Townshend Springs under Speakers


I was very interested, especially with all the talk.   I brought the subject up on the Vandersteen forum site, and Richard Vandersteen himself weighed in.   As with everything, nothing is perfect in all circumstances.  If the floor is wobbly, springs can work, if the speaker is on solid ground, 3 spikes is preferred.
128x128stringreen
Well...yall see thats where Harbeth differ, they are audio engineers who have adapted a highly successful and time proven design principle and applied those principles into a highly effective speaker design...

They haven’t merely chucked a bucket load of cheap third world quality Tat shack speakers at a 2 mill thick monkey coffin.. Rock on
What makes me gun-shy about getting the springs is that I tried Herbies things under my 5A's (a large step backward), Vandersteen's comments, (the speakers are time aligned and float a gorgeous tone picture...my thinking is that if the speaker can rock, the timing will suffer - don't know that as fact..just wondering), also my speakers are extremely heavy and would require hired hands to complete the setup..  too much for an experiment.
stringreen,
Just to be clear, are you using Vandersteen's recommended bases at this time? If not, and he's recommending three point support, I would say look into the Starsound support platforms. They were a miracle for my floorstanders and others too. If I understand correctly, it is more of a sophisticated energy drain from the vibrations of the speaker cabinets, and it's not a subtle difference. It makes the speakers disappear.
"I thought the best results were whatever sounds best to you in your listening room"

@chayro, I agree that actually listening is the final arbiter.  Well  Richard Vandersteen did exactly  that with his speakers in two seperate rooms. He found that springs resulted in "dynamic compression " and "smearing". 

It does raise the spector of speaker enclosure construction,  rigidity, internal bracing and resistance to resonance and vibration. Given the differences between his Vandersteen cabinet implementation and say Tekton or another speaker, could this be responsible for his outcome variance compared to what others report?

It seems logical that speaker cabinet design and construction is a significant consideration to explain the relative effectiveness of springs versus  the alternatives. 
Charles