I really REALLY didn’t want speaker stands to make a difference. I am in the business of demoing speakers for studios and such so I need to know as studios (like users at home) use all kinds of crazy things to put speakers on. Cardboard boxes, wooden crates, plastic bins, thin metal plant stands from Target, you name it. Well after years of trying to disprove it, Ive given up. It’s one of the biggest variables in the demo. You need high mass under a stand to get it to sound its best. I then went after Sound Anchor to use and rep in the US because that’ the only one Ive found universally works. I wish it wasn’t so.
It isn’t hard to hear, but it is hard to set up a good comparison of removing all variables other than the stands. You need a large room, plenty of space to put both stands in exactly the same spot. But there is a significant difference in bass, imaging, etc between a a high mass stand and low mass one. My experiments have left me with the clear result that the stand matters more than the spikes or what comes between the stand and the floor. It’s not that these other things don’t matter, they do, it’s just the stand itself matters more.
There are ways around it, I know a mastering engineer who does very high level work that built a large wooden box (same dimensions as the speaker itself in width) to get the speakers up to the ear level height and then filled it with play sand. That box is unmovable now and probably weighs 500 pounds. Sounds extremely good in his room.