Brass door knobs as footers

Jmoog08 -
I love a bargain, myself.
I think the idea with the footers is to drain internal vibrations into a very small foot print so there's not a lot of area to conduct vibrations back up into whatever the equipment is you are trying to isolate.

I do think the knobs might work. Seems to me (without actually seeing the knobs you are considering) you might still have a broad contact area, however. Check out Parts Express and look for Dayton Speaker Cone Spikes (or some variation on that). I used 4 of these (~$30 with shipping) and a 2 1/4" Cuisinart wood chopping block (HEAVY!) from Lowes to make a bargain plinth for my turntable. Actually think I hear a difference. Hey - either way, it's worth the experiment.

Home Depot, they have all kinds of cool knobs and stuff like that.

Neat.Reminds me of folks using old electric pole isolators to lift cables off synthetic or synthetic bend carpets.You can find those a flea markets,antique shops,and Ebay and they (the isolators) work/look better and cheaper than many "pro" devices.The knobs would only worry me if they rang (material was resonant) or had loose parts.My argument with a lot of folks who buy nice looking Billy Bags or expensive synthetic racks and speaker stands is that nothing beats mass (add cones or points to isolate after you have established mass) and for me Sound Anchor with it's heavy iron can't be beat.But not only does Bob (no my cousin) Warzalla make SA heavy he knows where to put it say more mass at top of speaker stand for some low on stand for others and does lot's of design work for individual speakers.But cheap eats that get that mass in thier and don't cause WAF freak outs are great so ideas like this should tried and reported on.
Cheers
Chazz

Holy crap! It looks like I misread the Parts Express entry; they charge less than $20 for a package of four cones with threads and protector disks, plus shipping as Ghosthouse said.

Ghosthouse, you are very close.

The brass cones 'couple' the speaker to the floor and thus act as a vibration 'sink', sort of like a heat sink. If carpet, or rubber feet, are between your speaker and floor, then the speaker will be isolated and the energy cannot be drained to the floor.

Its debatable, from vibrations perspective, if coupled or uncoupled is better. I think it depends on the speaker designer / design.

Three feet are most desirable. Four will 'over constrain' the speaker. Ever sat on a 3 leg stool that wobbles? Nope, didn't think so. A 4 legged stool however... wobble wobble wobble.

Brass is good. Great internal damping and nice and heavy. Spikes are only nessasary to pierce the carpet.

A big chunck of mass near the bottom is better too. it will lower the first mode frequency (good, perhaps out of the audio spectrum) and it will act like an vibration absorber because of internal damping.

Good to know that 7 years of mechanical engineering school is good for something.

Lucas