Speaker Spike Philosophy

I am a Electrostatic Speaker user for many years and in the past few years have used occasionally a Three Way Floor Stander.

To get the best from the Floor Standers during earlier occasions of use I have used various Sub Plinths,
that in the end become a Two Tier Sub Plinth,
using a highly compressed Chip Board as the Base Tier, that is Spike Foot coupled through Carpet to a Concrete Screed Floor.
A 40mm Thick Granite Slab is the Top Tier, that is Spike Foot Coupled to the Chipboard.

The Materials chose in the Sub Plinths were selected from a variety of used materials.

The Speakers were seated directly onto the Granite and as an alternative seated with onto the Granite with Spike Coupled Feet.

The Speakers were at their best 'in my view' when the Spikes were used as feet.
When used during this time period, I also had a selection of Dumbbell Weights seated on the top of each Speaker Cabinet.
I recall that by moving the weights off centre into different positions had the effect that I would refer to as a attenuation and could produce a very slight change in how the sound is being perceived.

Very recently I reintroduced the Speakers into the System, they were allowed to see the light of day after a long term storage and used in the New Listening Room Space I have recently created.

I worked my way methodically through their Setting Up and settled for the above set up.
It was for myself, being perceived as being correct in many ways, the result being,
the Speakers were much more impressive in the New Room, when recollections of their previous usage were taken into account.
I am yet to add the Weights to the Top of the Cabinets

I had a opportunity to trial the Speaker Set Up a little further, using a change to a footer, the good impression they were making was a stimulus for the extra investigation.

I had produced similar things for others in their Home Systems and the impression made was enough for those who experienced to create similar Set Up using either Townsend or Gaia Footers

I Seated the Speakers onto Audio Technica AT-616 Pneumatic Feet and was left thoroughly captivated, the effect on the SQ was not expected.
The impact they were having on the SQ was quite noticeable and further enhanced my already good impression.

I have one more trial to undertake, which is to protect the AT 616 Top Surface and Place them under the Speakers Spiked Feet.

I will say the Spiked Footers under the Speakers when used on the Two Tier Sub Plinth Set Up is allowing for a imaging and Soundstage with a defined edge. ( A Electrostatic Mimic )
 
The AT-616 have blurred the edges ’very slightly’, giving a richness to the presentation with a noticeable weight underpinning the performers.
The Soundstage is now perceived without a Boundary and the experience has that added effect of being more honest / believable. ( This has made such a impression on me, afgter Twenty Plus Years of Electrostatics, they are now in Storage, allowing for myself to get the most from this Set Up )

I fully concur with @millercarbon. An alternative to springs is the Symposium Svelteshelf on rollerballs. Whatever you put under the speakers if they are floorstanders, should be relatively thin, otherwise you need to lift your seating position by a similar amount to get adequate vertical allignment. Also note that bass performance is likely to decrease with increasing distance from the floor.

The problem with springs is if they deflect they must rebound. And they of course have their own resonances when they do. So they must be damped. Try driving a car without dampers. So the damping is very much more critical than the spring in its design. Which is why the dampers on your car cost 100x more than the springs. The problem with dampers is they often have their own resonances. Some springs are damped by having trapped air escaping through a hole. For anything other than the lowest of frequencies this is a disaster because the viscosity of the air is both the reason why any damping at all happens and the reason why you are left with another spring in the form of compressed/decompressed air in the damper. And guess what, that air spring has its own resonance... so most spring/damper combos left this long ago and moved to oil based, because oil doesn’t compress and doesn’t add yet another resonation to the system. But the problem with uncompressible liquids is that they are more viscous than gasses, meaning you need a reservoir, seals, etc and this all eats into your profit margin. The next problem with the spring/damper combo is what is the range of frequencies it can deal with. As an engineer you can probably do the maths. Car spring/dampers can cope with low frequency deflections well, but can not cope with high frequencies at all. This is why your car has pneumatic tyres as well, where the air is another spring and the rubber of the tyre has a damping effect.  The different spring rate of air in tyres to the spring/damper on the axle is a problem and why the fussy have lower profile tyres - it minimises the air spring conflict of the tyre.  And the smallest of vibrations (road texture) is handled in the rubber touching the road alone.
So the issue for audio is - what are the frequencies that are thought to be a problem? Where are they coming from? Are they in the range a spring can react to? If so, can that spring be damped so as to not make the problem worse? Is that damping adding new resonances and again making things worse?

The products marketed seem to me to have very low frequency spring rebound indeed, and have air damping which at higher frequencies will themselves become springs, not dampers.  I can not see how at the high frequencies and low amplitude of audio-caused vibration they can have any effect - I think any effect is due to the mountings and fixings (like the bushes on car suspension, which are vitally importance for isolation because they deal with higher frequencies which no car spring/damper can deal with) and not the springs. 

I’d like an engineer - mechanical - to tell us here i) whether there is a spring that is effective in the range of frequency and amplitude deflections thought to be relevant to audio through speakers, ii) how such a spring if it exists should be damped, iii) whether a spike or BluTac has solved the problem already!

Check out my thread (our thread!) on springs from last year. Lots of good stuff in there.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/springs-under-turntable

It’s about transferring weight to smaller area, achieving greater lbs per sq. inch. Good concept, can make a small speaker heavy.

I’ve done spikes, ... gave them away.

Big or medium speakers (or small speakers on sand filled stands) are heavy enough to put on 3 wheels (more weight per wheel than 4) (3 do not need leveling wherever you move them).

Put rear corner blocks not touching floor, just a bit shorter than the rear wheel height to prevent tip-over when moving. Tilt: corner block touches floor.

Move them here and there, find, then use the perfect location for one person (need marks, I have a grid wood floor luckily).

I listen alone and with 1 or 2 friends, when 2, I want good imaging
You can easily adjust toe-in for a wider center for 2 people, push back into the corners for lower volume listening, i.e. when expanding the dining room table, large crowded parties, ...