DIY speaker isolation base for a wood floor

@audiozenology, the only rubber I use for isolation is a set of Sims Navcom Silencers in place of the stock springs in my VPI HW-19 Mk.3 turntable, a favorite mod amongst HW-19 owners. While the stock springs provide the well-known isolation inherent in suspended subchassis tables, they allow a fair amount of relative motion between the subchassis (containing the platter and arm/cartridge) and the base-mounted motor.

The EAR Isodamp I use is not the constrained-layer damping model (C-1002), but the version made for the damping of vibrating/ringing metal panels and chassis (SD125). It is a heavy (about 1lb. per square foot), dense, stiff, 1/8" thick material with adhesive on one side. Applied to the metal chassis of hi-fi electronics, it is very effective at absorbing and dissipating their ringing resonances. Unless you consider electronics to be musical instruments---a silly notion imo---and should therefore be allowed to ring away, a very effective solution for eliminating unwanted resonances. While my phono amp, linestage, and power amps benefit from SD125, my very robustly built Esoteric digital player has no need for it---that 47 lb. box is very well self-damped. I guess I can't be a card-carrying member of the low-mass-is-a-gas gang, ay? ;-)

The best isolation I have ever witnesses was Audiogon member folkfreak’s Herzan active isolation platform under his turntable. Very effective, and unfortunately very expensive.

Here's a real talking point: "low mass". My Music Reference RM-10 Mk.2 is a real nice little tube amp, but that niceness is not the result of it's low mass (it weighs only 12 lbs.). My RM-200 Mk.2 also sounds good, and it's a fairly hefty 52 lbs. I won't be selling it and buying a mass-market receiver from the "Golden Age Of High End Audio", the 70/80/90's. More silliness.

Low mass in a loudspeaker driver IS a factor in it's sound quality, for the obvious reason: That mass is moving. The faceplate and chassis of my EAR-Yoshino pre-amp are the heaviest (20 lbs.) of any I've owned, and it's the best sounding as well. I guess in spite of it's mass ;-) .

"So bdp24 thinks you can place something in a room without it touching anything."

No he doesn’t. Not on Earth anyway.

"There is no such thing as decoupling in audio. That’s just a talking point from those who are dampening (1). Once you put your speakers in a room all the physics of that room and the speaker becomes one and the same (2)."

1: We are not dampening (to make wet ;-), we are damping (reducing the physical vibrations is a solid material). Those who contend hi-fi components are themselves musical instruments (a silly contention ;-) and should be left to resonate, are against damping. Those of use who don’t consider components music makers but rather music reproducers, are for it.

2: We need to make a distinction between the physical mass of a pair of loudspeakers from the acoustic sound they propagate with a room. Those speakers are ACOUSTICALLY inseparable from the room (the room is to the speakers as the speaker enclosures are to rear output of their drivers). That does not mean the speakers cannot be PHYSICALLY isolated from the surface of the room upon which they sit. Whether or not you want to separate them is another matter.

@blueranger, GK’s springs are ridiculously-low priced compared with all similar products (the Townshend Audio Seismic line, for instance), and a great way to find out if you prefer decoupling to coupling (spikes, cones) of your speakers. But remember, as Geoff has correctly stated here numerous times, spikes and cones provide isolation down to a not-very-low frequency (around 10Hz), and coupling below that frequency. And that frequency is not a single number, but rather the corner frequency of a 1st order (6dB/octave) low pass filter.