Filling speaker stands: sand, lead, steel, rice. Full, half, etc?


With my proac tablettes, I am using 28 inch speaker stands which have two round steel tubes about two inches in diameter.  The stands have spikes into my wooden floor (through carpet) and rubber pads on top.  I have a rather small room 12x12, and I have played around with the speaker positions in the room, finding a pretty sweet spot optimizing the bass and soundstage.  I have done all this with the stands unfilled.

so I am looking for advice on filling the stands. What do I use: sand, steel shot, lead shot, rice?  Do I fill them half full, three quarters, or full? Do I fill all the tubes the same? Can overfill makes things worse?

like most things (i.e. speaker placement) I suspect there will be some trial and error, but as it will be a real pain in the rear to fill/empty/refill the various materials to really compare, I am hoping that there are some lessons learned that the rest of you can share with me to get me pretty close with my first trial.

Alos, what effect will the filling have- should I expect deeper bass, bigger soundstage, greater depth, more detail, or..... better yet what should I not expect to change? This will help me know what I should be listening for as I tweak things.

and finally, should I expect my current optimum speaker position to change with filled stands? Will I have to go through the whole positioning exercise again?

thanks, ( and happy new year)

Bill
meiatflask
How did it sound? Lol. For those who admire sand or rice solutions, I suggest taking a gander at super smooth and super spherical glass microspheres, the operation of which is rather quite superior to non symmetrical sand and rice. These little babies are not cheap, what price glory?

How did it sound? Do you mean when my roommate ran into one and broke his toe? The sound was VERY loud and forward, without a hint of distortion. I could clearly hear every intonation of his vocalizations. LOL.

I thought it improved the sound, but not in a jaw dropping way. Honestly, though, I am audiophile lover but not an audiophile owner or expert. My gear is honestly mid-fi. Maybe the biggest benefit of filling them with melted lead (and narrowly getting away with it) is that my roommate did not knock the speaker over the day he collided with it, which probably would have snapped the KEF from the stand and broken it.

Obviously a super big advantage to fried rice, spam, grapes, pecans, and other delicious 😋 foods that are not too hard, not too soft, is you can eat them if they don’t sound good.
don t forget Stolichnay , after two shot , sound always improve and get 
more transparent