Building stands for Harbeth 40.2's

@krelldog

I understand why you may want to sub-in spikes for placement on a carpet or rug .

FWIW, the bottom tenons serve as replacements for spikes. The TT manual recommends that you place their stands on a slate platform (or equivalent material)

The resonant woods have round rubber pads separating the speaker from the base  - never compared them to TT I just took my dealers word that they were as good and less expensive - he could have sold me anything really cause I trust him.

Who believes that one brand of stand mount Speakers

Performs best with metal and another with wood? 

I used sound anchor stands for my Harbeth SHL5+ and the bass sounded significantly better than the ton trager stand copies I made.  

I liked the appearance of the ton trager knock offs but the solid, massive sound anchors delivered the tightest, deepest bass.  i had them spiked through carpet to concrete floor.  I discovered sound anchors at a local dealer where all of their speakers had excellent bass because of them, I was sold.  

1- if you do have the tragers made- definitely pay attention to stand height.  to my ears harbeth speakers sound best when they are lower than typical.  it reinforces the bass and gives the tweeters a softer more natural blend- just an inch or two below ear height. ideally you should experiment before committing to the height. 

2- without question use iso dots to decouple the speaker to stand.  very critical for lossy cabinet speakers. 

soft sorbothane made for peaky bass, medium firm dots made the best most balanced bass and hard silicone rubber dots seemed to drain the bass,  experiement,    

@mijostyn 

You may want to be careful with the carpet tape - it may damage the finish on your Harbeths - which could be an issue if you ever plan to sell them to upgrade.  It is almost impossible to remove from hardwood.

@bassdude , I have stuck 3M carpet tape to just about anything you can think of. It will not damage a modern polyester finish at all. It will leave a residue that is easily removed with brake cleaning fluid. The most common problem with carpet tape is that it will not stick to some surfaces that is when I switch to 3M high strength mounting tape. That can be a b-tch to get off.

Beech is excellent for speaker stands and that’s what Tonträger mainly uses. 

From HUG, by Alan Shaw, Designer, owner, Harbeth Audio UK:

Mar 7, 2023

Quite honestly, you are over reading the design, shape and styling of the stands. From our perspective as the speaker designers, the stand you show is just one of an infinite number of possible designs, all of which would almost certainly achieve good results.

During the design of the M40 I recall that I used IKEA tables, which had a flat top and four legs without the cross bars at the top or bottom.

The selection of a speaker stand must fulfil only two core criteria: raising the tweeter so that, ideally, the tweeter is level with your ear (very few users do this and hence very few users achieve the full sonic potential) and protecting the speaker from toppling over. With those criteria met, there is a very wide latitude on materials, shape size and colour.

One advantage of our relationship with Hifi Racks - very useful for the Bristol show last week - is the ease with which they can make longer legs for our stands. For example, we had never exhibited the M30 to a room full of mixed standing and seated folk before, and we calculated that we would need a few more cms. height, which they cheerfully obliged.

The selection of a speaker stand must fulfil only two core criteria: raising the tweeter so that, ideally, the tweeter is level with your ear (very few users do this and hence very few users achieve the full sonic potential) and protecting the speaker from toppling over. With those criteria met, there is a very wide latitude on materials, shape size and colour.

This is ludicrous assertion by Shaw. How a speaker stand interacts with the floor can, depending on other variables, produce clearly audible differences.

The quote is reminiscent of when, years ago, Shaw was famously agnostic about amplifiers:

Whatever amp you've got will work just great with Harbeth. Anything British, made after about 1980, fully serviced will be great. End of story.
 

Shaw designs excellent speakers, but at least some of his related views should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Think this way -- if the stands have dramatic impact to the speaker performance and he ignored it unduly, would he be successfully designed so many good speakers and have good reputation for that?

Lots ideas about good stand discussed here, including the expensive TT design lack of theoretical back and experimental evidence at all.  So please show the theories and measurement data to prove it that they are not snake oil.

@whipsaw

agree with you - alan shaw can be a tricky dude... in spite of the harbeths being excellent speakers... he is the business mind and owner behind the brand, and as an expert capitalist, you can count on him to say what serves his commercial interests... ’oh why yes, any old amplifier will do - just make sure you have bought the best harbeth you can afford’ 🤣