Huge difference in sound : Spikes vs. Vibrapods


I have a pair of Martin Logan prodigy speakers which after reading a few discussions about coupling and decoupling, I put of Vibrapods. So I have decoupled the speakers from my tile floor.
Several questions now:
With this setup I das this tingling feeling in my stomach once in a while, which you get from a powerful bass, when the sound really drops low, like with a baritone singer. Should you be able to *bodily* feel the bass once in while or is this what is called a boomy bass?
When I put my speakers on spikes, I immediately had the impression that the speakers could not go as deep as they used to go before.
This gut feeling was completely gone. (I do not experience this all the time of course, only at certain, very low passages with a double bass e.g.) and I had the idea that the base is lacking almost a halve octave. Is somehow has lost its punch a bit
So when you read my short description here, do you feel that my bass sounded to boomy with the Vibrapods and that the less authoritative bass with the spikes is the right sound.
O personally seem to prefer the bass with my speakers on pods.
tekunda

Showing 1 response by hdm

I responded to Tekunda's post over on Audioasylum about this (actually his first response there), and would agree with the posters here that you need to trust your ears and try this within your own system. My speakers are Elipson 1313's (a french floorstander weighing about 45 pounds each) and I have a room with berber (low pile) carpet over a hardwood floor/suspended wood floor. My system set-up with regards to speakers for the past 6 months or so has been 1/4" laminated glass (about 15"x15"-slightly larger than the footprint of my speakers) on the carpet, with vibrapods on the glass and speakers on the pods. The improvement (to my ears) as compared to spiking was pretty dramatic. I think Sam has nailed exactly what the vibrapods will do (and I am using floor standers), and if you prefer a "leaner" or "brighter" sound, the pods will not do that for you. Within my system, I would say that everything was improved-some posters at the Audioasylum say that the high frequencies are "rolled off" with the pods and the bass becomes "slower" but that would not be the way I would describe it. I'd say that you get a "richer" (and in my opinion more realistic) sound right from the bass through the midrange and treble, with the higher frequencies being marginally cleaned up but certainly not "rolled off". Bass and midrange performance in my system was really enhanced and the music seems to have an "ebb and flow" that was just not there with spikes. Spikes really bleached out the sound in my system and made it sound much more "mechanical". I'd recommend that anyone experiment with the vibrapods under speakers. They're cheap, and in my opinion, really effective, particularly as Sam said if you have a system that leans toward brightness and you'd prefer something a little smoother. My system doesn't warrant major expenditures on Aurios or other bearing devices, but I can certainly believe that they would also have a pretty substantial effect on speaker sound quality.

Blake