'Best' speaker stands ??

Do you think that the rear stillpoints will make a great difference even if I'm driving only above 250Hz?

what is a sink type decoupling isolation unit

 

What you can see is the bottom of a speaker sat on a seismic sink
Which is what WM refers to as the sink type decoupling unit .

 

I'm pretty sure Sid & Coke has made some air platforms to go under his Mission 782s. Might be worth dropping him a PM.

 

Titain,
I can't answer that question right now, All the speakers Ive seen/used the stillpoints are full range driver arrays, and as I don't have my pocket Spectrum anayliser/accelorometer to hand I can't pop down stairs and take a quick reading!!!!!
However they seem to effect the whole audio frequency spectrum, from my experiance so far with them.
The rear mounted ones are to help elimate speaker movement issuses as well as further cabinet control.
An easy and simple test, measure/mark your speakers in relation to a known point in the room, then have a usual volume listening session, then go back and re-measure from your reference points.
Cabinet resonace issues are an easy item to prove/disprove, I believe stereophile are rather good at suppling measurements and giving you certain frequency 'hotspots' that effect each individual speaker tested & even prediciting where the colouration is, without recourse to listening too it!!!!
The stillpoints are simply energy movers (as are a lot of isolation devices) converting vibrational energy across a wide frequency spectrum to a heat one, simple physics.
For all those sceptics, you wish to disprove their effect, you set the speaker up in the lab with a S/A and accelerometer, same freq output and volume level from the amp, one test conducted with the s/p in place the other without, then publish the results on the forum, you may find it most enlightening

 

I'm not one of them. As I wrote I have the cerabase which work with the same principle.
My speakers are like a cut piramid so the angle will have to be a little bit less than 90 degrees.


kermit
what is it made of that seismic sink? I cannot see it well on that photo.

nsherin,
air plattforms


Very interesting: quite good for the beginning, what you all wrote. It will take me many months before I'll make a decision so if anyone has more ideas.... I hope also that we meet in Heathrow: we also may have time to talk about it.

 

Titain a Seimic sink is an air platform, just a 2 way version of the same unit that my CDP was ontop of.
They are made of mild steel plates folded over with a couple of fancy inner tubes in them, else consider voodoo isolation platforms (a wood version)

 

What a bunch of sissies.

titian, what you need is Mana.

 

Up to now only two negative points for Mana.
- the look
- if I want to buy something it has to be 'the best' or at least I would like to think: that's it! I don't want to buy something which I know that if I get the next level, it will even be more better.

Anyway if I find a dealer here I will get a demo at my place.

 

I don't grasp the Seismic Sink logic - am I missing something? Surely if the speaker isn't held rigidly, the force and inertia from the drivers will move the speaker cabinet backwards and forwards, and won't this introduce strange phase effects and pitch shifts? According to the sales blurb on the Townsend site, these forces are large enough to bend steel bars, so if the speaker can freely move backwards, forwards, up and down, those speakers will be rocking in more than a good way.

Heath

 

You might try " Vibrapods " I used them to good effect when I had floor standers on a wooden floor. They come in various weight sizes, depending on weight of speakers.

Bob

 

Actually, titian, I only wanted to react to this prissy **** nonsense. On this forum, the word Mana is being treated the same way as people treat the name Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels: superstitiously, as if invoking it brings some kind of evil into the world. Bah, humbug.

To be serious for a moment, I don't think anybody will be able to give you a definitve recommendation on the best speaker stand. There are a few standard recommendtions like Partington, IF or Kudos, but who could say which one will be the best for you?

Get them all in and experiment. And do tell us about your experiences.

I personally am no fan at all of lossy mounting for speakers, such as a Seismic Sink, Vibrapods or similar, although I have had very good results by putting SSC feet under my speakers.

If you don't like Mana's looks, fair enough. I have no experience of Mana under speakers in my own system. I recently heard Hermann's system which has loads of Mana under Linn Isobariks. I generally don't like that speaker; the B110 midrange is well past its best-before date. But in Hermann's system, the speaker actually sounded pretty good.

I have no idea how much of that is down to Mana, but it certainly seemed to let the speakers go about their business free of disturbance, which is what a speaker stand should do. Again, I have no idea if the same result could be reached by an entirely different construction.

Bub is in a self-imposed cool down period. The rest of this thread can therefor remain Mana-free.

 

Thats the essence of the arguement that people use when they prefer a massy solution, or a sympathetic resonance solution - like massive lumps of stone under each speaker (massy) or sympathetic resonance - like Mana.

Ive found large slabs of concrete amply decouple my speakers from a wooden floor, and dont feel the need to try air bladder devices/mana. Im not inclined to change something thats working well.

I wouldnt denounce the effectiveness of other solutions, having not tried them Im unable to comment further

 

Thanks Markus for you thoughts. I know nobody can probably tell me which are the best for my system but before I try something I need to know what I should try. That's the purpose of this tread. I just have no idea what's around and you guys can give me a lot of ideas.
I won't even hurry up to buy something. I usually take my time, months before I decide to buy something. If there is a representetive of Mana here I will test their speaker stands.

 

The problem is, Titian, that there isn't. When I tried out Mana, I had to buy it, knowing the "send back if unsatisfied" policy applies only to the UK. As the stuff didn't work at all for me, I sold it to Bub. (I hasten to add that I didn't try it under speakers).

 

There may soon be one.

 

Markus,

Isnt mana a lossy support? After all tall stacks of it sway and rock around quite easily.

 

"Isnt mana a lossy support?"

Judging by Bub,s explanations , I,d agree with you Rob.
Adding more levels would , presumably , increase the lossiness .
So , one air plat or 6 or so levels of mana for the same effect?
I must add that yes I realise its a bit of a simplistic way to look at it , but......

Oh and as to the wobble when the speakers are working , sorry but it don,t just happen .
try it and see with a few homemade plats.

 

I'm in the process of designing stands for my new stand-mount Nonsuch 2s - think Nonsuch 4s with two drivers instead of four.

This is a non-trivial problem. Even for a fixed speaker system where I understand its behaviour, I cannot predict what stands will work best. Floor types vary but even if they didn't I would be forced to experiment with different possibilities. It took me quite a long time to design the stand and stand/speaker interface for the original System IVs and in the end I settled on a combination of dedsheet and neoprine between some very heavy sand-filled, MDF cabinets and even heavier rectangular section steel transmission line stands. I arrived at this solution after visits to two or three poeple whose views I respected, including the late Doug Dunlop of Concordant and Les W. of Avondale. Perhaps this was a little more difficult as the stands acted as transmission lines as well as supports.

To be honest, I was relieved when the Nonsuch 4s came out of the wash as floor mounts as it saved me from solving this issue. Now I'm right back in it again.

So in short, anyone who says they have the definitive answer to this question either knows one hell of a lot more about speaker design than I do - or a hell of a lot less.

Incidentally, one point: I believe that if the frequency of 'sway' of a speaker on an air-support (or similar) is well below the audio spectrum then they may be considered static to all intents and purposes. Again, I wouldn't swear by this but I do think it's likely to hold true. My views on spikes v decoupling isolation for the interface with the floor have been well aired and I won't bore you all with them again.

 

If the speakers can sway, then surely this will be within the audio spectrum since the drivers are moving in the audio spectrum and as the driver is pushed forwards, the cabinet will be pushed backwards with an equal force. Even if the speaker is swaying with a low frequency, wouldn't this movement introduce audible pitch shifts (similar to how a police car siren sounds different when travelling towards you than when travelling away)? They may only be slight movements, but surely these would be enough to colour the sound.

Heath

 

Titian just discovered these http://www.audiopoints.com/compactmonitorplaforms.HTML

Look kinda interesting.

and these http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cl.pl?ddaccsrack&1098412427