By Lam Seng Fatt
When I attended the Munich High End show earlier this year, all that I knew – or thought I knew – about speakers and spiking them was thrown out of the window after I met Max Townshend of Townshend Audio Seismic Sink fame.
Max said you should isolate your speakers and not spike them. Conventional wisdom had it that the spikes were to drain the vibrations from the speakers to the floor. The spikes were also to make the speakers stable instead of having them wobble a little. But Max said the speakers should be placed on his Seismic Vibration Isolation Platform which uses damped springs to provide the isolation. (See http://av2day.com/2017/05/townshend-says-no-to-speakers-on-spikes/
At last weekend’s Kuala Lumpur International AV show, I met another person who told me to isolate my speakers and not spike them.
Paul Morrison, Manager Sales & Distribution of IsoAcoustics, shared the same philosophy as Max.
“You should not spike speakers. The spikes are the conduit for vibrations to return to the speaker,” he said.
“But I always thought the spikes were to drain the vibrations from the speaker to the floor or ground,” I retorted.
“Yes, some will be drained away, but some will make their way back and cause smearing of the sound,” he said.
To prove his point, he had set up two pairs of Focal Chorus 726 floorstanding speakers. One pair was spiked while the other pair was placed on IsoAcoustics isolation stands. He played music and did a simple A-B test.
It was pretty obvious that the sound from the speakers placed on the IsoAcoustics isolation stands had a wider soundstage and cleaner sound.
“Not only that, but the voice loses a nasal quality,” he said, and did an A-B test again.
IsoAcoustics isolation stands use rubber as the isolating material.
“The differences in performance depends on the hardness of the rubber. Also the rubber pieces are oval shaped so that the speakers are made to move only in one direction,” he said.
The IsoAcoustics isolation stands come in various designs and sizes to suit speakers of different dimensions and weight.
It is possible for IsoAcoustics to make some specifically for your model of speakers, if the off-the-shelf ones do not fit. You will have to e-mail the dimensions and weight of your speakers for them to make the isolation stands just for your speakers.
IsoAcoustics isolation stands are distributed in Malaysia by WKH Distribution. For more details, please contact Kenny Sea of WKH Distribution.
