Building stands for Harbeth 40.2's

Beech is excellent for speaker stands and that’s what Tonträger mainly uses. 

From HUG, by Alan Shaw, Designer, owner, Harbeth Audio UK:

Mar 7, 2023

Quite honestly, you are over reading the design, shape and styling of the stands. From our perspective as the speaker designers, the stand you show is just one of an infinite number of possible designs, all of which would almost certainly achieve good results.

During the design of the M40 I recall that I used IKEA tables, which had a flat top and four legs without the cross bars at the top or bottom.

The selection of a speaker stand must fulfil only two core criteria: raising the tweeter so that, ideally, the tweeter is level with your ear (very few users do this and hence very few users achieve the full sonic potential) and protecting the speaker from toppling over. With those criteria met, there is a very wide latitude on materials, shape size and colour.

One advantage of our relationship with Hifi Racks - very useful for the Bristol show last week - is the ease with which they can make longer legs for our stands. For example, we had never exhibited the M30 to a room full of mixed standing and seated folk before, and we calculated that we would need a few more cms. height, which they cheerfully obliged.

The selection of a speaker stand must fulfil only two core criteria: raising the tweeter so that, ideally, the tweeter is level with your ear (very few users do this and hence very few users achieve the full sonic potential) and protecting the speaker from toppling over. With those criteria met, there is a very wide latitude on materials, shape size and colour.

This is ludicrous assertion by Shaw. How a speaker stand interacts with the floor can, depending on other variables, produce clearly audible differences.

The quote is reminiscent of when, years ago, Shaw was famously agnostic about amplifiers:

Whatever amp you've got will work just great with Harbeth. Anything British, made after about 1980, fully serviced will be great. End of story.
 

Shaw designs excellent speakers, but at least some of his related views should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Think this way -- if the stands have dramatic impact to the speaker performance and he ignored it unduly, would he be successfully designed so many good speakers and have good reputation for that?

Lots ideas about good stand discussed here, including the expensive TT design lack of theoretical back and experimental evidence at all.  So please show the theories and measurement data to prove it that they are not snake oil.

@whipsaw

agree with you - alan shaw can be a tricky dude... in spite of the harbeths being excellent speakers... he is the business mind and owner behind the brand, and as an expert capitalist, you can count on him to say what serves his commercial interests... ’oh why yes, any old amplifier will do - just make sure you have bought the best harbeth you can afford’ 🤣