Ok hi-fi nuts - £21 for a rubber band?!

[Nigel-YZ1]

How does this work? Not saying you're wrong

Speakers are vibration machines. If they're on the floor or something not too solid that passes to floor boards and the building structure.
Heavy stands damp that down.
Other alternatives could be half squash balls or funnily enough milk crates which have the flex to damp the transmission.

My ex neighbours never heard my 5.1 system even though i had a habit of running it loud.
What Hifi ran a story about a guy who had complaints from his neighbours in a flat. Turned out his stands did their job and the resonance was coming from the next flat over.

The other plus is that with heavy stands more of that vibration goes to moving air instead of the speaker case.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

By the way I'm a geek
I'd pay £21 for the rubber band.



...Then get told off by my OH

 

[Profpointy]

Speakers are vibration machines. If they're on the floor or something not too solid that passes to floor boards and the building structure.
Heavy stands damp that down.
Other alternatives could be half squash balls or funnily enough milk crates which have the flex to damp the transmission.

My ex neighbours never heard my 5.1 system even though i had a habit of running it loud.
What Hifi ran a story about a guy who had complaints from his neighbours in a flat. Turned out his stands did their job and the resonance was coming from the next flat over.

The other plus is that with heavy stands more of that vibration goes to moving air instead of the speaker case.

Whilst I see what your getting at I remain a bit skeptical. Even the heaviest stands will weigh a tiny fraction of the weight of the building. By way of comparison, when you hear neighbours voices on occasion I reckon it's sound travelling through the air to the wall or floor/ceiling then being re-radiated.on your side. I'd need a lot of convincing that the vibration was through their bodies into their feet then the floorboards

Edit: admittedly small children can sound louder but somehow I don't think this is the reduced damping from their being lighter !

 

[KnackeredBike]

I don't think this is the reduced damping from their being lighter !

Heavy ones mean that they know if they complain you might whack them round the head with the stand.

 

[MontyVeda]

In a similar vein on hearing differences, having had my (previous) speakers on variosly beer crates, or bricks for a number of years, money being tight, I decided to get some proper stands. The wisdom is that proper speaker stands make a big difference. Went to the shop and came back with a pair for £50 and another pair for £150 on appro; £150 being quite a lot back then.

Tried the £50 ones and there genuinely was a significant improvement, or at any rate difference. Tried the £150 ones and again a big change int the sound. Bu#&$r , I'll have to get the dear ones ! Then swapped back to beer crates and thought I preferred that to the dear ones. Basically each swap sound genuinely quite difference and hence percieved as better in some particular way, yet when swapping amongst all three options you could only really say all were different. The differences were ot subtle and far far greater than the difference between mp3 and CD quality. Shop were disappinted when I returned both pairs but hey ho.

Maybe a dumb question, but was it the construction of the stands/crates or the heights that made the difference?

I have floor standing speakers which sound fine, but i noticed they sounded better when i was sat on the floor (presumably because the bass-ports were more inline with my ears), so i raised them from the floor.

 

[bruce1530]

"I think the audio response could do with a bit of a tweak".
So I modified the mic amp and took the radio out for a road test.
"Mmm, better, but it could still do with a bit more bass".
So I tweaked it again. And again. And again. In fact this faffing went on for about a week, a bit more of this, a tweak to that, so I decided to put a stop to it. The next time I went out with two radios, one modified and one not:

"How was that Kevin?"
"Which one is which?"
"You tell me Kevin"

Reminds me of a similar story I heard from an acquaintance, who is one of the “top engineers” in the world of AM broadcasting. If you know about AM, you’ll probably know of the person I’m talking about. Anyway - he had commissioned the transmitter, antenna and processing for an AM station in the USA. The station owner was delighted with the sound. But a couple of month later, the call came in “Something’s wrong with the processing. It doesn’t sound right”. So my friend flew out to the states, tweaked the settings, owner was happy.

This happened regularly for several years - every few months, the owner would call up, saying the processing was wrong - it was too loud/too quiet/too much bass/too much treble/too much compression/not enough compression etc. Each time, the guru would get on a plane, fly to the US, tweak the processor settings, and the owner would be happy, for a few months. The owner was convinced that someone was changing the settings, or the kit was faulty - but it had been replaced several times, and the settings were unchanged.

Eventually, our guy worked out exactly what the problem was. Every time the owner became unhappy with the settings was just after he had bought himself a new car....

 

[Alan Frame]

Direct drive is much better.

Couldn't agree more

 

[winjim]

Direct drive is much better.

It's bloody difficult to beat match properly on belt drive decks.

 

[raleighnut]

It's bloody difficult to beat match properly on belt drive decks.

But we're talking about HiFi, not a disco.

 

[presta]

each swap sound genuinely quite difference and hence percieved as better in some particular way

I've noticed that my bike always seems to go better after I've been working on it, regardless of what I've been doing. See Hawthorne Effect.

 

[Profpointy]

Maybe a dumb question, but was it the construction of the stands/crates or the heights that made the difference?

I have floor standing speakers which sound fine, but i noticed they sounded better when i was sat on the floor (presumably because the bass-ports were more inline with my ears), so i raised them from the floor.

Whilst I don't doubt height and indeed positioning makes a singificant difference to the sound, in this case I don't think the heights were very different. On your specific point on base port position - that won't be right. Only the higher frequencies have a meanignful direction; tweeter position certainly, but not bass. Bass being longer wavelengths means the sound "fills the room" rather than seeming to come from somewhere in particular

 

[winjim]

But we're talking about HiFi, not a disco.

My friends would be disappointed to hear the Fi on their sound systems described as anything other than Hi.

 

[MontyVeda]

Whilst I don'tr doubt height and indeed positioning makes a singificant difference to the sound, in this case I don't think the heights were very different. On your specif base port position - that won't be right. Only the higher frequencies have a meanignful direction; tweeter position certainly, but not bass. Bass being longer wavelengths means the sound "fills the room" rather than seeming to come from somewhere in particular

Well i can certainly hear the bass coming from the ports better since i raised the speakers 10".

 

[raleighnut]

My friends would be disappointed to hear the Fi on their sound systems described as anything other than Hi.

But I'll bet they're not using a Rega turntable, or a Thorens/Linn type suspended sub-chassis.

In fact my guess would be 1210s or a clone thereof.

 

[Profpointy]

Maybe a dumb question, but was it the construction of the stands/crates or the heights that made the difference?

I have floor standing speakers which sound fine, but i noticed they sounded better when i was sat on the floor (presumably because the bass-ports were more inline with my ears), so i raised them from the floor.

Ah just had another thought, possibly contradicting something I said upthread. I seem to recall there's an uplift in the base if the speakers are directly on the floor plus another uplift if against the wall. If they are bassy enough already then this uplift will make them sound worse, or at least different