Floorstanders over Suspended Hardwood-Help Please

Place a cement stepping stone with washed rock top on the berber. They come in various sizes. You can spray paint them black so they look better and do not call great attention to themselves. They are very heavy as to sink into the carpet and form a solid base. Measure where your spikes would be and drill holes into the concrete and place your speakers with spikes into the holes deep enough until the speakers are stable and do not rock back and forth. Placing a speaker directly on tile on top of carpet does not always create a stable situation. The speaker tends to move around on the tile. You can also use the stone and then buy a 1.5 by 1.5 inch by 18 inch piece of wood ( two for each speaker ) which can be cut to match the stone. You turn your speaker on its side - measure where the spikes will be and drill holes in the wood and place them on the speaker spikes so they form a stand to be placed on the stone. This way you do not drill into the stone. You can use a smooth stone this way also. The two pieces of wood should be longer than your speaker and run parallel to each other - one in front and one in the back. This way you are spiking into hardwood . This will elevate your speakers the distance of the wood so you can adjust by using a 1 by 1 inch or 2 by 2 inch depending on the length of your spikes. I do the last way with my ML Odysseys as not to spike into my hardwood floor ( no carpet ) - I do not use a stone on my hardwood floor. I put felt under the wooden pieces to be able to move them and position them more easily while they are spiked to the speakers. The speakers are very stable by the stand-like nature of the two pieces of wood - its like spiking your speakers to your floor without actually doing so.

Coupling speakers to the floor, or in the case of monitors to the stand, is another audio myth. There is no good reason for it.

Charlie

I agree with Danvetc, and believe that you ought to DEcouple speakers from the floor, walls, everything. Best thing is to hang them, but room cosmetics usually prevent this. I know this works with Magneplanars and the Bose 901's, especially if you have a big room with cathedral ceiling. I never experienced it with a conventional box speaker, but it ought to work. Why do you put Monitors up on skinny stands?

Audiobugged: Laminated glass (as opposed to tempered) poses no threat to kids as it is actually two layers of glass with a very resilient type of glue between the layers. It is quite thin (about 1/8" to 1/4") and will not shatter or break unless it's really subjected to violent stuff (that's why it's called security glass). It is also virtually unnoticeable, cheap, and because it's thin doesn't present problems as a result of raising the speaker too much off the floor. In this application, (carpet, suspended floor, etc) which is exactly what Mot describes, I really like it.

I had my speakers spiked through the carpet into the floors before and would never go back.

Rather than try a "band aid" that results in another set of completely different problems, why not go to the source ? If you are bothered by the bass talking to you via the floor, why not install some simple braces underneath it ? I don't see any problem with doing something like this, especially since you said it was a crawl-space and not a basement.

In order to do this and have it work properly, you will need several thick planks of wood and a few inexpensive "bottle jacks". Lay a plank down on the crawl-space floor, place a bottle jack underneath each speaker and then place another plank on top of the jacks. If you do this right, you'll not only make the floor more rigid / less susceptible to resonance, but you'll be transfering floor bounce to Earth ground via the bottle jacks.

You can take this a step further and install a few more jacks / planks where they are needed. While you or someone else is in the crawl-space, have someone walk around in that room. Where the floor makes the most noise, that's where the supports go. How many braces that you'll need will obviously depend on how sturdy the floor is.

Another less expensive alternative is to use 4 x 4 posts cut to length rather than leaving the bottle jacks in the crawl-space as the support. You may still need a jack to initially "lift" the flooring while wedging the supports in place, but you'll only need one jack to do this and you can put it to use somewhere else once you're done with it. I would suggest using a piece of wood both under and above the posts as sort of an "end cap". This will help to both level out the ground and spread the load out a bit. If you use a larger plank above the post, you may be able to contact several of the floor joists at once, which will help to make the floor more rigid. If possible, running one long plank across all of the floor joists between the speakers would work best. That is, if the speakers are running across the joists and not parallel with them.

The advantage to using the jacks is that you can adjust them as needed should the flooring, soil or house shift over time. If using posts, you may have to shim them or cut new posts. Finding just the right size shim that is both sturdy and easy to get into place might be a good trick and that's why the bottle jacks may be slightly easier ( albeit more expensive ) to work with in the long run.

While you are at it, you might want to think about breaking ground at your electrical box that houses your outlets and dropping a line straight through the floor down to a dedicated Earth ground rod. This would offer a phenomenally short and low resistance path to ground for you. Before doing so though, i would check with a local electrician to see how this could be done in order to maintain safety factors while still meeting local code. Sean
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