Hi fi stands.

[Coco]

Concrete slabs separated by partially inflated inner tubes will apparently give you the right balance between solidity and vibration reduction (seem to recall reading that from Linn somewhere).

Dunno where you'd get the inner tubes though

 

[rh100]

Dunno where you'd get the inner tubes though

Don't know, but you'd have to use a Bang & Olufson bicycle pump though

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Good point. A lot of the stuff I listen to is of the, shall we say, noisy and chaotic genre, so I really can't see a £300 table making much difference.

 

[numbnuts]

I built my own TV/Hifi stand out of melamine chipboard

 

[Mr Pig]

A bicycle works perfectly well as an analogy. Top-class bikes don't succeed because they employ one or two high quality parts. They are better because they all of the parts are of high quality and, just as importantly, are correctly matched to each other and correctly set up. Knobbly tyres on a road bike will hurt performance, no matter how much they cost, and a top bike won't win races with its seat set too low.

In a Hi-Fi it's exactly the same. All of the parts not only have to be of good quality relative to each other but they have to compliment each other and be set up to work at their best. As performance increases keeping everything right gets harder to do so it is worth thinking about how far down that road you want to go.

So the short answer is yes, Hi-Fi stands can make a big difference to how a system sounds, but it's relative. If the system is a dog then no stand is going to fix it. If you want the best out of your Hi-Fi then stands are critical. Anyone who says that they don't do anything doesn't know much about setting up Hi-Fi.

Most of the stands on sale today are not that great. Manufacturers realised that people bought stands largely based on what they looked like and how they would match the curtains, most people just take the dealer's word for it about how they sound and few people actually test them. The result is Hi-Fi stands that sound like furniture because they're built like furniture. Many popular stands, Like Quadraspire, Hutter etc, really suck the life out of the sound. With the inherent harshness of CD to deal with it is often perceived as an improvement. The best stand in the world, in my opinion, is Mana but it's no longer made unfortunately. It's an awesome products but it's pretty full committal as far as set-up and implementation is concerned. Use is wrongly and it sounds terrible! You can still buy it second hand but demand keeps prices high. If you really want a stand that works it's the way to go though. I'm happy to chat about these things over the phone if you drop me a PM. Here's my Hi-Fi, with several thousands pounds worth of Mana ;0)

LINK More about it.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Very nice, good photographs too. I can't afford "several thousand pounds", though. I'm watching a couple of Quadraspire racks on ebay at the moment ... maybe I'll pick one of those up cheaply.

 

[twowheelsgood]

It's mostly total BS.

Of course if you have a record deck or at a push a tape or cassette deck movement might make a difference to a mechanical system.

If you seriously think it makes a difference to electrons then there is no hope for you. Even a modern CD player buffers and re-clocks so that isn't likely to make much difference either. It reminds me of the nutters who polish the pins of the plug seemingly oblivious to the other miles of the electicity distribution network.

Speakers do however require stands or proper footing, especially when used at volume and should be 80cm or more from the wall.

The biggest issue you will have is likely (after your own hearing) to be the sonics in your listening room. Hard reflective surfaces and alcoves are killers for sound. The modern trend for laminate floors means virtually any hi-fi is guaranteed to sound terrible in such rooms.

 

[User482]

Apparently, there is a million dollars on offer for the first person to distinguish between different cables in a proper double-blind test. Funnily enough, the hifi mags have been reluctant to come forward.

One thing that did make a difference to my hifi: I placed my turntable on a solid oak block (an offcut from the kitchen worktops we'd just fitted) which seemed to tighten and deepen the bass rather nicely.

 

[twowheelsgood]

I would say Mr Pig, in that photo putting those speakers that distance apart and that close to a wall would render several thousands worth of anything totally irrelevant.

 

[twowheelsgood]

Apparently, there is a million dollars on offer for the first person to distinguish between different cables in a proper double-blind test. Funnily enough, the hifi mags have been reluctant to come forward.

One thing that did make a difference to my hifi: I placed my turntable on a solid oak block (an offcut from the kitchen worktops we'd just fitted) which seemed to tighten and deepen the bass rather nicely.

You can certainly tell the difference in higher powered systems if the speaker cable lacks the raw current capacity. Standard, cheap 13A cable is pretty effective in general use though.

A very good friend of mine is a hi-fi nutter and is always banging on about various tweaks. I wonder if he ever noticed I swapped the phase of one of his speakers 6 years ago (that's guaranteed to pretty much wipe out your bass).

 

[User482]

You can certainly tell the difference in higher powered systems if the speaker cable lacks the raw current capacity. Standard, cheap 13A cable is pretty effective in general use though.

A very good friend of mine is a hi-fi nutter and is always banging on about various tweaks. I wonder if he ever noticed I swapped the phase of one of his speakers 6 years ago (that's guaranteed to pretty much wipe out your bass).

I use recording-studio cable. It doesn't cost much, which goes to prove that sound engineers are rather less easily taken in by the claims and prices of hifi stuff.

 

[swee'pea99]

I would say Mr Pig, in that photo putting those speakers that distance apart and that close to a wall would render several thousands worth of anything totally irrelevant.

Miaow!

 

[twowheelsgood]

I used to work at the BBC many years ago and everything is/was pretty much wired up with decidely non-exotic materials. The studios are connected with very modest twisted pair cable into Krone distribution frames. The big difference of course is everything runs on balanced lines, so no common mode or ground issues.

As I say, most people cannot integrate a hi-fi system into anything like an optimal position in a normal domestic room. Until you do that, whether these tweaks make an infinitessimal difference or not ain't gonna matter. Most people also live next to streets and get traffic noise, and use things like flourescent lighting and refridgerators which are going to mess around with the phase of the electricity to system which will make more difference. Then if you aren't aren't a teenager or listen to in-ear headphones, then your hearing isn't going to be perfect. I know I can't hear anything like I did (I'm 38).

My current living room is the worst I've experienced yet. It has a mezzanine floor above the living area forming an alcove about 3m wide and 2m deep. Move your head 1m each way and the bass disappears and re-appears. I may as well use an ipod through a guitar amp.

 

[swee'pea99]

Very interesting point about hearing and age. I know for a fact that my daughters can hear things I can't, just as they can read print that's totally illegible to me. I read somewhere that kids have been recording those teen-repellent mosquito devices and using them as ringtones so they can take calls in class without the teacher knowing....

 

[Mr Pig]

Of course if you have a record deck movement might make a difference...If you seriously think it makes a difference to electrons then there is no hope for you. The biggest issue you will have is likely (after your own hearing) to be the sonics in your listening room. Hard reflective surfaces and alcoves are killers for sound. The modern trend for laminate floors means virtually any hi-fi is guaranteed to sound terrible in such rooms.

Most of your post is complete rubbish!

In the early days of Hi-Fi many engineers believed that the type of amplifier used was unimportant. A correctly designed valve or solid state amplifier would sound exactly the same because they looked the same on paper. Of course they were wrong because they were trusting their limited technical knowledge rather than their ears.

You may not understand how a support could make a difference to the performance of an electronic device like an amplifier or CD player but that's a gap in your knowledge, it doesn't alter the facts. To be fair I don't think anyone really does fully understand it, even those who design them. Years ago I wrote to a designer in the Hi-Fi industry explaining how I thought Mana worked. He passed my theory on to a friend of his who is a physicist for an F1 team and he thought it was probably correct, but he didn't know. You're just guessing but the point is that it demonstrably does work.

You are right that there is not much you can do about the local grid but improving or removing whatever electrical connections you do have access to can help. I have a separate mains spur for the hi-Fi, it does help. The mains is sh**e, if you look at on an oscilloscope it's hardly recognisable! However, good Hi-Fi seems to deal with it and more importantly is designed to work correctly with it. I've heard devices that improve the mains signal and actually make the sound of the system worse!

Your hearing does tail off with age, mainly the very high frequencies, but it's all relative. Ok, so you can't hear to 20'000hz any more but over all you've not lost much in the way of resolution at all, unless you are suffering some kind of hearing disability. You can still hear the difference between a good Hi-Fi and a transistor radio just fine.

Hard surfaces can be a problem but again, it's relative. Never heard a jazz band sound great in a club with brick walls and wooden floor? I have. Gosh, how do they do that?

I would say Mr Pig, putting those speakers that distance apart and that close to a wall would render several thousands worth of anything irrelevant.

You'd be talking out of ignorance again then wouldn't you? The monitors you might have seen at the BBC; Harbeths, Spendor, Chartwells etc, were designed to work in free space. Nothing wrong with that, in fact my sister bought a pair of Harbeth Compact 7s on my recommendation, but my speakers aren't like that. All of Linn's classic speakers are designed to work correctly in exactly the position you see them in the picture. After twenty years of using them I can confirm that Linn are right! If they worked better out in the room they'd be out in the room.

Move your head 1m each way and the bass disappears and re-appears.

And you're giving advice to me! Would you like me to come round and fix your Hi-Fi for you?