Granite Under Speakers Over A Wood Floor

Well: This is after the fact as I was blocked out of posting all morning but I will post it anyway.

I agree with Kelly on this one. I enjoy the feedback from dealers and manufacturers in the threads on many subjects (including their own wares) as it's like getting free professional advice without the pressure to purchase. I do however feel that their position in the industry should be noted as is done by my favorite pro posters (although this does not have to be done with every single post as many are on general topics). There is another outcome of candid posts in that if caught in the act (in regard to this matter), the products tend to take on a negative impression in my mind (though I have never auditioned them). Kind of the reverse of what the shill was intended to achieve. I do not know who RCM1960 is and this post is not directed at them (if they do not fill the bill) but is just my take on this type of behavior, when it does take place.

robert: this one's for you.

a sargent, returning from a scouting party, gallops breathlessly into general custer's encampment at little big horn. he announces,"general, i've got some good news ands some bad news." the general replies,"well, i guess you'd better give me the bad news first." says the sargent, "we're surrounded by 15,000 warriors of the siuox nation and we're all about to meet our maker." incredulous, general custer asks, "good lord man if that's the bad news, what's the good news?" says the sargent, "well, at least we won't have to ride back home through nebraska."

no i'm not from the cornhusker state (NB: one word, no apostrophe; wouldn't write can nuck's, eh). i still count iowa as my home, tho i've lived in colorado since 1975. i'll withold further judgment on your posts until you explain what the hell you're makin' & sellin' besides those metal pointy things and racks with clever clefs. -kelly

All my floors our hard tile, so i built my own. 3 sheets of sheet rock 1 sheet of 1/4 inch plywood 3 sheets of sheet rock. Then to spark it up a bit i framed it in oak and stained them. Works for me.

If your flooring is wood and you have large speakers some sort of treatment is in order. I did some impulse measurements on my SC-V's (305 lbs) and on my old IMF Monitor IV's (90 lbs)in my living room. Under the location of the speakers I had cross braced the floor and put four floor jacks on oak blocks under the location of each speaker from the floor bracing to the concrete in the crawl space. My floor was built to hold a grand piano and the joists are full 2x10's on 12" centers with plank underflooring and oak flooring. This is certainly stiffer than most recently built houses. However, the measured impulse response clearly changed for the better as we adjusted the floor jacks. My bet is that any decent sized speakers on wood floors need some sort of bracing or decoupling. I'm going to take redkiwi's suggestion and get some soapstone and see if I can measure any additional improvements

There might be a way to go ahead and use spikes or granite or prozac tablets (GOOD ONE, elgordo, but wouldn't that be lithium?) on your wood floors without marring them. Most woodworking adhesives will not bond to a finish. It's S.O.P. in the trade to put a little finish on exposed parts near glue lines prior to assembly to avoid glue contamination of the raw wood and uneven absorption of the finish after assembly. The glue is simply shaved or struck off with a scraper. PVA glues like Elmer's white or yellow or perhaps better, polyurethane glues like Gorilla could be puddled over carefully marked area where the points would contact the floor. The polyurethane or varnish finish would keep the glue from making a permanent bond even after years and any marring could be burnished out with the BACK of a piece of sandpaper. The caveat would be whether the weighted point of the spikes or cones would eventually work through the glue. Alternatively, for existing damage, Mohawk Industries makes colored shellac sticks which are melted into a finish for spot repairs, again using the back of the paper to blend. I buy mine from a distributor but they have a website or the sticks are available to the public from Garrett Wade in N.Y., also on the web. Perhaps someone with the time and need would experiment with Elmer's, a finished board, some spikes and weights.