I couldn't have said it better myself.
No, really, I couldn't have.
Thanks for the vote for intellectual humility. I'm still trying to close the gaps in my knowledge base. Its a work in progress.
To couple, or not to couple, that is the question
There seems to be a fundamental difference of opinion between those who would couple their speakers to the floor (e.g., with spikes), and those who would decouple them (e.g., with springs). I’ve gone both ways, but have found that I prefer the latter; I’ve currently got Sorbothane feet attached to my tower speakers, so that they wobble or "float"—much like the Townshend Platforms videos show for that similar, but more expensive, approach. My ears are the final arbiters of my listening experience, so they rule my choices. But my mind likes to have a theoretical explanation to account for my subjective preferences.
That’s where the question comes in. A very knowledgable audiophile friend insists that what I prefer is precisely the opposite of what is best: that ideally, the speaker enclosure should be as rigid and immovable as possible so that the moving cones of the drivers can both most efficiently and most accurately create a sound front free of the inevitable colorations that would come from fighting against a moving cabinet. He says that transients will be muddied by the motion of the cabinet set up by the motion of the speaker cones. And this makes perfect sense to me in terms of my physical intuitions. It’s perhaps analogous to the desirability of having a rigid frame in a high-performance vehicle, which allows the engineers to design the suspension without having to worry too much about the complex interactions with a flexing chassis.
Am I just deluded, then, in preferring a non-rigid interface between speaker and floor? Or does it depend on the kind of floor? (I get that most advice seems to favor decoupling from a suspended wood floor, and coupling to a slab; my floor is hardwood, but not exactly "suspended" as the underflooring structure is very rigid.) Or are there trade offs here, as there usually are in such options: do I gain something (but what, and how?) even as I lose something else (i.e., clean transients, especially in bass tones)?
The ears will win this contest, but I like to have my mind on board if possible. So thanks for any input you may have on this question.
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It's complicated. ALL components on Sorbothane. IMO, and especially for bottle rockets, all components should be isolated. In an earlier life in previous concrete slab home, components were in one room and speakers on spikes in another. Many good studios have the mains rigidly mounted while other have them compliantly mounted. Gear maybe in a separate room or in a control room alcove trading cable length for vibration control. There's no free lunch. Current media room floor is 2nd over garage: Spica TC-50 on shot filled spiked stands and 4 Sorbothane pucks to stands. LFT8b on sand filled Sound Anchor stands on spikes with damped spike protectors. Like almost everything HiFi, it's local. Change the program and the perceived improvement may vanish. |
I believe you have a SA stand as I do also. As an inexpensive solution, I use velcro looped around heavy power cords and then around the rack above to help relieve the weight hanging off of the component. It is not something that can be seen easily, the velcro is easy to adjust as needed, and in my system it serves the purpose. |
In the beginning and for quite some time all my efforts were with speaker cables. Power cords and interconnects were routed away from each other, but with no attempt at isolation. Until one day I had all these extra speaker cable elevators laying around and thought, what about power cords? Much to my surprise the improvement was almost as great as under speaker cables. One day looking at my turntable, the phono leads going down to the gain stage touch the rack at both ends. Surely whatever vibration is in the rack winds up transmitting along the lead into the arm and this can't be good. So I rigged up a way to suspend the phono leads at both ends. Very nice improvement! My friend in Belgium with a killer Magico Q7 system tried this, was floored at the improvement. Gradually over time my whole system has been isolated and floats like this. Power cords, even the ones going to subs, benefit about as much as anything. This I find odd, because suspending the 3 power cords going to my subs seems to make an even bigger difference than the power cords themselves! The only thing I can think of is, without isolation they wind up feeding vibrations into the conditioner and everything else, just like the phono leads into the arm. Isolation is so important, it even predominates with the power cord going into the motor pod of my Sovereign turntable. I've upgraded turntable motor power cords before, always with a nice result. But was disappointed with the Sovereign. Odd, since the power cord being used was a lot better than anything I had done this with before. I could only surmise maybe because it is so stiff? So after a few failed experiments I thought well if isolation is so important maybe instead of all this crazy good expensive wire that is thick and stiff how about try cheap hook up wire that is soft and flexible? Just for the last few inches into the motor. I soldered this to a spare IEC and connected a Synergistic power cord. Success! Isolation uber alles! |
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