I have used many different items under speakers- spikes, gliders, wheels, furniture sliders…. I have never found the results to be predictable. I don’t think in terms of coupling, decoupling, physics or anything like that. I think in terms of liking the sound better with x than with y. Differences in home construction and room acoustics render the academic approach well, academic. Spikes were the knee-jerk for audiophiles for years, but now many are discovering the soft-sprung Townsend platforms sound better sometimes. Use your ears.
Herbie’s Spike Decoupling Gliders: my…experience
So my Herbie’s gliders (giant, titanium) arrived to put under my 180 pound B&W 802 D2’s.
I immediately rushed to install them, alone (yes wait for it..) to see what kind of difference they can make.
I also adjusted my spikes so I had the speakers on their side to do what I needed to do. I righted the speakers again, on my own no sweat (just a hernia).
Rocked the speaker up and inserted the Herbie’s gliders, no problem. Except, ONE of the spikes popped out of the indentation in the glider and was resting in the top of the glider - and the 180 pound speaker toppled! I yelled “NONONONO…” I think I managed to yell about 7 No’s in the time the speaker took to topple.
Amazingly, it landed on three massive 8” thick extra firm camping mat that just happened to be there from when I had the speakers on their sides to adjust the spikes. By some miracle neither my speaker, my floor, and my body were damaged due to my stupidity fueled by impatience!
To further my stupidity, I proceeded to reinstall the Herbie’s under the speaker, on my own again. Yes, I did that. But this time I was successful, against all odds. What could I do, the family was asleep!
After this success, my senses came to me and I decided to wait to install the gliders under the second speaker.
This gave me a unique opportunity to test the difference in sound between my left speaker sans Herbie’s, and my right speaker with Herbie’s. The difference was not small. The Herbified speaker sounded more immediate, open, confident and clear. Albeit with a tad less “tangible” bass. While the non-Herbified speaker had more of that tangible bass, the bass was muddier. And the rest of the range was also muddier and less immediate. Listening like this was totally weird, it was like the cables were out of phase or something.
In the morning I sheepishly told my wife what happened and she helped my Herbify my left speaker in like less than a minute. I was greeted with a far more confident mid and upper presentation, which was more detailed, more solid, more open, and the soundstage was wider and more solid. All with a tad less bass but the trade seems easily worth it. I can see why some people claim that vibration control products impact tonal balance. But I’m not sure if it really is this or not - it may simply be that a degree of muddiness is removed and the tones just come through better as a result (with less bass “mud”).
I don’t have any experience with similar products (isoacoustics, Townshend, etc) so I don’t know how they compare. But I’m quite amazed and happy with the difference these make. They should come with a warning though! (Against being stupid that is)…. On a serious note, it’s easy to underestimate how unsteady your speakers can become with a single footing at a slightly different height than the others.
I do wonder about the physics of what is happening. With decoupling products that is, I do comprehend why my speaker toppled. You use spikes to couple the speaker cabinet to the floor so it becomes fixed, to improve performance. So why in the world would undoing this with a decoupling device improve things further? I don’t get it. I noticed less bass. Maybe the flex reduces the speaker’s ability to produce as much bass, reducing vibrations in the cabinet and allowing mid and upper frequencies to shine more? Taking that logic to an extreme, would the ultimate decoupling device be suspending your speakers from the ceiling? Totally uninformed theory…
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I just read another post on a different forum that cited precisely the same results using the Herbie’s gliders. The sonic results, not the speaker toppling over result. Bass had “less impact” with Herbie’s, but soundstage and everything else more clear. They said they tried going back to spikes but couldn’t due to missing the clarity and soundstage of Herbie’s which is a big difference. That said, this person proceeded to measure their room response and actually found MORE bass with Herbie’s despite what he was hearing. He then found that by removing some bass treatment in his room, the impactful bass returned even when using the Herbie’s. To me it seems to suggest that we can become accustomed to enjoy a small amount of sonic distortion or resonance, especially when it comes to bass, provided it’s not the dominant quality. I don’t have any room treatment (yet) but maybe I need to play with my ideal speaker positioning which may have changed with the Herbie’s. At least that is easy enough with the gliders added. |
Wow, that was lucky. I've learnt the hard way that you should always get someone to help when working with heavy cumbersome equipment. It's a pain to have to wait but the alternatives are not worth thinking about
In my experience decoupling improves bass clarity. You might start to hear bass playing notes and tunes instead of being one lumpy mess. This improved clarity and less bass bloat might also in certain systems and rooms appear to result in less perceived bass. I would be surprised if the decoupled bass didn’t measure lower in frequency than the spiked bass. However, the spiked bass might have more output in the 60Hz to 100Hz range due to the bloat. Therefore naturally enough, in some thin sounding systems this might actually be welcomed. It’s interesting that B&W now have introduced some decoupling of the midrange units into their latest 800 models.
"We’ve also completely redesigned the decoupling for the midrange assembly itself – but we’ll go into more detail on that in a later blog."
https://www.bowerswilkins.com/en-gb/blog/products/excellence-evolved-800-series-diamond |
@cd318 , thanks for that, and yes that makes a lot of sense. I think it’s a function of just having become used to the bump in the low frequency bloat (which was mild), and it’s just gone now. The overall tone remains balanced and pleasing (thanks to my Gryphon Diablo 300 and it’s warmish leaning DAC module), and I think I may just need to get used to not having that slight bump in the frequency response which was not natural anyways…. Sounds like that other poster I referenced found a way to reintroduce the bass bloat to his liking after installing Herbie’s, by removing his room treatment. I might play with sliding my speakers a bit closer to the back wall just to see. My system is in an open room so there are no corners close by adding bass resonance.
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