Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Read that as "B&Q trumpet stands" and thought "Why the fuck would a DIY shop be selling musical instrument stands?"

When mounting studio monitors on my desk I used to use a felt pad to protect the wood, a small stack of dense concrete bricks then angled foam monitor pads. Total cost around £10.

What speakers are they? Look nice!

Some trusty B&W 620i's
Brought them 25 years ago and have somehow survived countless parties over the years.

What size speakers? Are they floor-standing ir bookshelf size? I've got some Cyrus stands made by Mission. Glass top and bottom plates, piece of tree-wood held in place by two steel tubes for the support. On Gumtree atm, https://www.gumtree.com/p/speakers/cyrus-speaker-stands-by-mission/1311927180

I don’t think I explained myself well before, sorry.

I have some huge tannoy Dorset t185 on their stands, with mushroom feet.

However, my new flat has wooden floor floor laid on concrete screed. When I play some decent music, the vibration from the speakers travels down the stands and into the floor. Thus I want to isolate the stands from the floor, by placing them on a material. I wondered if there was a go to decent option for placing the stands on to isolate, before I just workout what material would be best and buy something.

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Have you tried spikes and pucks (or 2p pieces)?

Will spikes really help?
As far as I understand the physics, spikes neither absorb nor isolate vibrations. If anything they create a firmer connection to the floor that potentially transfers vibrations even more.

I'd experiment with a combination of rubber feet and concrete slabs.
Rubber to absorb some vibes and concrete should be so heavy that it want be moved by the remaining vibrations.

Meanwhile on Gumtree...

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You could experiment with cheap materials, problem is anything isolating tends to be squishy - e.g. half squash balls, foam - not a good thing for balancing tall, top heavy speakers on.

I am a believer in coupling for speakers and isolating everything else. Thus floating timber floor is worst possible thing. But!... how do you feel about lightly modifying that purty little floor? If you were sure about speaker positioning, you could drill holes right through the boards and into the screed, insert rawlplugs and screws. Spikes on your speaker bases then sit in the screw heads, the speakers are coupled and nobody is any the wiser.

Nice 'noys by the way.

Thanks.

No modification, I’m renting.

Spikes are perfect at transmitting vibration to the floors and subsequently walls below. I’m going to try some high density foam under the standsand see how it works.

What about squash balls under a concrete slab with the speaker ontop?

Very impressed by how good this looks

Yes reasonable idea. Or some foam under concrete slab.

Yoga mats from TKmax would be a cheap bet and probably have a wider range of colours.

Not meaning to be too cheeky, but you may also want to Google / search reddit for cable management.

Is the dude in Dulwich still around? The guy that fixes stereos?
Or is there an alternative?

You could try a constrained layer damping approach:

-----Slab---------
Thin viscoelastic layer
-----Slab---------

I would probably avoid just a soft layer, as it will make the speakers unstable and in my experience often muddies the sound.

reddit.com/r/cableporn

The problem with the floor could be solved to some degree by putting more weight on it so anything with mass under the speakers would help. If the floating floor is vibrating then it just needs weighting down. Play some test tones and find out which tone is the centre of the problem.

You're likely suffering problems from the positioning as well. It's my understanding you should get the speaker further into the corner or further away from it. The position you have where the top driver is the same distance from the wall and floor can cause problems too. Again, test tones would help you establish where the boosted frequencies are. Also listening for 'one note bass lines', if you're not hearing the changing notes in the bass line then you've probably got a massive hump around 50/60hz. Personally unless I was listening on a beanbag I'd want those speakers much higher off the floor.

Spikes are generally for carpet, the idea is they go through the carpet and connect to the floor. People love spikes for some reason.

I just moved in. Will send you a DM with me address and you can come over and sort it for me!

Okay who’s coming over to listen to tones and set it up for me!? Ha

Same!

I'll do yours if you do mine.

Its on my radar as I got some flack at the weekend for cables strewn everywhere.... after I'd done all the moving, set up the sofa, TV and painted.

The comment did not go down well. But it did spur me to looking up solutions.

Cables all start off neatly but then you've got to add something or remove something and you can't be bothered snipping off cable ties, unscrewing covers, etc and it quickly all goes to shit (not helped by the fact that I have 14 things plugged into the mains {one of these being a USB power supply with half a dozen USB items powered from it} where my AV setup is).

Am I a bad person for putting my tannoys on my shelves? tbh it sounds fine. And the living room’s a damn sight nicer without some mahoosive speakers dominating the room.