If you have a pair or small monitor speakers, buy concrete blocks & corner blocks, spray paint black, glue blocks together for correct height & put on cheaap spikes. Put speakers on dot of Blu-Tak. Doesn't have much WAF, but are resonance-free, aolid & very heavy.
Cheap Tweeks
Does anybody have any cheap tweeks to share with us to further our search for "affordable" sonic bliss? I have 3 for you to try that anyone can afford. 1) if your amp sets on the floor, try putting 4 tennis balls under it. you might want to place a piece of half inch plywood under the amp first. 2) If you need to isolate your components better, put a piece of plywood under them and then put the largest size bubble wrap that you can find uner them. These ideas work and are much cheeper than big buck isolation platform. 3)If you use "dynamic" speakers, put a quarter at the top front corners and a dime in the center. It must be the resonence of the change that does the trick. All I know is that it works.
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MDF board is superior to plywood for isolation and available at any hardware super store(home depot ect.)Well sealed double bagged and tapped sand bags on all components except amp,great for vibration and tightening up the sound.Keep bags away from vent slots ! A favorite of mine that I have never shared with before is foam hot water pipe insulation.You can cut little sections to elevate any cables from the floor.Any where that interconnects ,power cables or speaker cables touch ,you can wedge between or put on any cable where two touch.They also are great to put on the back of rack shelves for sharp edges and vibration that can affect cables touching the shelves.Many other uses,get creative.Now for an incredible source of DIY tweaks; www.audiotweaks.elosoft.com Happy tweaking ! |
Here are indespensible tweaks for under $100 that work: 1)Auric Illuminator CD treatment,$39,reduces digital HF grain/glare in problem CDs, improves overall sound. 2)Kontak connector cleaner/enhancer,$39, much better than ProGold, lifts a veil. 3)Vibrapod feet,$24,will be improvement over stock feet,good for mid-fi gear, better than tennis ball cut in half, heh,heh,heh. 4)Black Diamond racing cones, $60, carbon fiber cones can be effective without tilting up sound if you have proper base for cone to drain vibrations into, BD sells $50 carbon fiber base pads which can become expensive fast.......next step up are various bearing designs. 5)Radio Shack de-mag unit,$38, gives you a taste of Bedini II and Furutech RD-1, treated CDs will have effect like Auric Illuminator.....regards, Sam |
0) Listening to a stereo at a suburban-hell stereo super store. 1) Moving your speakers out into the the room (free), 2) Raising your speaker cables off of the floor using wood blocks or foam cups, 3) Twining your power cables together and running them down one side of your rack then separating (by 1 inch) and running your interconnects down the other side of the rack. 4) Putting your speakers in a sparsely furnished room (nothing between them). I also recall (back in the old days) that putting four concrete garden blocks on top of each of my old Bose SA1000 box speakers improved their sound noticeably. |
Beavis has a good idea; I am going to try something similar which should look better . If there is one of the company that sell concrete yard art close to you check them out. They have some heavy concrete stands which don't look bad and can be painted. The prices looked to be in the $25 to $50 range for a pair. |
I forgot to mention one that costs nothing. Some amps , and preamps invert phase. Just wire your speakers in reverse phase to see if they sound better. That is , hot on amp to ground on speakers or vice versa. Not to be confused with out of phase , in which one is wired in on manner and the other in the opposite, The important thing is that they both be wired the same. There is a famous paper in audio called "The Wood Effect" which explanes the importance of Absolute Phase. |
Cheap tweeks.... Diversitech
EVA Anti-Vibration Pad under my Klipsch LaScalas on my unstable wooden floor snapped the audio image into sharp focus. Quite remarkable actually. Short of buying the IsoAcoustics GAIA I Speaker Isolators @ $599.95 per 4 (I need 8), these are about $2.00 each so I went wild and bought 16 and doubled up under each corner. Without daring to overstate the improvement and getting a red flag from the hyperbole squad, I am SHOCKEDI tell you ...just shocked I say.... Focus, focus, focus! Cleaner, crisper. I had tried dozens of other homemade treatments. (I was rightly concerned that some blurring was occurring due to micro vibrations) Once I get an extra $1200 bucks I'll get the real thing, until then BIG IMPROVEMENT HAS BEEN SECURED ON THE CHEAP. Love this hobby! |
Save $1140, get 2 sets of Nobsound springs for $60. Then when you are ready skip right past Gaia and get the much better Townshend Podiums. Meantime the (21 year old) topic is cheap tweaks, so dig some rubber bands out of your kitchen clutter drawer and use them to isolate all your cables. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Just so you know this is from actual experience. |
Thumbs up on Bybee Quantum Clarifiers! BIG NEWS. So here's yet another cheap tweak that transformed those Klipsch Lascalas once again. My bad since after everything we all know about vibration (and I've been staring right at the issue without seeing it for years!) here it is....You know how the Lascala has two separate sections? Well, the top sits upon the bottom which houses the bass bin (famous for being a shy performer). Shy or not, since the mid and tweeter ride above the bass it shakes the living hell out of those horns. Yesterday I cut up my "Purple" seat cushion into 16 4" squares, sandwiched with closed cell foam and positioned the top bin onto the squares. I got lucky guessing at getting the top to "hover" on the cushions where the top will jiggle with a slight push. The mid and treble is 25%, no...50%...no..75% better depending on how much bass heavy the music is. At first I tried just foam but the "purple" is squishy in just the right amount. Cheap and simple and WHY DIDN"T I DO THIS % YEARS AGO!!<?? |
Just made another break through. which, when you hear it you'll say. as I did. why didn't I think of this earlier? Those huge Klipsch Lascalas have two sections which plug together. the HF bin and the LF bottom bin. They sit on each other separated by 4 hard rubber feet. As is immediately obvious, these "feet" provide next to no vibration isolation. So...I cut up a 'purple' seat cushion into 16 4" pads, sandwiched them between thin closed cell foam "bread" and placed 8 between each of them. Wowsa! Another excellent upgrade into better resolution especially in mid and high frequency details. And if I'm not mistaken, the bass is clearer too. The purple' cushion is about $50. Wasn't using it anyway much. May be better with real spring things |