DIY speaker isolation pads

[brutiarti]

From the manufacturer of my speakers regarding the speaker stands: "The EPICON stand is developed with focus on stability and elimination of vibrations, and the height is fitted according to the ideal listening position" pretty simple to me.

[pknaz]

Marketing speak - what does that tell you in regards to how they function?

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 14:08:46 GMT -5 pknaz said:

If we're attempting to reduce enclosure resonances, what are some of the tried and true methods for doing this? How might those same methods be applied externally to the enclosure?

Enclosure resonances are not what you are trying to reduce with speaker isolation. It is all those nasty's that are transmitted from a speaker. You design the speaker enclosure to be 'inert' best you can like leonski says.

Making said already built speaker enclosure inert sitting on your desktop or living room floor while actively producing sound is impossible.

The amount of mass required to do that would be more than you can imagine.

[leonski]

Mar 29, 2017 14:08:28 GMT -5 Axis said:

Mar 29, 2017 13:56:31 GMT -5 leonski said:

Very good Nick !

No, Newton's third law is alive and well. Newton was smarter than anyone alive right now. Einstein was a little smarter and for the most part physics has not really changed since those two dudes inhabited the planet.



I'd love to know who is/was really smarter? Newton? Einstein? Tesla? Hawking?

Newtonian Physics reached a limit. Relativity took care of many of the problems. It seems we are in the midst of a 3rd revolution with a yet-better description of 'reality'.


Sure, in your listening room, Newton Rules. It's really tough to beat a speaker 'spiked' to a concrete slab and made with a very 'inert' enclosure.

leonski, I do not agree with your reality at all.

Einstein with his thought experiments was only slightly smarter than Newton. Richard P. Feynman was a close third and Hawking gets most things wrong over and over. Hawking just gets on tv a lot.


Just an Opine>    I don't really know who IS or WAS the smartest person.      I suspect that Feynman was the most FUN, however.      Einstein 'thought experiments' have been experimentally and observationally proven
to have some basis in fact.    Time effects and 'gravity' wells and so forth.   
Now?   If we could only figure out a cheap and easy way to beat the 'Speed Limit'.

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 14:39:46 GMT -5 leonski said:

Mar 29, 2017 14:08:28 GMT -5 Axis said:

leonski, I do not agree with your reality at all.

Einstein with his thought experiments was only slightly smarter than Newton. Richard P. Feynman was a close third and Hawking gets most things wrong over and over. Hawking just gets on tv a lot.


Just an Opine>    I don't really know who IS or WAS the smartest person.      I suspect that Feynman was the most FUN, however.      Einstein 'thought experiments' have been experimentally and observationally proven
to have some basis in fact.    Time effects and 'gravity' wells and so forth.   
Now?   If we could only figure out a cheap and easy way to beat the 'Speed Limit'.

There brain size will be larger than normal and they will not figure it out because they went to a school of high learning.

I said " leonski, I do not agree with your reality at all.

Einstein with his thought experiments was only slightly smarter than Newton. Richard P. Feynman was a close third and Hawking gets most things wrong over and over. Hawking just gets on tv a lot."

[Axis]

A speaker driver is a powerful motor. It pushes the cone out (forward) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (aft) . It pulls the cone in (aft) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (forward).

Should you try to stop the speaker cabinet from moving forward and aft ?

[DYohn]

Mar 29, 2017 15:27:58 GMT -5 Axis said:

A speaker driver is a powerful motor. It pushes the cone out (forward) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (aft) . It pulls the cone in (aft) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (forward).

Should you try to stop the speaker cabinet from moving forward and aft ?

uh... if your enclosure is moving, yes.

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 15:30:05 GMT -5 DYohn said:

Mar 29, 2017 15:27:58 GMT -5 Axis said:

A speaker driver is a powerful motor. It pushes the cone out (forward) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (aft) . It pulls the cone in (aft) and the speaker cabinet in return is forced the opposite direction (forward).

Should you try to stop the speaker cabinet from moving forward and aft ?

uh... if your enclosure is moving, yes.

Why not allow your speaker cabinet to float (move) forward and aft from the opposing movement of the speaker cone ?

Stop any side to side movement of the speaker cabinet .

This is not theory for me. My speakers are allowed to float forward and aft but not side to side. I can push on the face of my speaker enclosure and it moves forward and aft very easy. The base of the speaker stand that sits on my desk does not move. A separate stand that the speakers sits on is separate of the bottom stand by top and bottom oval rubber grommets and four separate post that allow it to move forward and aft but not side to side.

All that movement of the speaker cone and enclosure turns my desktop into a speaker without my stands. If I take my speakers and put them on a piece of foam my desktop still vibrates and makes a sound of it's own. On the stands I do not hear any sound other than the speakers. This is not a big issue on my carpeted living room floor but that is not to say that it is not making sound.

[DYohn]

And movement or vibration in the enclosure is wasted energy that simply lowers the efficiency of the loudspeaker system. Yes, there have been a few designs that purposely created enclosures that vibrated and were tuned, but the most efficient enclosures are completely inert.

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 17:10:25 GMT -5 DYohn said:

And movement or vibration in the enclosure is wasted energy that simply lowers the efficiency of the loudspeaker system. Yes, there have been a few designs that purposely created enclosures that vibrated and were tuned, but the most efficient enclosures are completely inert.

The speaker enclosure will vibrate and move regardless. A isolating stand removes those enclosure vibrations from a surface that the enclosure is on. If that surface does not resonate from those vibrations that's good. You should know that it takes mass to make something inert. Large amounts of mass.

You can not take a Emotiva Airmotiv 5 powered monitor and make it inert. It does not need to be. You hang that speaker in mid air and it will not loose efficiency that you will hear. Decoupling the speaker and enclosure from a surface that vibrates reduces the energy that is the cause of those vibrations. Now the movements are directional and sympathetic to the speaker. Energy is not wasted by this movement and improves the low frequency definition. I hear this improvement.

[DYohn]

1) if your speaker enclosure is flexing enough to vibrate or move then it is a crap speaker enclosure.
2) Do not confuse acoustic vibrations being caused in the environment by the speaker output with mechanical vibrations caused by a flexible enclosure.
3) Decoupling a speaker from whatever surface it might be sitting on is desirable for minimizing environmental noise and distortion. The better it is decoupled the more you are hearing just the speaker and less of the noise caused by the environment.
4) I have never used an Airmotive 5 but if it is vibrating and moving about then either it is a crap design (which I doubt) or it is defective, or it is being used incorrectly.

[leonski]

Mar 29, 2017 18:00:08 GMT -5 DYohn said:

1) if your speaker enclosure is flexing enough to vibrate or move then it is a crap speaker enclosure.
2) Do not confuse acoustic vibrations being caused in the environment by the speaker output with mechanical vibrations caused by a flexible enclosure.
3) Decoupling a speaker from whatever surface it might be sitting on is desirable for minimizing environmental noise and distortion. The better it is decoupled the more you are hearing just the speaker and less of the noise caused by the environment.
4) I have never used an Airmotive 5 but if it is vibrating and moving about then either it is a crap design (which I doubt) or it is defective, or it is being used incorrectly.

Speaker cabinet resonance can have audible effects.     Look at Stereophile speaker reviews where some audible effects can be coorelated with cabinet resonance.
Stereophile uses a fairly sensitive acclerometer attached TO the enclosure under test.    Even some well-regarded speakers have cabinet resonance.     Some fairly inert designs, like
the Magico ($$$$) use Aluminum which is pretty 'inert' in these measures.    Even seen an aluminum bell?  
THIN wood can get into a mode where it acts like a piano sounding board or a hollow body Guitar.   
Layered wood, without voids, can be considered to some degree a composite material.   Different parts of the wood are at different density and resonante at different frequencies.

Speakers should be 'locked down' in some fashion, even if it is a simple spike to floor arrangement.  

What does 'decoupled' mean?    Sitting a speaker on a couple inches of Foam Flubber is a bad idea.     30+ years ago, maybe 40, I heard the speaker of the day SUSPENDED from 
the ceiling on ropes.    Bose 901 from an early series, at that, and driven using a Phase Linear 400 or the 700.    It's been a while!     I thought later that the stands with the 901 speakers
was an improvement.

The speaker I'm most familiar with, doesn't HAVE an enclosure.    Maggies are FRAMED using MDF.   But I've heard Maggies framed with real wood and with somewhat higher stiffness than stock and the
difference was to the Positive.   Magnepan also does some real weird stuff for costing purposes.    Drivers are held to frames with STAPLES.   Stand is minimal, but quite functional.  

Speakers should never 'dance around the table'.   Or floor, for that matter.     

[leonski]

The speaker enclosure will vibrate and move regardless. A isolating stand removes those enclosure vibrations from a surface that the enclosure is on. If that surface does not resonate from those vibrations that's good. You should know that it takes mass to make something inert. Large amounts of mass.


Not necessarily true. A bell of 5 tons is STILL a bell.

Ingenious design trumps sheer mass almost every time.

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 18:00:08 GMT -5 DYohn said:

1) if your speaker enclosure is flexing enough to vibrate or move then it is a crap speaker enclosure.
2) Do not confuse acoustic vibrations being caused in the environment by the speaker output with mechanical vibrations caused by a flexible enclosure.
3) Decoupling a speaker from whatever surface it might be sitting on is desirable for minimizing environmental noise and distortion. The better it is decoupled the more you are hearing just the speaker and less of the noise caused by the environment.
4) I have never used an Airmotive 5 but if it is vibrating and moving about then either it is a crap design (which I doubt) or it is defective, or it is being used incorrectly.

1) Not the speaker enclosure. The surface that the speaker enclosure is sitting on. Forget about the enclosure. Why are you talking about speaker enclosures.

2) These vibrations that the speaker stand are isolating and decoupling are mechanical vibrations being transmitted to my desktop surface. These vibrations then turn into acoustic vibrations and make a nasty sound.

3) This is spot on. This is what I have been saying all along.

4) Physical matter is mostly empty space and you would need to compress the earth down to the size of a golf ball before it would even be close to inert. Even a speaker that inert would vibrate my piece of crap desktop that I need the isolation stand for. There is nothing wrong with my Airmotiv 5. I do not blame it. I love it !

[Axis]

To decouple your speaker enclosure from your desktop surface you do not put a 5 ton weight on top of it to make it more inert.

You float your speaker. You separate it from the surface of your desktop.

[Axis]

The Airmotiv 5 has a rubber pad on the bottom of it and my desktop is very thick and very hard material. It was training desk for Chevron and I took it home when they decided to make a change. It is not one of those wimpy desk that you buy at office depot. When I sat my Airmotiv 5's on my desktop and played them it sounded ok. I have some of those speaker pads you get at the Music instrument store that I bought to go with my first pair of KRK studio monitors. I put those under them and it was about the same. It was not until I bought a pair of IsoAcoustics Aperta stands that I got to hear my Airmotiv 5 powered monitors sing. It was night and day. I remember spending days taking my Airmotivs down and putting them back on the stands over and over. I was laughing and grinning ear to ear. It is the best sound improvement one could possibly want from monitors sitting on a desk.

Everyone that has a pair of monitors just sitting on foam pad or hockey pucks, do yourself favor and save your money and buy a pair of IsoAcoustics Aperta stands. Dan Laufman should have them as a E-proved product and use them with there Airmotiv's.

I'm done here.

[brutiarti]

The height is another factor into the equation

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 19:00:11 GMT -5 brutiarti said:

The height is another factor into the equation

The Isoacoustics stands allow you to raise and lower the height. They also allow you to tilt the speaker and this allows you to aim the drivers down or up. I have my speakers as low as possible and tilted as to aim my tweeter up. It took considerable time to get the sweet spot right and boy is it sweet.

[Axis]

Mar 29, 2017 14:06:57 GMT -5 pknaz said:

With regard to something like the ISO-Accoustics speaker stand:
www.isoacoustics.com/products/iso-l8r-series-speaker-isolation-stands/iso-l8r155-isolation-stands/

I'd like to know what other people think about this stand in the "Tall" position, and how the angular motion of the legs might actually exacerbate a speaker's resonances given that it is now suspended at the top of an inverted pendulum.

[Axis]