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DIY speaker isolation base for a wood floor

A definite sonic improvement in tightening up the bass. 
1. Start with 4 aluminum cones. I used some old Mod Squad Tip Toes.
2. 16x16 slab of granite.
3. 1/8 cork.
4. 1/2 inch neoprene rubber.
5. 1/8 cork.
6. Top with another 16x16 slab of granite.
7. Enclosed with a wood cradle to hide the mechanism.
  The granite is from scraps from a shop and was cheap. The added 1/4 inch of neoprene to 1/2 inch thickness did help. Let me hear your thoughts.
blueranger
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Ironically I don’t sell to members here. That would be too icky. It’s also against my company policy to sell to knuckleheads.
blueranger's avatar
blueranger OP
719 posts
 
So, sorbethane in place of cones or springs to couple to floor.? If I had sone extra funds I'd play around with both.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 

blueranger OP
So, sorbethane (sic) in place of cones or springs to couple to floor.? If I had sone extra funds I’d play around with both.

>>>>>Sorbothane is a shock absorber. That’s why they use it in shoes. It’s not an isolator. You’re not trying to isolate yourself. Hel-loo!
audiozenology
362 posts
 
From Sorbothane.com

  • Sorbothane® combines shock absorption, good memory, vibration isolation and vibration damping characteristics.
  • Sorbothane® can absorb over 50 percent of vibration energy over most of its temperature operating range at frequencies from 10 to 30,000 hertz.

From me: Sorbothane acts as both a shock absorber and a spring. That is one of the reasons why it is effective. The problem that may arise with Sorbothane alone is getting the resonant frequency. Best to use their calculator and you may need to cut pieces to the size you need and pay attention to the Shore hardness. A very approximate rule of thumb is if the Sorbothane is compressed 30-50% you are getting pretty good isolation (~90%). 50% compression should put you under 10Hz resonant frequency.


geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Sorbothane is one of the worst materials ever foisted on naive and gullible audiophiles. I put Sorbothane in the same category as SONEX and lead. Sorbothane is just another pretender. There are many black semi-soft viscoelastic materials that audiophiles have used for resonance control. Sorbothane is actually on the bottom of the list of ones I’ve experimented with. Sorbothane seems like such a good material, not too soft, not too hard. Little bit why audiophiles think lead is a good damping material. LOL

People would be far off in the long run 🏃‍♂️if they follow my suggestion of mass-on-spring isolation for their isolation needs and look around for an effective viscoelastic material for their constrained layer damping materials. It’s far better to leave things undamped than to over-dump in the great word of Acoustic Revive.
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