Floorstanders over Suspended Hardwood-Help Please


I have a pair of Silverline Sonatas that weigh in at about 120 pounds each. When I lived in my previous home, I used a set of four points under each speaker over a thick carpet and an equally think pad. I recently moved and these speakers will now be in a room with suspended hardwood floors. There is a berber carpet over a portion of the room and under where the speakers will be placed. With their weight, the Silverlines will drive the points right through the berber and couple with the hardwood. Bad.

I need to find a solution and have thought of three possibilities:
1) Find a very thick pad to place under the berber and use the points like before.
2) Use discs under the points directly atop the berber. Stable?
3) Get some 1-2” slabs of marble, using iso-pads between the marble and the carpet and points/discs between the speakers and the marble.

I have tried using slabs under other floorstanders over carpet and always found them to be less than rock solid in the vertical plane.

Do any of these approaches seem best, or are there others to consider. Please keep in mind that I do NOT want to spend several hundred dollars on platforms such as Sistrum, etc.
motdathird
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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Your #3 solution is similar to what I did with my Vienna Acoustics Mozarts on a heavily carpeted suspended wood floor with very good results although with some differences.

I placed a 1/2" piece of medium density fiberboard (MDF) - cut 3" wider in each horizontal dimension than the footprint of the speaker - on top of the carpet. Then I placed four Vibrapods on top of the MDF and a slab of 1" granite on top of the Vibrapods. On top of this sandwhich I placed the spiked speakers. They are very stable and there appears to be no interaction whatsoever between the speakers and and floor since the speakers now sound tighter and clearer than with either spikes or vibrapods alone. The Vibrapods cost $6 apiece and MDF is avaliable at Home Depot for aboout $7 for a 4'x8' sheet and they will cut it to size for you for about .50/cut. Scrap granite can be had Inexpensively - I paid $15/each.
Forget tiles or glass, etc. They are flimsy and breakable, with a relatively high resonant frequency. Get some corian (the stuff they make kitchen counters with). It's a resin product, very heavy and non-resonant. You can find it cheap at flea markets or through a plumber or contractor who cuts holes in it to fit kitchen sinks, etc.
You can have it cut to size, to fit the footprint of your speakers. Drill holes in the corian slabs and install spikes into them. Then put your spiked speakers on to the corian.
Great isolation, better sound.