Coupling or isolating floorstan. to the floor?

Because a speaker cone is coupled to the cabinet, the cabinet will always vibrate to some extent with the cone. This causes a dissipation of energy which can result in loss of efficiency as well as phasing inaccuracy. So the idea is to hold the cabinet as rigid as possible so (ideally) all the work is done by the cone and none by the cabinet. Now it seems that vibrapods may hold a cabinet more rigidly than if it were standing unrestrained on the floor, but they cannot hold it as rigidly as spikes can. Am I missing something here?

Gboren
Thanks for the comments. Do you have any insights into how & why Aurio MIB's are able to work under speakers? Because I (like you) believed that mechanically coupling the spkr cabinet to floor was of utmost importance.

I saw MIB's used (3 per spkr. seated between a 2" marble slab & the spkr. cabinet) Verity - Parcifals.

Sound was good - bass too. Room was a tiled (2nd floor. with a carpeted listening area). ...Not sure if the slabs were plain marble or had something under them - would've been thin if anything.

Awdeeofyle...interesting. I approached Verity with ideas for modifying their excellent adjustable huge spikes, and they warned me to NOT change the distance between the woofer and the floor, as bass response is tuned with that fixed 1/2 wavelength distance frequency in mind.
I use the stock spikes with great success, btw.

awdeeofyle: ya got me how the aurio's work (or even IF they work). I'm actually a skeptic of many of the tweaks on the market, including most isolation devices. Of course, I can respect someone's differing opinion. Having said that, I certainly do believe in SPIKING speakers for the reasons said. I can also imagine a theory as to how the Aurio's work although I cannot believe they work as well as spikes, particularly when efficiency is at issue.

Here's my theory: when speakers are flush on the floor, the cabinets move slightly in reaction to the cones moving. If the friction coefficient is not exactly the same for each speaker, each speaker will be affected slightly differently, causing a slight phase shift. Because the Aurio's are ultra low friction, and because they are machined with such low tolerances, any two speakers are more likely to vibrate in phase with eachother. How's that?

With the speakers on top of the Vibrapods, instead of the speakers moving in reaction to the cones, that energy is transfered to the Vibrapods which then dissipate that energy.