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... |
It will take me a bit to make the stands but I will let you know the results. I do not know if it was this thread or another, but I also found some recycled rubber pucs (from car tires). I got the idea to look at HVAC sound and vibration isolators and thought these might work under the board. But if I am understanding your opinion it is to have the speaker on the board without spikes or should the speaker be spiked as well. |
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. |
Make sure it is the best kiln dried maple hand ruubed with just mineral or tung iol . I use 4" thick ones with oil finish and there is a very obvious changein my syste,. I now have very attractive slabs of very thick maple and brass cones. It look great. The system sound pretty much the way it always did it just loooks better.
Under my preamp a thick dampening pad had a obvious sonic impact. That is likely a function of keepining the tubes as still as I can. My Make shift pad is going to be replaced with a 5 inch tall sandbox of pure tiger maple if Timbernation sends it. I am gointo use finely powcered lead for damping and ballat atop giggantic brass feet I am making to order. They wiegh 20lbs a piece and will sit in a speceial high tension suspended cup. Total figure 100 KG- or 220lbs plus the pre. |
Has anybody ever used a Sistrum speaker stand atop a Mapleshade platform?
I've used Sistrum and loved the results under speakers, amp and for a rack. But I like the idea of raising the speakers a few inches for soundstage height. |
Johnmcalpin, I use a sistrum stand on top of 4-inch Mapleshade amp stands. My room is carpet over concrete. Unfortunately, I also use a cheap 1 1/2 foot wood speaker stand on top of the sistrum, so I can only hint at what you might want as an answer. Also, this situation is fragile(speakers have been knocked over.). The sistrum tightened the bass and was slightly less warm than when the speakers's stands just sat on the Mapleshade. I didn't like it at first, but decided that the extra bass and precision might be worth it. I will have to change this for security purposes, and I might be interested in Mapleshade's Gibraltor speaker stands. |
My floorstanders on maple platforms thinned out a bit too much for my tastes. I use bamboo cutting boards and am more satisfied with the midrange. |
Good thread ... I tried an experiment the other day: I have (and love) a pair of Legacy Sig IIIs. I was using just the speaker spikes driven through the carpet into the wood (raised) floor. I had two 12"x12"x2" marble platforms that consist of two marble slabs sandwiched with dampening material between each slab. I set the slabs on the floor using four of those expensive German brass cones underneath. Then the speakers went on top of the marble slabs using the existing brass speaker spikes. The improvement in the highs and mids were really something ... the best I've had so far. BUT ... there was no bass foundation. I took the speakers back to where they were before and the mids and highs were veiled in comparison ... but the bass was back. So, as as result of this thread, I ordered two 18x15 maple boards from Maple Shade. We'll see what happens and I'll report back. Happy listening everyone. |
+1 on the bamboo cutting boards.
There inexpencive at Lowe's and do wonders for speakers on carpet. |
OK, my unfinished 15 x 18 x 2 Mable Shade maple speaker platforms arrived and I set them up using long brass cones coupling the platforms to the floor through the carpet. The speakers were coupled to the platforms using the speaker's built in brass spikes. The results were not subtle at all. In fact, the system was improved in all areas from top to bottom. All areas of resolution were improved as was the musicality. Voice is incredible. Plucked strings, decay, initial attack a all improved. I'll say with confidence: If you are not using Maple Shade platforms under your speakers, you haven't heard the best your system has to offer. $150.00 for two platforms plus shipping ... a bargain for this type of improvement. Next to come ... a 4" platform finished in rosewood with the heavy brass Mable Shade feet and Isoblocks for my turntable. Stay tuned. |
Hello Oregonpapa if you are still out there...
Ref: your 2-12-11 experiment with two 12"x12"x2" marble platforms under each speaker. I would be curious about the performance of the marble if you removed the sandwich of damping material between the slabs. Would improvement result and possibly approach that of the 18x15 mapleshade set up? It seems to me that the sandwich of damping would kill the base response as described in the rocking on the carpet example in article at http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/speaker-spikes-and-cones-2013-what2019s-the-point. |
Hi all ! There is nothing special about maple and especially about the "special" maple which is sold by Mapleshade . All woods have their unique sonic signature , maple may sound great in one system , cocobola may sound great in another . " Draining vibrations " Pleeeaazzze . Something with weight and inert imho is best under speakers . |
Bradluke, I think you are right on this topic. The wood is dense, heavy and essentially inert. When you connect your gear via pointed cones into/onto the wood, it stablizes the equipment, thereby dampening whatever vibration the gear may be experiencing. With tubed gear, in my case, a preamp with microphonic prone, 60+ year old 6SN7s, holding it still, is important. Some people may call this "draining" vibration. I grant you that poetic license should not be a license to steal, in the way we sometimes see it used. |
Back again ...
Using the maple platforms under my speakers has transformed the bass response. There is no way I would ever return to the speakers just spiked through the carpet again.
Just as an aside ... Audiogon, please return the font to that previously used before the change. Thanks. |
The customized screw-in brass footers have been great for my Dali MS4 and now MS5. I use lots of their boards and cones, always to positive effect. |
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I use maple boards (2" to 4")under my speakers and all my audio equipment. I first went to a lumber yard so as not to spend as much. I was pleasantly supprised. I have a concrete floor under thick carpet and use brass spikes between the floor and the maple boards. On flat surfaces ,I use isolation blocks (not SQ or mapleshade. I only changed to this mounting system and it has transformed my system more than any prior purchase.
This was an incredible upgrade. Greater than any equipment added in the past. I have been amazed by the results. |
Hard to explain, but true: I have Merlin Master VSM's. For two years they have been spiked to the concrete floor under wall-to-wall medium pile carpeting. I've always felt that there was some undesirable deadening of the low-to-mid bass going on. Tried various room treatments. 2' x 4' x 4" bass absorbers angled about a foot behind the speakers did help. But still something was not quite right.
The other day I decided to buck conventional wisdom. I had an intuition to place 1/2" maple shelves from an old Lovan rack I had under the speakers so that they are just sitting freely on the carpeting and the speakers are spiked directly into them. HUGE improvement in bass and no apparent disturbance in any of the other factors such as sound staging, or higher frequencies. In fact, I would say that everything just sounds better. I don't understand the science behind it, but I'd guess that coupling the speakers directly to the concrete floor had the same effect as over-damping a room or the inside of a speaker cabinet. Just goes to show that in this hobby it's good to experiment. And if you're lucky, the best solution is also the free solution. |
A couple of weeks ago the Mapleshade unfinished 2 inch boards I ordered arrived and I simply have the Thiel 2.4s placed atop them without any footers through the thin pile carpeting underneath on a suspended floor. WOW, what an improvement in focus, detail and depth of stage. Here's my conclusion: I think maple happens to have the correct resonance, impedance and absorptive properties that allow phase cancelling information to be absorbed while not absorbing in phase musical information. I think it also performs this "filtering" fairly evenly over the audible range. There is a reason why it has long been used to make musical instruments. Would other tone woods work as well or better? Perhaps, but I know that this made a noticeable improvement and my audio buds all agree. |
Maple is the right stuff for putting under audio. Thats all there is to say about it. |
I tend to agree. Not that I've tried everything else under the sun. Or are about to. |
I couldn't afford Mapleshade blocks at the time so I got Myrtlewood plinths from Battlerock Studios. I placed them underneath my KEF 104/2 speakers and got great results. They are a little over 2" thick. The Myrtlewood plinths along with brass footers really helped with the vibration issues I was having with just the KEFs on my floor. I saw give Myrtlewood a shot. |
Actually, I have tried everything under the sun. If you get good results with a maple board under a component you will get even better results by supporting the maple board with hard ceramic, brass or aluminum cones. Furthermore, results can be improved even further by constructing two layers of maple boards and cones. |
Note what you are doing when the maple platform is flat on carpet. You are tending to decouple; which is what I have come to prefer. Micro-detail is better, as is the liveliness. |
I finally got around to putting some maple cutting boards (John Boos) under my Tonian TL-D1s and can't for the life of me figure out why I didn't do it sooner.
Italian flagstone was too harsh, bamboo too dulling. Putting metal discs under the spikes relieved some of the dulling effect and brought back the leading edges of the highs but the maple without the discs has the best of all worlds.
I'd like to thank whoever it is who posted on another thread that he put the flagstone under the maple with the speaker spiked to the maple as it's the best combo I've heard yet on my carpeted floor.
This is the most natural and balanced sound I've heard and thank everyone here for your input. I know it doesn't work for everyone since so many variables are at stake but in my case, it's just perfect.
All the best,
Nonoise |
I concur about using the Maple Platforms coupled with brass footers. I'm using Mapleshade Platforms with brass heavyfoots countersunk into the maple platforms so as to not raise my speakers any higher. My CM-7's sit on Brass Heavyfoots on top of the maple platforms. The setup is actually quite good looking to boot.
The sound improvement was not subtile. I used a Mapleshade custom sized, solid brass weight, with a hole drilled thru as a spacer on the front heavyfoot's to tilt the speakers enough to "time-align" the drivers. It's a real pain to do the setup properly, moving speakers around the carpet before spiking them to the subfloor, getting the tilt correct, etc. BUT....there is no denying it transformed a pair of modestly priced speakers into real gems. The focus, imaging and that elusive 3D effect I love belies the pricepoint of these speakers since I did this setup. I'm SOLD!!! Money well spent.
That said, the results might vary with the quality of your speakers. If you're using really high end speakers that are built like bank vaults, this tweek might not be so dramatic. I can only speak for my results with modest speakers. |
Sound terrible in my house, thin wool rug over spruce. |
I used them under my monitors and they do give the speakers a good sound, albeit a maple coloring. The sound was much better than sitting on the tile floors.
the mapleshade stuff is swamp maple I think which accounts for all that black striations.
I now use a "space age polymer" called TerraStone under my towers. |
Tinkerer that I am, I finally settled on using the small, dime sized discs under the spikes on top of the maple. The mids are still wonderfully fleshed out and the highs have that finer leading edge and trailing off that without the discs seemed to be a a bit diminished. I thought I was hearing things but the final configuration was consistent with all the music I tried.
Well worth the experimentation.
All the best,
Nonoise |
Try Symposium for some real improvement!! |
Chill, shill. Minus K and Vibraplane kick Symposium's black cat's rear end. |
Photonman is that the paver material? |
Well, I know I'm in the wrong business. Maple at those prices are robbery.
I have noticed the crazy prices on most all of the Mapleshade stuff and the wild claims. But, if one person hears a difference then Mapleshade can truthfully say their stuff works. Even if 10 hear no difference. Those claims are what makes our hobby a joke to many possible listeners. |
I keep looking at Home Goods for the right size solid wood cutting boards to put under my speakers to show up. Some are solid maple. Haven't found a matched pair yet. Cost there is ~ $40 each, sans audiophile mark-ups. |
