Mapleshade boards under speakers

I use bamboo under my speakers over a new oak floor, and it works great. tighter bass, better imaging, etc.

Chashas1,

Thanks for the prompt reply to our inquiring minds. Interesting to me that the thick Maple slabs are that much better for your application than the birch plywood. This is what Mapleshade and other purveyors of solid Maple platforms claim - seems to work that way for you, although I understand the maple is thicker and a different variety ofwood, so not a perfect control of plywood versus solid slab in this case.

I think it is interesting that there appears to be such a broad range of experiences with wood platforms reported in this thread, ranging from "it works great" to "it did nothing" to "hated it". In the case of speakers where vibration is intense, cabinet designs vary greatly, and room interactions have a huge role perhaps the range of experience should not be that surprising.

I have found that using wood platforms for vibration control under many components in my system has helped tremendously in my fairly small and lively (many hard surfaces) listening area. I would suggest the greatest benefits have come from those compenents with moving parts - TT, CDP and of course speakers. I put this "tweak" in the top category along with power cables in terms of providing "astonishing" improvements in system sound.

Nice thing about tweaks like this is that it doesn't require any break in to enjoy. Improvements are noticed immediate or not at all.

PS - I am a fan of BlueTack and use it where it makes sense and sounds good - like attaching my speakers to bamboo platforms...

Maril555,

That is the point of large thick maple or other slabs - to drain vibration away from your gear while at the same time keeping vibrations from your gear, particularly speakers, from interacting mechanically with your floor and setting up unwanted harmonics in your room. This issue has been discussed in some detail in at least one thread on this forum before:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?htech&1238883454

I think that the benefits of maple or other wood platforms for speaker and other equipment are highly ear, gear, rack and room dependent - so what works well for someone will not necessarily work well for others.

My "analytical" leaning CD player, sprung TT and less than completely rigid speakers cabinets benefit greatly from the application of wood platforms in my fairly lively listening room. While a softer or more neutral sounding source, very well designed speaker/spike system in a well tuned or dead listening room may not benefit from or actually be "harmed" by the characteristics imparted by wood platforms. YMMV.

Jrb25,

According to Mapleshade website:

"You can't get good sound just by placing the speaker's flat bottom on the floor or on a stand. Because of the large area, low-pressure contact, much of the cabinet's vibrational energy is reflected back instead of being drained efficiently and cleanly down into the floor."

I find this only marginally satisfactory

A site selling Reference Points products (http://storesonline.com/site/1609406) claims:

"The sharp cone point couples to the shelf, floor or platform and acts as a mechanical diode, channeling vibration out and preventing unwanted ambient (floor) and stand vibrations from entering."

"Mechanical Diode"???

I guess the idea is that a given weight connected through a smaller brass point focuses energy being produced internally into whatever is below it. A massive maple platform is rigid to a point but has the capacity to absorb or dampen at least some of this energy, thus "draining" internal vibration "away" from speaker or equipment cabinets.

In the reverse direction, the thick slab of wood absorbs some of the energy from the floor or shelf and keeps it from entering the gear from the bottom up. The overall thickness and weight of these platforms keeps them from resonating like the back of a violin or guitar, but the resonant properties of the wood work instead to absorb and dissipate energy as wood fibers move slightly adjacent to each other - I assume generating some heat in the process.

Sebraasch,

Your room's floor structure is well suited to benefit from wood platforms given my experience and the experience of those above. I tend to agree with Chashas1 about the glass casters, but am also a great believer in trying things out for myself to see what works best. I would try the oak boards without brass cones (directly on the floor or connected with dots of BluTack), with brass cones and casters, and with cones plus disks. I assume you are not interested in placing the brass cones directly onto the your new hardwoods...

The Mapleshade folks suggest you should use cones between speakers and platforms, and platforms and the floor = twice isolated. I would just experiment to see what works best. Instead of buying four sets of cones right away if you don't already have them, buy two and and test them while driving only one side of your system. Test them on top of the platform, on the bottom, and on both top and bottom, and see which way sounds best to you.

I don't use any cones with my platforms, just connect the speakers to bamboo platforms with Blutack and have the platforms sitting directly on the hardwood floor. Not saying this is best, just works well enough for me for now - much better than having speakers sitting directly on the floor without wooden platforms.