Filling speaker stands: sand, lead, steel, rice. Full, half, etc?


With my proac tablettes, I am using 28 inch speaker stands which have two round steel tubes about two inches in diameter.  The stands have spikes into my wooden floor (through carpet) and rubber pads on top.  I have a rather small room 12x12, and I have played around with the speaker positions in the room, finding a pretty sweet spot optimizing the bass and soundstage.  I have done all this with the stands unfilled.

so I am looking for advice on filling the stands. What do I use: sand, steel shot, lead shot, rice?  Do I fill them half full, three quarters, or full? Do I fill all the tubes the same? Can overfill makes things worse?

like most things (i.e. speaker placement) I suspect there will be some trial and error, but as it will be a real pain in the rear to fill/empty/refill the various materials to really compare, I am hoping that there are some lessons learned that the rest of you can share with me to get me pretty close with my first trial.

Alos, what effect will the filling have- should I expect deeper bass, bigger soundstage, greater depth, more detail, or..... better yet what should I not expect to change? This will help me know what I should be listening for as I tweak things.

and finally, should I expect my current optimum speaker position to change with filled stands? Will I have to go through the whole positioning exercise again?

thanks, ( and happy new year)

Bill
meiatflask

Showing 3 responses by bdp24

willem, surely Mr. Shaw considers room placement, not just height, an important determiner of speaker sound quality. And how about degree of toe-in? I recently finally heard a pair of Magicos in a home (having heard them in showrooms a fair amount), and before listening commenced, I commented on the less-than-"normal" amount of toe-in with which the owner had positioned the speakers---about 15 degrees off straight ahead, I’d guess. He responded that you do NOT want Magicos pointed directly at you, and when we started listening, I heard why! I am much more familiar with planar speaker sound than of speakers with dome tweeters, and many planars need to be heard directly in the line-of-fire of the ESL, m-p, or ribbon tweeter.
I bought a Solid Steel stand from the U.S. distributor at the Vegas CES in the late 90's. He had applied lead tape to all the metal tubes, in locations that weren't visible---the back of each leg, and the backs and bottoms of the cross-beams.
For dry sand, look for Silica at a building supply yard near you. It is not organic sand, but rather man-made, and is used in sand blasting. It is available in many different grades---the size of each grain---60 being a good one. A 100 lb. bag cost me less than $10.