Keeping cables off the floor

Jim: I am just guessing, but soft wood vibrates a lot. Other than clearing my cables from the carpet fiber I also find that the sound gets muted when they touch the walls as well and assume that they must be picking up vibration received and then sent by the wall to the cable. One specialty product for this purpose is made out of ceramic which is very dense. However just keeping the cable off of the carpet fiber does improve the sound in my system. Curiously enough two small sections that come into brief contact with a 100% cotten rug seem to make no difference that I can hear. The opposite is true of the carpet which is made of manmade fibers. Probably not the best material (soft wood), but it should still improve the sound I would think. There are a lot of things that I could still do to improve the sound of my system, but I am not willing to totally screw up my living room (for other uses) to achieve these improvement and am usually happy with any gain that I get.

Makes sense, Dekay. I wonder if a can get a stip of acrylic in a 2x4 shape and do the same thing. I just happen to have a source for acrylic fabrication here in L.A. that I'll drop by -- haven't been there in quite a while. I would think that this will do the trick. Or, maybe "dip" and coat the wood blocks in acrylic. Another option with the wood "slices" might be giving it a several of coats of "whatever" and lining the groove where the cable sits with a strip of sorbothane or similar (but cheaper) material. An engineer I am not. This is an area where my ideas can get scary, or at least my more techincally oriented friends tell me so.

A totally weird idea that I dropped on general principal was to take those funky looking, third world napkin rings -- the ones in the shapes of birds, fish and animals (picked up a bunch on Bali), run the speaker calels through them and insulate the cables (since the holes are bigger than my cables) with rubber bushings (can get these in any size from auto suppliers) or super dense foam. Just too weird, even by my liberal standards. I did think it would be a unique look and maybe have a better WAF, though.

I like the napkin ring idea myself. I wonder if you could find a cheap heavy coordinating base to glue to the bottom of each one (like little blocks or flat rounds of trophy marble or ceramic) and skip lining the ring itself as they should be elevated enough off the floor by the base. I live in LA as well and used to order (in the 70's and early 80's) from a place called Bemak Plasics. They used to be on Santa Monica Blvd. but either moved or went under. I think that are wifes must know each other. I mentioned placing architecheral balls in the uppermost corners of the living room and dining area (to diffuse low frequencies) and my wife has been bugging me to complete the project ever since. She wants to paint them different colors. She has always wanted crown molding, which I refuse to put up with a cottage cheese ceiling and feels that the balls would trim the room in a way. I have not gotten around to researching what material they should be made of, which is the holdup.

Dekay, the place I go to is on Colorado Blvd in the mostly industrial part of Santa Monica (times, they are a changin' ever since Sony moved in, though). Can't remember the name, just know how to get there.

Maybe we're on to something. The napkin rings with a solid base as you've suggested and an acrylic ring lining the hole. I'm calling my patent attorney now ;-)

Sounds like we've had similar interior design experiences with our better halves. I found a cane store that went out of business (now that's a winning business concept) and wanted to buy all of the wooden canes they had left, paint them in bright colors and mount them on painted canvases. Good visually, (well,interesting anyway), and nice acoustic treatments to boot. Shot down on that one.

Jim: Well we can't win them all or any sometimes. It must be a CA thing, we made drapes out of souviner table cloths for the spare bedroom (anything goes). I searched the Audio Asylum site Cable Forum using "cable and floor" and "cable and carpet" and came up with quite a few hits. Probably should have tried the Tweaker's Asylum as well but the screens were giving me a headache. One comment said that polystyrene foam was a good material to use and that wood was not (there are claims that wood floors are worse than carpets. I will have to try lining a wooden cable channel box that I placed under the rug at a doorway with polystyrene and see if it opens up the sound even more. I need to pull it out anyway to chisel out another half inch of the subfloor in order to make it flush. Anyway, check out AA for more info than we have mustered here so far.