Any new ideas on an old theme?

Decouple, because the floor boards are a big, flexible, poorly braced structure which will radiate sound.

If you have nice speakers where even the sub-woofer enclosures are braced every 7-8" to keep panel resonances out of the pass-band, why would you put them on top of a wooden structure that isn't even braced every 10'?

If the bass drivers aren't mounted in a bipole configuration you'll get more rocking of the speakers when they're not anchored to the floor although the speakers are so massive compared to the drivers' moving components (even a heavy sub woofer isn't half a pound, when a light weight speaker cabinet is 50+ pounds) that the lost driver motion is inconsequential.

ALL interesting and thoughtful comments . . . there is a long thread on this very topic at the steve hoffman site that was recently led by commercial sound engineer barry diament . . . he's a big fan of "floating" spkrs w/rollerballs and disks (symposium rollerball, jr., finite elemente cerabase--barry has similar devices of his own making) . . .

I have some disks from ANOTHER well-known maker (name escapes me) being used under various components, and I plan to try 3 of them under one of my harbeths. (Barry's rec'd also involves a very flat, smooth slab of tile or plexi under each spkr w/the disks between slab and spkr).

dc

Very interesting discussion here. If you use the wood pedestal under the speakers is it best to simply lay it on the carpet or would it be better to spike the wood block to the floor? I think I may try it this weekend.

Fafafion>With reference to the Cerebases beneath floor standing speakers
Are they placed directly on the carpet(even thick carpet)
Do you use three of four under each speaker ???

Timrhu said:

"Very interesting discussion here. If you use the wood pedestal under the speakers is it best to simply lay it on the carpet or would it be better to spike the wood block to the floor? I think I may try it this weekend."

I have a rather interesting arrangement where I have a few magazines under the block of wood to raise the level of the speakers off the hardwood floor a bit... so I guess I would suggest trying the wood "pedestal" directly on the carpet, and then with spikes under the pedestal to see if that is an improvement. I am not sure what advantage is gained by coupling the speaker-pedestal system to a wood sub floor if that just adds the chance of exciting the floor and transferring vibration to your equipment rack, but some proponents claim that it increases the bass response in a good way. Try it without spikes first and if that sounds good, you may have saved some money. If you have some extra spikes around the house, try that too.

For an (expensive) commercial solution and some hype about wood platforms, check this site;

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/speakerstands_hub.php