Speaker Stands

[CN211276]

The oak stands arrived yesterday and were easy to put together which is just as well considering my lack of DIY skills. Played some favourite albums and was fully aware of what Tomasz meant when he said he could hear the stands. There is an increase in clarity throughout the frequency range, most pronounced in the bass. This is accompanied by an increased sense of space and a more lively presentation. This is in addition to the improvement the Iso Pucks brought about when placed on the heavy metal stands. The Atacamas, which I intend to sell, seemed to be slowing things down as well as bringing about some muddiness.

I have become convinced that decoupling on light rigid stands works best with Cubes. For mass to work I think an extreme amount is required as mentioned early in this thread with the 40kg marble ones, hardly a cost effective and practical solution. I do think that mass and coupling might be the best option for conventional speakers to counter the horizontal rocking motion which does not apply to Cubes.

[NSNO2021]

Very interesting thread, my highly modified Cubix came with stands Richard had made locally out of 6mm plate steel. Visually these are the most oil rig of oil rig stands, weighing in at 20lbs each and each Cubix is an additional 50lbs. Over the past 30 years I have tried numerous ideas and theories, for the most part I could hear some difference but I never came close to a eureka moment.

For the past 5 years I been more interested in decoupling and had been moving slowly but surely towards GAIA feet however I was unsure about taking a chance on spending circa £500 and also by the fact that 70lbs combined weight is just beyond the limit of GAIA 1s and right on the minimum weight for the GAIA 2s and ideally I would want to be close to the middle of the weight range to get the optimal benefit.

Then Stu can along with his inner tube idea which I tried to imitate but failed. But as I said at the time, I don't give up easily and I was always quietly confident there would a way to achieve this experiment.

Over the past 2 weeks I have made out of 9mm plywood what are basically trays with 15mm sides to retain the inner tubes and as a result I now a inner tube platform under the metal stand and a smaller one on top of it. After a long time faffing around with different size inner tubes and air pressures, plus countless different position it finally happened.

EUREKA .

The improvement is not small, it's huge and it has honestly transformed my sound stage from decent to awesome. The bass is so big, deep and crisp that I have had to move the Cubix further out into the room than they have ever been in 30 years and 4 house moves. It's not just the bass that's improved, the presentation is factual louder, it has more energy and the timing is better but and there is always a but, the appearance of my " Heath Robinson " stands is dystopian weird and ugly .


Now I know how to improve the sound, I will pause for a while and start to think about designing a pair of wooden stands to incorporate inner tubes. And the final proof point of the decoupling. In the last 2 weeks I have watched less than 2 hours of television and listened to between 40 and 45 hours of music

Ps I have PMd Stu to thank him for his original inspired idea

[NSNO2021]

Very interesting thread, my highly modified Cubix came with stands Richard had made locally out of 6mm plate steel. Visually these are the most oil rig of oil rig stands, weighing in at 20lbs each and each Cubix is an additional 50lbs. Over the past 30 years I have tried numerous ideas and theories, for the most part I could hear some difference but I never came close to a eureka moment.

For the past 5 years I been more interested in decoupling and had been moving slowly but surely towards GAIA feet however I was unsure about taking a chance on spending circa £500 and also by the fact that 70lbs combined weight is just beyond the limit of GAIA 1s and right on the minimum weight for the GAIA 2s and ideally I would want to be close to the middle of the weight range to get the optimal benefit.

Then Stu can along with his inner tube idea which I tried to imitate but failed. But as I said at the time, I don't give up easily and I was always quietly confident there would a way to achieve this experiment.

Over the past 2 weeks I have made out of 9mm plywood what are basically trays with 15mm sides to retain the inner tubes and as a result I now a inner tube platform under the metal stand and a smaller one on top of it. After a long time faffing around with different size inner tubes and air pressures, plus countless different position it finally happened.

EUREKA .

The improvement is not small, it's huge and it has honestly transformed my sound stage from decent to awesome. The bass is so big, deep and crisp that I have had to move the Cubix further out into the room than they have ever been in 30 years and 4 house moves. It's not just the bass that's improved, the presentation is factual louder, it has more energy and the timing is better but and there is always a but, the appearance of my " Heath Robinson " stands is dystopian weird and ugly .


Now I know how to improve the sound, I will pause for a while and start to think about designing a pair of wooden stands to incorporate inner tubes. And the final proof point of the decoupling. In the last 2 weeks I have watched less than 2 hours of television and listened to between 40 and 45 hours of music

Ps I have PMd Stu to thank him for his original inspired idea

Hey Paul,

Your lovely post has brought me out of hibernation It wasn't an idea I invented as you know, just borrowed. I think quite a few people have tried inner tube isolation in the past. The best thing about it (apart from the gigantic jump in enjoyment of music) is the fact it costs so little to try. In my case I had the inner tubes already so it cost me zero. How anybody can spend eye watering amounts on manufactured products like the Townshend or Black ravioli etc when inner tubes are so cheap easy to try and might even work better than said products.

The naysayers usually cite the wobbliness as detrimental and the fact you have to keep re inflating the tubes. The fact the speakers can wobble about has no detrimental effect that I can pick up on. The advantages are many and massive in my opinion. I have had my speakers on tubes for ages and I haven't had to pump them up at all. I think some people see this as a Heath Robinson diy thing that can't possibly work because it is so simple and doesn't cost enough to be taken seriously Fools and their money.

I was a bit saddened when you originally reported you couldn't get the idea to work with your speakers and stands. I was very glad to hear when you reported your new effort to work so well. I think you need as little pressure in the tubes as possible to keep the resonant frequency as low as possible. That takes a bit of trial and effort and is different for different types of tube, speakers and the weight the tubes have to support.

Making it all aesthetically pleasing without compromising the performance is the hardest bit but there are ways of doing it and hiding the tubes. I eagerly await the pictures of your new wooden stands once you have designed and made them

[CycleCoach]

Very interesting thread, my highly modified Cubix came with stands Richard had made locally out of 6mm plate steel. Visually these are the most oil rig of oil rig stands, weighing in at 20lbs each and each Cubix is an additional 50lbs. Over the past 30 years I have tried numerous ideas and theories, for the most part I could hear some difference but I never came close to a eureka moment.

For the past 5 years I been more interested in decoupling and had been moving slowly but surely towards GAIA feet however I was unsure about taking a chance on spending circa £500 and also by the fact that 70lbs combined weight is just beyond the limit of GAIA 1s and right on the minimum weight for the GAIA 2s and ideally I would want to be close to the middle of the weight range to get the optimal benefit.

Then Stu can along with his inner tube idea which I tried to imitate but failed. But as I said at the time, I don't give up easily and I was always quietly confident there would a way to achieve this experiment.

Over the past 2 weeks I have made out of 9mm plywood what are basically trays with 15mm sides to retain the inner tubes and as a result I now a inner tube platform under the metal stand and a smaller one on top of it. After a long time faffing around with different size inner tubes and air pressures, plus countless different position it finally happened.

EUREKA .

The improvement is not small, it's huge and it has honestly transformed my sound stage from decent to awesome. The bass is so big, deep and crisp that I have had to move the Cubix further out into the room than they have ever been in 30 years and 4 house moves. It's not just the bass that's improved, the presentation is factual louder, it has more energy and the timing is better but and there is always a but, the appearance of my " Heath Robinson " stands is dystopian weird and ugly .


Now I know how to improve the sound, I will pause for a while and start to think about designing a pair of wooden stands to incorporate inner tubes. And the final proof point of the decoupling. In the last 2 weeks I have watched less than 2 hours of television and listened to between 40 and 45 hours of music

Ps I have PMd Stu to thank him for his original inspired idea

I'd love to see a pic of the stands.

[NSNO2021]

Well I have plenty of photo's I just need to find the inspiration to go through the hoops to upload a few. This is not helped by my somewhat "anti social media" persona and the fact I cannot recall sharing photos but I guess there's always a first time for everything

[karatestu]

Well I have plenty of photo's I just need to find the inspiration to go through the hoops to upload a few. This is not helped by my somewhat "anti social media" persona and the fact I cannot recall sharing photos but I guess there's always a first time for everything

Paul, if you redesign your speakers for only a single pair of tweeters which are positioned above the centre of the up firing mid bass then you won't need stands. And it makes the tweeters positioned on the front of the enclosure (and closer to your lug holes) sound completely wrong. All in my opinion of course.

[NSNO2021]

Stu, just like you were, I am trying to reduce the amount of time I spend obsessing about my system because its in danger of taking over my days and weeks. When the time is right I will hopefully enjoy designing a pair of easy on the eye stands that help the presentation of my music. The thought of designing and building another pair of speakers is currently a step too far.

If I do it and I have thought about it quite a lot, then it will be next year when and only when my modifying/tweaking/faffing mojo returns and if it doesn't return I won't for one second be concerned. .

[CN211276]

The oak stands arrived yesterday and were easy to put together which is just as well considering my lack of DIY skills. Played some favourite albums and was fully aware of what Tomasz meant when he said he could hear the stands. There is an increase in clarity throughout the frequency range, most pronounced in the bass. This is accompanied by an increased sense of space and a more lively presentation. This is in addition to the improvement the Iso Pucks brought about when placed on the heavy metal stands. The Atacamas, which I intend to sell, seemed to be slowing things down as well as bringing about some muddiness.

I have become convinced that decoupling on light rigid stands works best with Cubes. For mass to work I think an extreme amount is required as mentioned early in this thread with the 40kg marble ones, hardly a cost effective and practical solution. I do think that mass and coupling might be the best option for conventional speakers to counter the horizontal rocking motion which does not apply to Cubes.

Decoupling has made such a difference that an update is needed.

When ever a change is made I experiment with the subtle filters on the Qutest to see if a different setting improves the sound. When the Cubes were attached to the heavy metal stands I found that incisive neutral sounded best with no cut off of ultra sonic frequencies. For some reason this option improved bass performance. With the oak stands and Iso Pucks the optimum setting is incisive neutral with a filter above 20 kHz. This has smoothed the treble and removed harshness which was apparent on some digital recordings. Bass performance is not affected. I presume the previous setting was masking the effect of energy being fed back into the speakers.

The extra transparency decoupling has brought about has emphasised the difference between analogue and digital recordings. To these ears some of the early digital recordings leave something to be desired and as with digital play back considerable progress has been made over the decades. Many recordings over the past 15 years or so sound superb providing there is not too much compression.

[George Hincapie]

I have some heavy oak, shot filled, stands in storage. Free to a good home but collection only from HP15.

If you can find any of my earlier photos you can see them.

[NSNO2021]

I have been playing around with a totally fresh idea - well it's fresh to me and I can't find any evidence on Google of it. I think it will take me at least 6 months to get a decent prototype made but I am quite excited about it. Who would have thought I would have got the speaker stand bug ? Stu has a lot to answer for