Should I put this in loudspeakers? It's a great tweak, though

uglymusic

Ever since we moved into the house, I've been struggling with the very lively living room with a bouncy suspended wooden floor. It's a complete contrast to the concrete box we had in the flat.

In short, the room plays along with the music.

Visitors - even some of those with trusted ears - have told me it wasn't that bad. But every so often I get really fed up with it.

I've seen some people on the interwebs recommend using rubber washing machine feet - the sort that you use to stop the the thing leaping around and walking out into the kitchen - instead of spikes for my kind of room. It's a recommendation that chimed with my own wonderings about if such a connection between drive units and floorboards could possibly be exacerbating the problem.

I snagged some from Mr Bezos - thereby adding to his recent daily £10 billion increase in wealth - for £7.58 for 8. You'll note he didn't make that much from me.

Out wiv dem spikes. In wiv dem rubbers(!).

What a difference! I have a cleaner sound with better focus within the soundstage. And Sam has confirmed my thoughts, so I'm probably not deceiving myself - well not about the hi-fi, anyway.

phorize

I use some rs components anti vibration feet on my something solid stands. They work like a treat. 

uglymusic

Yeah. It makes so much sense, doesn't it?

phorize

At 10 pounds a set they did. These are basically m6
bolts in rubber feet. If they can stop a presumably very expensive piece of industrial plant shaking it itself to bits thought they’d do for my speakers. They did. I may try some casters at some point if I get bigger speakers. 

phorize

phorize said:

At 10 pounds a set they did. These are basically m6
bolts in rubber feet. If they can stop a presumably very expensive piece of industrial plant shaking it itself to bits thought they’d do for my speakers. They did. I may try some casters at some point if I get bigger speakers. 

I also use them for my Garrard plinth. 

Docfoster

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

uglymusic

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

I guess it may not be the final word on subduing my room, but at the moment it's like I have a new system! Or, at least, my old system with the new-ish monoblocks. I have the clarity and nuance back and some.

The bigger and closer to the floor issue is to be expected, I suppose. Have you thought of building an upside down speaker? :-)

You've clearly got a lot closer to working out what's going on with your room than i have, mine.

But the concrete foundations are something I'd thought about for here. But not for very long :-D

I also thought of using paving slabs, but with the feet doing a wonderful prophylactic job on the floor and room resonances, I probably won't go there either.

uglymusic

phorize said:

At 10 pounds a set they did. These are basically m6
bolts in rubber feet. If they can stop a presumably very expensive piece of industrial plant shaking it itself to bits thought they’d do for my speakers. They did. I may try some casters at some point if I get bigger speakers. 

Do I feel myself being sucked into tweaker madness? I wonder if different rubber formulations will have different effects?

uglymusic

phorize said:

phorize said:

At 10 pounds a set they did. These are basically m6
bolts in rubber feet. If they can stop a presumably very expensive piece of industrial plant shaking it itself to bits thought they’d do for my speakers. They did. I may try some casters at some point if I get bigger speakers. 

I also use them for my Garrard plinth. 

That is interesting. I've been thinking about putting my monoblocks on the floor. That confirms I should get another couple of sets of rubber feet. The amps aren't light, although they're not silly weights like some US amps. They'll still squash sorbothane feet, I think. I've had that happen in the past.

I think there's a good chance the rubber feet will be a good buy, even with the speakers no longer exciting the floorboards so much.

phorize

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

Is Concrete floors are the way to go if possible. I’m lucky in one way as I live in a 120 year old house still has the stone floors in situ, but we got permission to put underfloor heating on top which has a thick layer of concrete screed. My floor is very inert, down side is the left flank of my speaker about 5 feet out is a large fireplace with cast iron wood burner. The position couldn’t be worse for the bass. I may get an acoustic panel to cover the fireplace up in the summer. In the winter through it’s near field or very casual listening only if the bass matters. I may look at routing the speaker cable under the floor so I can have the speakers flanking the fire place. Either that or some decent headphones.

phorize

phorize said:

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

Is Concrete floors are the way to go if possible. I’m lucky in one way as I live in a 120 year old house still has the stone floors in situ, but we got permission to put underfloor heating on top which has a thick layer of concrete screed. My floor is very inert, down side is the left flank of my speaker about 5 feet out is a large fireplace with cast iron wood burner. The position couldn’t be worse for the bass. I may get an acoustic panel to cover the fireplace up in the summer. In the winter through it’s near field or very casual listening only if the bass matters. I may look at routing the speaker cable under the floor so I can have the speakers flanking the fire place. Either that or some decent headphones.

I guess it depend on the role the cabinet plays in the sound. Speakers that have relatively inert cabinets probably only need basic dampening of significant vibration as the cabinets don’t play a role in the design sound wise.

cj66

Never tried rubberised feet for speakers on suspended floors.

What I did for the same circumstance, standard boards covered by carpet, was to lay batons perpendicular to the boards, just a little bigger than the speaker's footprint. These were siliconed down with screws added for extra rigidity.  The boards themselves were also secured more.

Watch out for pipes and electrics!

Some dome head screws were added to receive the speaker's spikes into an exact fit. Carpet was replaced over said bracing to hide the work.

I thought it worked very well indeed.

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

I guess it may not be the final word on subduing my room, but at the moment it's like I have a new system! Or, at least, my old system with the new-ish monoblocks. I have the clarity and nuance back and some.

The bigger and closer to the floor issue is to be expected, I suppose. Have you thought of building an upside down speaker? :-)

You've clearly got a lot closer to working out what's going on with your room than i have, mine.

But the concrete foundations are something I'd thought about for here. But not for very long :-D

I also thought of using paving slabs, but with the feet doing a wonderful prophylactic job on the floor and room resonances, I probably won't go there either.

I've gone with paving slabs. Big 600mm ones, as the old DIY 3 ways needed them to be that width.
By my calculations the slabs are straddling 2 floor joists, so that should at least minimise the unwanted effect of the floorboards. Though the joists are obviously not as rigid as would be a concrete floor.

Not sure literally upsidedown speakers would be the way to go, but I am certainly considering placing all future bass drivers as high up as possible. 

Docfoster

phorize said:

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

Is Concrete floors are the way to go if possible. I’m lucky in one way as I live in a 120 year old house still has the stone floors in situ, but we got permission to put underfloor heating on top which has a thick layer of concrete screed. My floor is very inert, down side is the left flank of my speaker about 5 feet out is a large fireplace with cast iron wood burner. The position couldn’t be worse for the bass. I may get an acoustic panel to cover the fireplace up in the summer. In the winter through it’s near field or very casual listening only if the bass matters. I may look at routing the speaker cable under the floor so I can have the speakers flanking the fire place. Either that or some decent headphones.

Your floor sounds lovely. I'm envious.
Shame that the heating system spoils things! :-D

Docfoster

phorize said:

phorize said:

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

Is Concrete floors are the way to go if possible. I’m lucky in one way as I live in a 120 year old house still has the stone floors in situ, but we got permission to put underfloor heating on top which has a thick layer of concrete screed. My floor is very inert, down side is the left flank of my speaker about 5 feet out is a large fireplace with cast iron wood burner. The position couldn’t be worse for the bass. I may get an acoustic panel to cover the fireplace up in the summer. In the winter through it’s near field or very casual listening only if the bass matters. I may look at routing the speaker cable under the floor so I can have the speakers flanking the fire place. Either that or some decent headphones.

I guess it depend on the role the cabinet plays in the sound. Speakers that have relatively inert cabinets probably only need basic dampening of significant vibration as the cabinets don’t play a role in the design sound wise.

My playing around with speaker builds has certainly shown me how unhelpful wobbly cabinets can be.
The Goodmans 18P wanted 120 litres of sealed cabinets. I braced them only minimally initially (a mistake). They benefited enormously from retrospective bracing I fitted at a later stage. They do become enormously heavy tho. If I were to try something of that size again I think I would use the double plywood with sandwich with adhesive filling that Alan (Brown) was discussing here recently.

I suppose open baffle speakers in the garden is the way to go tho. Eliminate the cabinet and the room!

Docfoster

cj66 said:

Never tried rubberised feet for speakers on suspended floors.

What I did for the same circumstance, standard boards covered by carpet, was to lay batons perpendicular to the boards, just a little bigger than the speaker's footprint. These were siliconed down with screws added for extra rigidity.  The boards themselves were also secured more.

Watch out for pipes and electrics!

Some dome head screws were added to receive the speaker's spikes into an exact fit. Carpet was replaced over said bracing to hide the work.

I thought it worked very well indeed.

That's a really good idea. Kind of takes a more pro-active approach to my musings about ensuring the slabs span a couple of floor joists.
Actually working to make the suspended floor as rigid as possible makes a lot of sense. I'll think about that. Possibly taking up the floor boards,fitting some noggins between the floor joists, and then replacing the floor boards would have a reinforcing / rigid-ing effect as well.

Rings a bell too. Have you mentioned it before...?

uglymusic

cj66 said:

Never tried rubberised feet for speakers on suspended floors.

What I did for the same circumstance, standard boards covered by carpet, was to lay batons perpendicular to the boards, just a little bigger than the speaker's footprint. These were siliconed down with screws added for extra rigidity.  The boards themselves were also secured more.

Watch out for pipes and electrics!

Some dome head screws were added to receive the speaker's spikes into an exact fit. Carpet was replaced over said bracing to hide the work.

I thought it worked very well indeed.

I have polished floorboards with little metal dishes stuck to them to receive the spikes so I guess that's functionally similar. That's the arrangement that made the floorboards join in with the music.

uglymusic

Docfoster said:

uglymusic said:

Docfoster said:

Great that you've found a way of subduing your room.
I tried them, but I didn't like what they did. I suppose every room and speaker is different! I'm delighted for you. I've noticed my room problems worsen as drivers get bigger and closer to the floor. 

My room is certainly the worst part of my system. I think it could be the chimney and / or concrete hearth that create a lopsided acoustic in the upper bass. I've reduced it a bit with various tweaks, but its still present. Quite significant with floorstanders with larger bass drivers mounted low down.

I'm thinking that the next time we change the flooring in the living room I might smash out the hearth and replace it with floor boards. I'm even considering building a small portion of solid concrete foundation underneath each speaker. (The floor timbers are only about 18 inches above the ground underneath, so it wouldn't be an enormous job.)

I guess it may not be the final word on subduing my room, but at the moment it's like I have a new system! Or, at least, my old system with the new-ish monoblocks. I have the clarity and nuance back and some.

The bigger and closer to the floor issue is to be expected, I suppose. Have you thought of building an upside down speaker? :-)

You've clearly got a lot closer to working out what's going on with your room than i have, mine.

But the concrete foundations are something I'd thought about for here. But not for very long :-D

I also thought of using paving slabs, but with the feet doing a wonderful prophylactic job on the floor and room resonances, I probably won't go there either.

I've gone with paving slabs. Big 600mm ones, as the old DIY 3 ways needed them to be that width.
By my calculations the slabs are straddling 2 floor joists, so that should at least minimise the unwanted effect of the floorboards. Though the joists are obviously not as rigid as would be a concrete floor.

Not sure literally upsidedown speakers would be the way to go, but I am certainly considering placing all future bass drivers as high up as possible. 

I'm sure we must have discussed the slabs here on Chews. I must have forgotten. Was thinking way back when they were recommended for my flat in London. But, despite a suspended wooden floor and Impulse H6s played at bonkers levels some of the time, spikes did the trick.

Seems it's house by house rather than house construction, if you see what I mean.

I wasn't being literal, but I have a pair of Missions in my second system that have the bass/mid driver at the top.

cj66

Docfoster said:

cj66 said:

 ...lay batons perpendicular to the boards, just a little bigger than the speaker's footprint.

Rings a bell too. Have you mentioned it before...?

Yup, I've definitely mentioned it here before.

In my case I was in search of a solution for SBLs, results were worthwhile.

uglymusic

cj66 said:

Docfoster said:

cj66 said:

 ...lay batons perpendicular to the boards, just a little bigger than the speaker's footprint.

Rings a bell too. Have you mentioned it before...?

Yup, I've definitely mentioned it here before.

In my case I was in search of a solution for SBLs, results were worthwhile.

Different loudspeakers would be the best solution Now, how do I ban myself?...

cj66

...by creating a cables do/don't make a difference thread

uglymusic

Docfoster

Made some stands for my new speakers today.
Decided to go for maximum coupling.
So stands screwed down into the concrete slab at the base, and stand screwed up into the bottoms of the speakers at the top.
Nothing's going to knock off those speakers!



Definitely tightens up the sound. :-)

Though upper bass drift to left seems unaffected.

You can see the hearth on the left hand side of the photo. Under the wooden floor boards there's a big concrete supporting it. I'm thinking that to bass frequencies that the wooden floor is invisible. Bass just passes straight through. But the concrete support of the hearth underneath the floor reflects it. No hearth on the other side of the room of course.  It's just a single skin internal brick wall. The wall on hearth-side is external. Double skin cavity. So maybe that's playing a part. Chimney too possibly.
Who knows... :-/