Your thoughts on speaker stands

Please try inserting the appropriate size/number of vibrapods between speaker and stand. You will hear a deeper
more detailed lower midrange and bass, which is the obvious short coming of 2 way stand mounted speakers. Sound also seems slightly more 3D, I tried this on my back-up system
and the improvement was so obvious I have never considered going back to mass loading/spiked method.

Most people have a box of extra vibrapods, only takes a couple minutes to try out.

find a rigid stand. four pillar models cost the most. i have one piece welded, two pillar target HR stands filled with sand and they still exhibit some fore and aft spring to them. not sure how it affects the sound as i wasn't willing to pony up for the four pillar jobs. to avoid accidents and damp resonances it's good to affix the speakers to the stands somehow. i used blu-tack, but i bet you can find some other kind of stretchy gum adhesive stuff cheaper - like the kind mom uses for hanging pictures without using nails. i'm really glad i did tho or they would have fallen on the floor a heap of times already. last, if ya gotta assemble the stand i'd make sure there's a good seal to contain whatever you use to fill them. oh, and use a funnel...it makes the filling alot easier.

Generally speaking my advice is to go with light but rigid stands if you have "springy" floors such as wood or heavy rigid stands if you have more secure floors such as cement of plaster. I would use spikes to couple to the floor in both cases. I also prefer one piece welded stands to the cheaper modular models. One exception to this may be Coincident speakers which are tuned to the speaker cabinet resonance as opposed to damping the crap out of the cabinet. I don't know if they are different, but it would seem that you would not want to over damp them because of their design. Using Pods (or cones) as Sam mentions can make a huge difference and it just depends on what type of sound you are looking for. I use tack right now, but have used both Pods and cones in the past as well as both types of speaker stands noted above. On the plaster based floor in the living room I am currently using Target HR70 (28") stands with sand (I tried lead and sand and did not care for the sound). Sand alone in my situation sounds smoother and more natural. I use a small accurate bubble level for the initial setup and then fine tune by extending a straight rod along the top of the speaker and then measuring the distance from it's tip to the floor. This seems to match the speakers quite well (especially when the listening position is out into the room) and it is simple to do. Others may disagree with part of what I have to say, but this is what has worked best for me in the past.

The most rigid stands that i have seen are manufactured by Solidsteel. They are a tripod design and actually quite attractive. Check them out. I think they will adequately address many of your concerns.

The most important attribute of a stand is its height. Most of the time, but not always, you need to get the tweeter to ear level. I still have an email I received from the designer of some very good speakers who told me the only function of a stand if to get the speakers off the floor and the tweeter up to ear level. Some speakers are better tilted backward a little so Im not sure what a level would do for you in that situation.

I think if you have a speaker with a well braced rigid relatively non-resonant cabinet, then weight and rigidity are important, even on a light floor. Cinder blocks work well. With a lossy box design, weight and rigidity are pointless. Wood stands are fine.

I have lossy box speakers and use metal stands filled with unscented kitty litter for one set and the matching wood stands filled the same with the other.

With metal stands, after height, damping the stand's own ringing comes next. Kitty litter works fine.