a cone shaped footer going from the speaker onto a small puck shaped disk on the floor will get good results and not mess up the floor. Then you either make that or buy one that seems to fit the bill. Like a simple thing to try, file or sand the point of a spike to be more rounded. Or place something like a penny between the spike and the floor. Change the penny out for a nickel. No kidding. Try it and see.
Sorry, but other than the no longer available BDR Cones there are no recommended products so all I can do is recommend this process to help you figure it out for yourself.
Spikes have never had a good effect on my systems, be it speaker or component, neither has any Herbie’s product (spent many hundreds of Herbie’s stuff, never a positive and conclusive result), spotty success with BDR cones. Still got some of the original Mod Squad Tiptoes.
Roller ball systems work great for lateral movement, suspended on a bicycle air tube (no kidding) work even better, also providing vertical isolation.
I made some footers similar to Herbie's Gliders.Threaded bolts from the hardware store with a stick- on felt pad on the head.They make it easy to level and reposition the speakers without marking up the floor.Various pads,cone,spikes will all make subtle changes to the sound if one enjoys experimenting.I don't enjoy wrestling heavy speakers at my age so practicality won out.
Somehow the idea of "grounding" took root. This idea always was at best a metaphor and never did have any validity. Vibrations do not flow like electricity from one place to another, cannot be drained, etc. Whatever. As if logic or physical reality ever stood in the way of an audiophile and his drive to misunderstand.
Are you stating that mechanical grounding techniques, Resonance Transfer theorems and methodologies are not valid?
IME spikes usually work well on carpet on hardwood on concrete. For direct on hardwood, particularly suspending floor, some degree of damping gives a more satisfying bass response. Hardwood on concrete is a toss up between isolation and damping depending on the rest of the room.
I'd like to hear members responses to the effect of spikes and other foot treatments on a fairly thick rug; I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll start another one.
Cheeg I don't care if you ask, I've heard people put glass cutting boards granite, paver stones or wood with spikes then speaker on top if it, maybe some sorbathane or even cheap blue tack between glass and speaker. II looked at Gaia's, $300 to $200 for 4, that a little high for second system speakers. I know about vibra pods or herbies but never used any rubber under component it always seem to dead in sound. Not the case under floorstander with blue tak.There should be something better than blue tak, I have used blue tak between spiked monitor stand and speaker with good results. With blue tak floorstander is like glued to the floor it does not move and sounds very natural, still a little dumbfounded with the change.
Since I don't have any kids or pets to worry about, I used to have my monitors sitting directly on a thick, maple stand that sat on a big enough section of tile to cover the area of the stand's base and it all rested on carpet, over concrete, over wood.
I tried some footers for the monitors from Herbie's and they just didn't sound right. The only thing that improved the sound was some extra constrained layer damping pads I had left over from my audio gear. They're from Les Davis Audio and they're quite thin but seem to do the trick.
cheeg I've used spikes on carpet in the past and didn't care for the change in sound.Seemed thinner somehow.Just personal preference.All speaker cabinets resonate some, so each of us have to try things until the resonance becomes pleasing rather than irritating:)
I have Vandersteen 5A’s that come with spikes. I heard that Herbe’s was a step in the right direction....got 6 to isolate the speakers from my stone floor.....sent them back....wrong direction. You have to try any adjustment to hear their effects.
I have carpet and underlay over a timber floor and for many years had my speakers on quite large spikes to cut through to the timber.
I though it sounded ok but when I bought new speakers last year the speaker manufacturer recommended I decouple the speakers from the floor by placing a slab of granite on top of the carpet and the speakers on the slabs. I had never realised how bad the bass had been or how much it had muddied the midrange.
It’s really easy to try. I initially just used a large clay paver from the garden and the improvement was instant. Granite does look better. Two of my audio buddies were equally impressed and have done the same with similar results.
@cheeg, a friend of ours has a pair of beautiful Eltax Symphony floorstanding loudspeakers (part of a 5:1 system) stood on a double (?) layer of carpet.
Of course we tut-tutted and muttered a few comments about what the reviewers would say about speakers that wobbled when touched. But guess what? They sounded good, far better than you'd guess by just looking.
Later on another friend stood his floor standing Kef 55s on two slate tiles, no spikes. He's convinced that that they sound better, and I am too. Just a touch more organic and less harsh.
Perhaps they a touch less sharp and precise, but the trade off is worth it for a more relaxing listening experience.
I've always used spikes and this has peaked my interest. My Nola Boxers sit atop 24" sand filled stands with blu tack in each corner of the stands top plate. the stands are spiked through thick carpet to a concrete slab. I don't have any furniture movers but I have rubberized 3" squares that I'm going to replace the spikes with. should be interesting.
What drew my interest to remove spikes was Music Direct sent me a catalog of just loudspeakers displayed. The Revel Performa F228Be $1000.00 towers has no spikes just a plastic or rubber base surrounding the speaker, in fact all there speakers displayed had no spikes. I had some Joseph Audio towers it had a base with small screws holding it on with spikes then mounted to base maybe best of both worlds, I don't know. I never knew what an impact spikes make. We spend all this money on cables, platforms, cartridges, tubes to bring out the best and then to find spikes in my system leaned everything out. I still feel in need to find a happy medium between blue tak and spikes, system feel like it lost a little air, even with that loss I'm enjoying things more with blue tak. I always heard if you have carpet you have to pierce through to get to get best sound,sounds like that's could be up for debate also.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but piercing the carpet is only good if there is something good-and-solid underneath it. If the carpet resides on a suspended floor, then coupling the speaker to the subfloor only creates more problems. Enter Herbies gliders...
My Super Stiff Springs are intended for just such things as heavy subs. Each spring rated at 30 lb. so 5 springs will isolate a thing weighing up to 150 1b. And since the Super Stiff Springs are small in size they have excellent lateral support. Cost is only $12 per spring.
While in high school I was introduced to a group of Bell Labs engineers who became audiophiles in the mid/late 50’s, my father being one of them. This band of intellects with rather large record collections spent time modifying Fisher, HK, Lafayette and Scott electronics and focused on DIY speaker design. They used penny nails (the equivalent of modern day spikes) under speaker systems to avoid what they determined as ‘acoustic coupling’ of the speaker cabinet with the greater mass of the floor long before vibration management products existed in audio.
The theorem being; if a speaker chassis rests flat on the flooring, the massive ground plane (energy sink) of the structural building in concert with gravity will negatively affect sonic performance of the enclosure and driver function, particularly the dispersion characteristics. ‘Spikes’ allowed for separation of the two planes limiting the effects caused by the greater mass, earth’s ground.
No one actually knows where the application of spikes under loudspeakers was initialized as this is but one story I thought worth sharing.
Why does the Majority of Speakers and Stands Come With Spikes?
Manufacturers continue to supply spikes because they are historic and one of the lowest cost footers available in manufacturing. Ask any manufacturer why their best loudspeaker comes with a set of $4.00 spikes and wait for the various explanations to unfold. Let us know your findings because we too wonder... what’s up with all those different replies and philosophies?
That Poor Darn Spike:
A typical nail-head spike costs $0.45 cents (Made in the USA) to manufacture so why do listeners and manufacturers continue to compare ‘spikes’ to devices costing hundreds of times more money?
They Call it Testing? - We Call It Marketing!
We witnessed electronic switching between two identical pair of loudspeakers in comparing a $4.00 set of steel nail-head spikes to a $600 set of spring footers where the $600 springs did sound better.
There is a video involving heavy foot stomping displaying visual results from self induced floor shock, noted on computer tablets, comparing a set of $8.00 steel speaker spikes to a $2,000.00 isolation device. You can easily guess which one maxed out the better result.
We find it amusing where both companies took their best shot at comparing mechanical grounding (direct coupling) principles to isolation theorems using the crudest form and cheapest competing parts available (a steel spike) in order to achieve their heavily favored one sided results.
If comparisons of methodologies, techniques and/or products are to be made, wouldn’t you prefer products close to the same retail price points be evaluated? No one appreciates being misled.
Form Follows Function:
Like all parts and devices; the materials, geometric shapes and functionality evolves over time. The first rubber tire was a solid material but nobody would consider comparing that part to a Firestone used in open wheel racing - right?... So why then spikes?
No two spikes, springs, discs, cones or wood blocks sound the same if they are shaped differently, even if they are manufactured from the same material. As an example, pick up any two different brass products and listen to their performance as the differences are surprisingly ‘not’ close at all.
It would be highly beneficial to specify the brand name and/or model number or dollar cost when making statements involving footers. Generic spikes have a place in audio history but the industry is moving well beyond the forty-five cent part.
By categorizing ‘spikes’ into a single topic or understanding will cloud you from the reality of knowledge and sonic performance.
Would you consider an Audio Point™ a spike? After thirty years of continuous sales earning listener satisfaction year after year, we do not. There’s over a half million out there and are considered a rare find in the used marketplace so in our opinion the spike has definitely evolved.
Material science and applied geometry have proven that shapes and chemistry plays significant roles in the function and sonic outcome of ‘ALL’ footer systems, equipment racks and loudspeaker platforms.
The Power of Auditions:
Our Company was the first to provide financial return and satisfaction guarantees in 1999 where the majority of our peers told us we would be out of business within the year. Now days every competing entity, dealer or distributor has to consider participation in this business model.
Take full advantage of the audition process as audible performance definitely separates reality from opinion.
Unfortunately, audio is aligned with other luxury industries where the price of a product figures into the level of satisfaction achieved - not saying more dollars necessarily establishes a greater value; after all, this is comparing sound reproduction alongside a few million sets of independent ears!
This is what sometimes happens when a manufacturer shows up all of a sudden to gush (at length) over his product (spikes) before reading the OP that specifically pointed out spikes were not all that in his system. Maybe the band of intellects the manufacturer referred to would be happy to see how isolation and damping have progressed in the past fifty years. Well, maybe they wouldn’t, how the hell would I know?
For me Vibrapod do a great improvement (compare to spikes) under my 80 pound speakers. There is floating floor in my music room. I made comparaison test with Gaïa II, and I return the Gaïa.
This is what sometimes happens when a manufacturer shows up all of a sudden to gush (at length) over his product (spikes) before reading the OP that specifically pointed out spikes were not all that in his system.
If I offended the OP, he or she is welcome to delete my post but you have to agree, a lot of conversation here addresses spikes so I offered up a few facts defining the differences between them. We call that information sharing. If the OP contacts us, we would be willing to send some samples in order to hear exactly what those unmistakable differences are and improve upon his or her sound at the same time.
Maybe the band of intellects the manufacturer referred to would be happy to see how isolation and damping have progressed in the past fifty years. Well, maybe they wouldn’t, how the hell would I know?
The band I refer to were responsible for the oversight in building the world’s first transistor production line. Obviously their genius was definitely ahead of their time. I saw microscopes everywhere so there is no doubt they knew more than most with regards to isolation techniques - of this I am sure.
These guys were some of our audio forefathers and my first mentors. I have no doubt they would be happy to see how far isolation has evolved. Anything that improved cymbal decay, depth of voice and instrumentation always put smiles on their faces as these guys loved listening well into their eighties. Pretty cool stuff…
Having tried numerous methods on various speakers, I’ve found mostly the same results mention above . My .02 regarding the “ Blue Pads “ is with my JBL 4412A’s as used on Sound Anchor stands . I found them to be helpful with bass , clarity and imaging . However the Sound Anchors are big , heavy and solid . This was probably the greatest part of my results . The bad is that the Blue Pads , over time distorted and the oils in them left stains on the Walnut veneer. So keep an eye on your floor finish . Cheers , Mike .
After spending countless hours listening and experimenting with various feet/footers the stock spikes my Tannoy Cheviot's came with sitting on Herbies sitting on a hardwood floor won hands down.
Audiopoints, I enjoy any insight and enjoyed your post, I do not want to remove informative information from anyone. I'm still in the dark on what to use. If there is a different spike that would not lean out speaker I'm open to it. If there is a rubber type product, I would like to know. I just don't want to buy I pile of footers and find it does no better than $3.00 blue tak. Damaging floor with blue tak is a concern. The only non spike products I know are vibration pods and herbies. The Gaia at $600 is a big gamble. I'm open to contacting audiopoint or they can pm me. I'm still in same place when I started this thread, blue tak still under my speakers.
Gary which herbies product did you have spikes sitting on? Did you find spikes leaned your Tannoys. Did herbies bring back a happy medium on spikes between lean and full sound,sorry for all the questions, thanks
There are a number of separate issues regarding the mounting of speakers on spikes and footers. Some folks may need to decouple their speakers from things like wooden floors which are bouncy.
I have seen some people report that sorbothane footers were best with wooden floors.
But to my mind and ears the more serious problem is cabinet or headphone case resonances causing audible distortion. Spikes, footers and mass can help here plus what I am more concerned with is called "constrained damping" of the enclosures, using sorbothane.
My main system sits on ceramic tiles laid on concrete and I find the spikes of some use. I also use a rigid brace fastened to the wall, which was originally put in to prevent the speakers toppling over in earthquakes (I am in SoCal.) This also helps the sound rather like the spikes.
However the biggest problem is enclosure/cabinet resonances. What I think is going on here is that energy from the drivers enters the enclosures ( Newtons third law every action has an equal and opposite reaction) plus conservation of energy states that energy
can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. I assume that the driver created energy in the enclosure does eventually dissipate as heat or we would be hearing it for a long time, but it does not do this fast enough to take it out before it feeds back into the driver as rubbish sound . Adding mass, such as lead shot, means more material to dissipate heat plus it probably prevents the speakers from wobbling in response to the motion of the drivers impacting air. Spikes would seem to essentially couple the enclosure to a greater mass thus having somewhat the same effect as adding lead shot.
The best results by far which I have found are adding sorbothane glued to the front panel of the speakers behind the covers or to various places on headphones. Sorbothane's claim to fame is that it converts mechanical energy to heat. I worked some my techniques out for applying sorb with old Stax SRXIII pro headphones with interchangeable covers so that I could quickly swap around different types of material. Some of the results were counter-intuitive.
Firstly use the densest sorb (called duro) I use 70 duro which is the densest I have found. This was recommended by a tech advisor at Sorbothane and I can confirm that it seems to be right.
Secondly, use small pieces, on speakers I use pieces less than 1.5 inch in any dimension, for headphones .5 inch. Frankly I don't understand why but the size effect keeps coming up.
Thirdly, in spite of the small sizes, use thick sorb, 1/2 inch or more.
Fourthly the sorb has to be properly glued to the surface. My 1/2 pieces are glued using a fairly costly ($35/can) Lord glue recommended by Sorbothane. If you use thinner sorb it often comes with a 3M double stick backing which seems pretty good too.
Finally the impact of the sorb is greatly increased by "constrained damping," ie putting some kind of backing on the unglued surface. I find 4 layers of electrical tape is quite effective. I started with clamping the sorb to surfaces but generally found I had to use the least pressure and in the end just moved over to constrained damping.
I would say that the effects are far in excess on anything other tweak or upgrade I have heard. I have taken the cheapest ear phones and made them sound like high-fi with 10 cents worth of sorb glued to them.
What exactly am I hearing from these mods? Firstly increased dynamics, I recall my first experience was that I started rocking in time to music since the rhythm was far more pronounced. Secondly greater amounts of timbre, instruments started sounding more realistic. Thirdly, better channel separation (with headphones.) Evidently sound from one earphone can travel across a headband and be heard in the opposite headphone. In fact a man named, I think Mitchell measured this effect some years back for a British audio magazine. Interestingly it was obvious with headphones that the sorb was lowering the audio output of the phones somewhat necessitating turning the volume up. This I consider to be a sign that the sorb is actually removing a considerable amount of the energy in the case/enclosure which would otherwise be there adding distorted sound back into the drivers.
I doubt that the resonance in the case/enclosure is itself audible. Wooden boxes and metallic or plastic cases do not make good drivers. Rather the sound in the case/enclosure feeds back into the drivers as Mitchell found.
Plus this is a cheap way of improving sound, ignoring the cost of glue it takes dollars or less to add this to headphones, although with large speakers you may be spending a hundred or more dollars.
If you doubt me, I suggest Googling terms like "constrained damping." I have come across several references to this being used in speakers. As regards headphones, Sennheisser has been using a "polymer" damping in the headband of its TOL dynamics and I suspect something similar in its electrostatics. (BTW sorb is a polymer) Grado has its own polycarbonate that it claims works somewhat the same way.
The band I refer to were responsible for the oversight in building the world’s first transistor production line. Obviously their genius was definitely ahead of their time. I saw microscopes everywhere so there is no doubt they knew more than most with regards to isolation techniques - of this I am sure.
>>>>>Yeah, that’s always a tip off for me, to see lots of microscopes and guys running around in white lab coats. 🤗 Say, aren’t you the guy who says isolation is impossible?
Open baffle you don't hear the box. These speakers front baffle is larger than back panel with curved sides. There's got to be a happy medium between spikes and compounds. For the hell of it I put the spikes back on an hour ago and listened for 10 minutes, totally different sound. It was like I changed interconnects from cardas to kimber silver streaks. Totally different system. Spikes more transparent. Blue tak sounds bigger, thicker, heavier no loss of highs just different. With blue tak the speakers are like cemented to the floor, they do not move, spikes slight movement. I need to bring the blue tak sound very slightly closer to spike presentation. I'm taking spike off again, blue tak is more musical to me but at a cost.
+2 for the ISOAcoustic GAIAs. Have them on my speakers and subs. Made a noticeable difference in SQ.
FWIW, the first experience I had with "bluetack" was placing that between monitor speakers & their stands in the early 90's. Very nice upgrade in SQ (they sat on spikes prior to this) & I've been a tweeker ever since.
I had some mdf laying around drilled counter hole, mounted spikes and placed blue tak between mdf platform. Sounds more refined but in a good way and little fuller than just spikes but lost that natural tone even though is a little too heavy, I'm back on blue tak. Raining 4 days, stuck inside. Crossover is outboard I'm going to remove solid copper post and go straight in to crossover with solid core silver speaker wire. Maybe that will remove some of the thick sound and lift the highs, if not I'll try herbies first. Can someone explain what Gaia' do different than spikes, is it really worth the cost. Never knew footers had such an impact, it's pretty drastic in my case.
It's a complicated business, at least for me. Better isolation will let you hear the drivers better with a cleaner sound mainly due to reduced baffle/cabinet/ drive unit chatter and resonance. I think.
But that's not always a good thing because a loudspeaker is the sum of its parts and the way they interact. Sometimes cleaning up the sound gives the impression of a weak bass performance.
Especially for designs that don't sound particularly full in the first place. Those kind of speakers that need turning up loud to sound full may never sound full enough once the sound has been cleaned up by isolation in this manner. So you could end up with a result of a cleaner but thinner sound, is losing more than you gain.
On the other hand isolating can work wonders with speakers that might suffer from slight bass heavy / muddy signatures.
I had an interesting experience recently. I was moving around my speakers with some pads to dial them in. They formerly used spikes and were in essentially the same location. I removed the pads but did not reinstall the spikes. A few days later I fired up my system and everything from the bass to the treble sounded MUCH better in virtually every way, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out the pads had some sticky glue on them that rubbed off on the speaker bottom and "tacky glue" them to the wood floors coupling the largest available surfaces together. Put the spikes back on and performance deteriorated significantly. this was a great "test" as I had no idea what happened so not a placebo effect.
You will have more apparent bass when a very low velocity material is added to the equation. Slower than lead like all the rubber and spongy materials. Like placing your hand over your mouth and speaking. No highs no breath of sound mosly lows. The Shear velocity of the material chosen, geometric shape of the device..shape and speed of the material above and below are also of great importance. Your audio room will sound best with no right angles and corners as will every other area of your component high fi. Only a small portion of what takes place between 2 or more materials and their shapes. Tom
These speakers go down to 27hz and have nice bass even with spikes at low volume not only hear bass but feel it too, but no spikes just seem to appeal to me since there removal.Removing Cardas all copper binding post with speaker wire going straight into crossover brought back a lot of air and clarity. They do have ambiance rear tweeter with volume knob I had to adjust a little.( I've always kept it fairly low and still do). One problem with blue tak was piano, the sharpness and projection was muffled a little and not true, that is pretty much gone. This is not the way I planned to solve footer problem with rewire but it's helped a lot with piano and highs. It will hold me over till I can find solution to replace spikes. I still have caps to install so this will help too, this is a strange hobby. Still open to suggestion even if I had to do Gaia but damn for $600 it better be like a small component change not a tweek.
“No two spikes, springs, discs, cones or wood blocks sound the same if they are shaped differently, even if they are manufactured from the same material. As an example, pick up any two different brass products and listen to their performance as the differences are surprisingly ‘not’ close at all.”
What might prove useful to apply the seismic test to popular products like Herbies, Star, Gaia, Townsend etc and compare the results.
“No two spikes, springs, discs, cones or wood blocks sound the same if they are shaped differently, even if they are manufactured from the same material. As an example, pick up any two different brass products and listen to their performance as the differences are surprisingly ‘not’ close at all.”
>>>>>Brass composition varies wildly. Springs have even more variables. Geez, talk about comparing apples 🍎 and watermelons 🍉. To whit,
“Brass is an alloy made primarily of copper and zinc. The proportions of the copper and zinc are varied to yield many different kinds of brass. Basic modern brass is 67% copper and 33% zinc. However, the amount of copper may range from 55% to 95% by weight, with the amount of zinc varying from 5% to 40%.”
As I’ve oft described, performance of cones is also a function of Hardness. Brass for example is a relatively soft metal, and carbon fiber is a relatively soft material, whereas tempered steel and NASA grade ceramics rank very high on the Mohs Hardness scale - and are audibly superior to softer materials like brass.
A strange thing about the Jumbo and Super DH Cones, which are the same NASA grade ceramic material, and the same size. The only difference is that the Super DH Cone has a slightly more ballistic shape, whereas the Jumbo is more conical. That slight difference in shape translates to noticeably better performance of the Super. But even the smaller size DH Cones, Medium and Small, outperform, it’s just a matter of cost vs performance. You would not believe how many Supers I had in my system at one time. They make excellent tuning devices as their Hardness allows vibration to exit very rapidly. So just placing them on top of speakers or tube traps or components can be quite beneficial.
Springs are decouplers so probably shouldn’t be compared to cones, though cones can act as mechanical diodes. Springs can be rubber airsprings, rubber bladders, rubber tubes, or metal. Metal springs can be any of a wide variety of alloys and can undergo varies performance treatments. Spring rates should be selected based on load.
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