How to make speakers levitate..

Hi guys,
I just had a thought yesterday to get my Apogee Calipers off the floor and hence reduce/eliminate suspended floor interference/vibrations: use either a wooden or steel joist, fixed to the brick wall on either side and put the speakers on it.

Distance across is about 12 feet. I can paint/cover the wood or steel, so appearance is not desperately important.

Anyone got any opinions on wood or steel as being preferential? I would have thought the steel would be less visually intrusive than the wood, but the latter might be more damped...

Cheers,

Fraser

 

Why not simply put them on a bunch of Vibrapods or something similarly calculated to provide vibration isolation related to the weight of the object on top?

 

The speakers weigh about 85lbs each, so, it is a possibility, but I just thought about being outside the box (excuse the pun and get the speakers off the floor completely.

I made some supports for them from 3x2 lengths of wood, raising them up about a foot and that made a big improvement to the sound. I was going to remake the stands, using planks and absorbing sandwich material inbetween each plank.

I duuno: just thinking about options. The room is going to be just for music and is the whole of the attic, so aesthetics comes after function.

 

At one point I suspended some marble slabs by metal wire from the ceiling and sat the speakers on that. Don't knock in to them though or they swing!

 

blimey, sounds like a lot of effort.

I'd build some large air platforms if I wanted to do that.

Basically a couple of bike inner tubes inside a box.... like the picture below, but big enough and made the right size for your speakers

http://www.noteworthyaudio.co.uk/voodoo_shelf.jpg

 

How about placing each speaker on their own large model tug boat, floating in baths of water.

 

Could you have a couple of wall brackets fabricated so that each speaker is mounted a little above the floor and say about 0.5m out from the wall. Do you have brick walls at either end of your loft space with the roof sloping along the length? Just an idea. Ben

 

Brick walls on either side, sloping roof behind speakers, ie the roofline is parallel to the speakers.

I *could* go with your suggestion, it's one I hadn't thought of , but, given that I am not going to be using the space behind the speakers for anything and will be acoustically treating the roof and walls I don't mind having a girder all the way across: this would require less substantial fixing to the walls and may be easier/cheaper to make up....

 

Hi,

My only thoughts about tha method is that it would vibrationly link the speakers together. Not always so good for imaging and so on.

 

Shouldnt the speakers be fixed though. For every action an equal and opposite reaction and what not?

I'd rather get some breeze blocks down or something.

 

Buy a pair of levitating sumo wrestlers and ask them to each hold one loudspeaker. Job done.

 

You are sort of fighting fire with a turd, if you are going to mount the speakers just above the floor, all that will happen is the back wall becomes a big baffle and it will still dump a load of noise into the floor.

There is nothing new under the sun.

 

Aurelex foam mopads......

you've seen mine ...approx £36 you can make anything for less !

Real cheap scape version would be to use thick pipe insulation foam.

But isolation rather than coupling works well with the logans...

 

Back wall is sloping roof that will have acoustic treatment and is also a number of interfaces removed from the suspended floor boards.
If the speakers are on the floor then the floor will couple them together anyway, even if they are on breeze blocks or on wooden stands on isolating foam etc.

Lots to think about and thanks for all the feedback so far! I haven't *done* anything yet though: still thinking..

 

My mopads make the speakers float ! they are nearly isolated from the floor ...

how about suspension from the ceiling ?

 

Would you have to feed them though, could be expensive!

 

Got my B&W CDM9NTs on cd-str5. Works very well.

http://cd-str5.com/eng/start.htm

 

Can't suspend from the roof joists as a) the roof will collapse and b) the rest of the hifi (apart from the amp) is going to hang from the joists

 

How about a pair of levitating sumo wrestlers, sitting on the floating tug boats, holding them in bubble wrap gloves. Now that's isolation.