Speaker spikes on concrete or wood floor best?

I would rather have a concrete floor if you have a choice between locations with either. Make sure that the covering for the concrete is sufficient to damp reflections. Due to water damage I just replaced the inherited from previous owner wall to wall carpet on my concrete floored listening room with vinyl flooring with 3 large wool area rugs and the improvement was well beyond expectations.

Concrete is the absolute best. But many do not have that option. I have wood floors over concrete and it works great.

I tried using the spikes that come with my Thiels, but prefer cork adhesive dots. Sounds better to me.

Great question and one that I never gave much thought to. My speaker/stands came with spike so I've always used them. First on wood and now on tile covering concrete.

May I rephrase the question to help the larger audience:

If you have concrete flooring should you use spikes or another material to anchor your speaker stands?

Likewise, if you have wood should you spike it or use a covering over it?

Hi Kphinney

What did you end up using? The reason I ask is that I currently have speakers with large Edensound brass footers on them. The speakers and footers sit on top of a 2.5" thick wood block that has carpet piercing spikes. Now the flooring in my listening room is going from carpet over concrete to engineered wood over concrete. I'm thinking I may not need the wood block with carpet piercing spikes anymore but I'm thinking I may need disks underneath Edensound brass footers. Part of me was thinking to put Auralex Subdue platforms underneath the speakers as an alternative.

Any thoughts or comments on this is much appreciated.

Thanks

Jedinite:

I have a similar setup to yours. I have B&W 803ds that have 2" Eden sound footers, mounted on a 3.5" thick maple plinth. Under the maple plinth I have 3" diameter Eden Sound long spike carpet footers that pierce my carpet to a wood floor. This system sound fantastic, much better than footers alone or stock B&W spikes alone.

I would not eliminate the plinth, as this acts as a second stage of vibration sinking to your floor. If you go footers right into the wood/concrete floor, I think your speaker sound will degrade considerably, as concrete is the worst material to sink into (as it reflects sound back up). You can try discs under the plinth spikes to protect you floor, but I am not sure how good those will sound. Is the engineered wood thick or is it the 1/4" Pergo type?

You might also want to talk to the folks at Maple Shade. They can give you some tips about mounting plinths over various flooring materials.