You made a good argument about sunk costs.Are you a lawyer in your spare time? No, I am better than a lawyer, I am Millercarbon. Actually if you watch the Alan Watts videos I post you would know who I am. And who you are as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMRrCYPxD0IWhen my folks passed I went to file probate. Clerk said you have to be an attorney to do that. No, you don't. Well you have to hire one, there's all these forms to fill out and file and they must be done a certain way. You mean like this one? And this one? I had researched the whole thing on-line. Thirty seconds later the case is filed and I am waiting my turn with the judge. Another time in court being sued by two idiot morons each with their own attorney me representing myself I didn't hardly even have to open my mouth but once to get the whole thing dismissed in my favor. I even got one of the idiot moron's attorneys to do something for me on their dime. So yeah, on top of audio, physics, electronics, politics, philosophy, economics, cosmology, add law. Oh, and business, astronomy, finance, trading, technical analysis, Elliott wave analysis, international finance (different than individual), world history, etc etc. Porsche, driving, fine watches, telescopes, bicycles, woodworking, plumbing, ... you get the idea. On top of all that I am incredibly modest and enjoy few things more than helping others master some of these fascinating subjects. As to why makers like Wilson don't just put theirs on springs, it would be so easy, but the answer is even easier. There's only so much time, money, and talent to go around. Easy for us armchair entrepreneurs to say do this do that. In reality they already are doing everything they can think of to do. If a Podium looks like a no-brainer, and it is, but so is directional wire, so is trying 15 different solders to find Cardas Quad Eutetic. Why use springs only under the speakers? What about the crossovers? Or should the crossovers be external? You get the idea. It is like that for everything. Every minute spent tracking down the best way of doing one of these is a minute not spent on what Wilson really knows best, designing speakers. (Yes I am giving them the benefit of the doubt on that.) |
Everyone seems to think the post that follows is some kind of personal message. I pulled $250 out of my you know what as an extreme example. Oh well. I didn't admit anything. Because, for one thing, what you said is false. Some company name of Credo ripped off Townshend's design and builds and delivers their floor standing speakers on springs. Here it is! https://www.credo-audio.ch/ev-reference-one-eng.html Made their own tediously wordy video ripping off all Max's same ideas too https://www.credo-audio.ch/loudspeaker-isolation-en.html As for Magico, et al, this is the same faulty logic used to discredit aftermarket power cords. Fact of the matter is manufacturers of all kinds of things make choices that often times have nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the fact customers vary widely in their skills and abilities. It is a whole lot easier to plop a Wilson down than to crank one up onto a Podium, adjust and level. But, funny thing, we had one do just that and you know what? Said it was totally worth it! Worth the trouble, worth the money. I must admit. Also, very few are as open minded, innovative, logical and eager to change for the sake of improvement as yours truly. For example, it has been known now for a solid two decades that the solution to SOTA bass is a distributed bass array. Yet where are the speaker manufacturers? You have confused popular with true. Many things that are true are not popular. In a lot of cases probably never will be. So? Then too there is this thing called the fallacy of the sunk cost. You might find this interesting. The idea is once having spent some money on something you factor that into all decisions forevermore. The money is spent, the cost is sunk, it is a fallacy to even think about it any more. But it happens all the time. In your case what the speaker retailed for or how big the discount or what you paid is a done deal and could not possibly matter less. For proof, imagine someone gave you the best brand new Wilson speakers for free. Imagine you know they will be a whole lot better on Podiums. (They will.) But you are not going to put speakers that cost zero on a $2500 platform. Right. See? |
I've tried a lot of different spikes and cones over the years and was using BDR Cones as the best for a very long time. This was under my turntable, and speakers, and everything else. When I tried springs it wasn't even close, they were better in every way. There is much less glare, greater clarity, and a lower noise floor. Peak dynamics aren't better in the sense of having more volume but dynamics do improve because the noise floor is so much lower. Imaging improved probably for the same reason.
Extension, the improvement in extension with springs is highly dependent on tuning them to the load. If the load is too light the top end is too prominent. Likewise if the load is too great the bottom end is bloated and top end extension rolled off. Get it right though and springs are significantly better than any cone, or spike, or anything else. Period. Been tried too extensively now to be anything but beyond doubt.
That is the situation with plain springs. They beat all comers. Except they have no damping. So the one weakness of springs is the aforementioned tuning requirement. Even then though without damping there is a problem with resonance. I noticed this with springs under my turntable and figured the same had to be happening everywhere else.
This is really what led me to try Townshend. I knew Max had figured out a way to accomplish damping, and engineered and tested to use the right amount.
The results are easy to hear. Every instrument has so much more of its correct natural tone signature and timbre it is immediately obvious. It makes all your recordings come alive as never before. This all happens without ever drawing attention to anything. It never sounds like any one frequency is being accentuated or hyped or anything. Quite the opposite That is what happens with spikes- the ringing accentuates a part of the audio band that we associate with detail. It is not really detail. It is etch and ringing masquerading as detail. It is no exaggeration to say the sound on Podiums is a revelation.
I don't know that I would recommend $2500 Podiums to a guy with $250 speakers. But my $4k Moabs? They for sure sound way better than $10k Ulfberht, and for $4k less. So for me they are a deal, and while not a deal for everyone they sure are for a lot more than have them now.
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Right. I started testing with different springs ordered from eBay. Even once you know what you want in terms of dimensions it is still a lot of trouble to find. That is why I ultimately dumped individual big springs and recommend Nobsound. Not because they are better, but because they are about as good and save a tremendous amount of time and trouble!
Townshend on the other hand are not only a whole lot better but save even more time and trouble. The MDF test platform I built was from scrap just sitting around my shop. Knocked em together in an hour or so. Looked ghastly but worked plenty good. When I was seriously contemplating just what it would take to make them look good and be easily adjustable, the whole package, that is when I decided to try Townshend Podiums. Glad I did. Better looking, easier to adjust, and sound way better too.
Lots of choices. All of em better than cones or spikes. That is what amazes me. That all these options are so much better, yet the vast majority still have not figured this out. Kind of like DBA, around for 20 years, yet hardly anyone knows about it and half the ones who do argue instead of adopt. Go figure! |
The Credo video used a very early generation Townshend Podium that they tried to pass off as a current model. They were for a time a Townshend distributor, until they ripped it off and started selling that instead. They pull a fast one with the graphs, you have to watch real close and go back, as they try and make the Townshend graph look bad when it is better, and theirs look better when it is worse.
You are right, you do not have to break the bank with isolation. Ordinary springs from eBay for about $30, or Nobsound springs for about $35, perform about as well as Gaia or anything else around that price level. It is really quite astounding just how good ordinary springs can be when resonance is minimized by tuning the spring to the component load. Nowhere near Townshend level but awfully good for the money.
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Or could it be, because I called out that your preferred method - Springs, are you know.. “springy”, and would not be be best at damping vibrations. The spring action would just add their own color or even potentially, resonance to the vibration. Springs might be good at suppressing vibration transmission (from one send to the other), but this is a different application altogether. No, that is EXACTLY the application! Could it be you have totally missed this? How?! It has been explained clearly several times. Max Townshend has a whole video on this! Springs do not damp. Never said they do. Nobody said they do. That would be nuts! Springs isolate. They allow the speaker to vibrate independently from the floor. This allows the speaker to damp itself and stop vibrating much more quickly than when coupled to the floor such as with spikes. This is why the seismograph clearly shows less ringing with Townshend Podiums than spikes. NOT because the Podiums damp anything, but because they break the coupling with the floor. Honestly, it seems there is a small but very butt hurt group who just can’t get past their being butt hurt long enough to read and understand. Try and see through the pain. There is no shame in being wrong. Some of this stuff is not that easy to understand. Took me a while. But I find it a whole lot easier to TRY AND UNDERSTAND than to go around trying to blame someone else’s attitude or whatever other excuse I can dream up. Just accept the fact that you blew it. You blew it so bad that what is the essential element- decoupling- you thought was "a different application altogether." You got it absolutely bass ackwards. Admit it. Accept it. Move on. In other words, grow up. |
bachemar- Imagine if you (speaker) were trying on different types of mattresses (footers) and were wriggling in place (speaker vibration) and how the mattress felt. Now imagine different types of mattresses and what exactly would happen to your wriggling efforts
- Cheap spring mattress, where you can feel the springs - The springs would absorb some of your wriggling, but it would still feel uncomfortable, because you can feel the "springiness" of the springs. This springiness is really the springs bouncing back from your wriggling but with a slight time delay.
- You now add a pillowtop to the spring mattress (the Damping that was mentioned in an earlier post) - Ah much more comfortable, the pillowtop absorbs some of the low amplitude wriggling, and also absorbs some of the spring feedback, so it feels less bouncy
- An old school (non memory) foam mattress - slightly better, but still suffers from the springiness, although to a lesser extent
- You now try on a memory foam mattress (sorbothane, Herbie's discs etc.). There's no more force feedback from the mattress, and the memory foam, helps absorb and dampen your wriggling
- Sleep on the floor or a block of wood/stone/marble etc. that is lying on the floor - This would be fairly uncomfortable, the floor does nothing to absorb the wriggling, but doesn't impede it either. As you wriggle, you create multiple contact points between body and floor, which could create its own rattling sound.
- Now imagine if your skin was rigid, and had built spikes attached to your back, sleeping and wriggling on a concrete/stone floor - Similar to above, but the spikes might reduce the contact points making it slightly harder to wriggle and much more reduced rattling noise
- Now imagine sleeping with built in spikes, but these spikes have dug into the wooden floor - I imagine, the bonding of the spike with floor would create a damping effect making it harder for you to wriggle
bachemar, Imagine you are an audiophile. No, wait, too hard. Nevermind. |
Yeah, and paying for all the wasted time running down dead end rabbit holes.
Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is the part of the signal that gives us our sense of exactly what instrument it is and exactly where it is coming from is exceedingly subtle, fine, and low in level. So low in level that even very fine vibrations are enough to blur and lose it. This is why things like fO.q tape work so well. This tape only damps micro-vibrations, but does this so well a very small amount produces a very noticeable improvement in midrange presence and detail.
The same happens when ringing is eliminated by putting the speaker on springs. Townshend Podiums are the best springs because they also eliminate tonal coloration caused by resonant behavior. But however it is done springs are the best at this by far, simply because they are the best at uncoupling the speaker from the floor.
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hshifi, We had someone recently upgrade from Gaia to Townshend Podiums, they are quite a bit better. Do a search you will probably find others. If you want to save money the Nobsound springs are quite a bit cheaper than Gaia (only $30 per set of 4) and probably at least as good, not Podium level but certainly better than anything else for the money.
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Millercarbon, if he doesn't want to try the springs, yeah I'll have them back.
By the way nice write up, the concept surely isn't that hard to understand?? Well I was able to get it (once it was explained by someone not being a total clown about it). pragmasi- A spring is an energy store, a bit like a capacitor, so where does that
energy go?.. Either back into the loudspeaker or into the floor. So the
problem hasn't really been dealt with by using a spring on it's own, it
will need further engineering or tuning to ensure the energy is
dissipated benignly. That is the beauty of Townshend, Max uses an ingenious air valve that provides just the right damping factor. Clearly explained in my Townshend Podium review. Ordinary springs by the way do work a whole lot better with a whole lot less problems than you seem to think. Essentially what happens is the springs by isolating the speaker allow the whole speaker and the whole speaker alone to dissipate the energy. All other methods such as cones, spikes, mass loading, etc inevitably wind up exciting the floor, etc, all of which ultimately comes right back into the speaker creating a situation where the whole speaker/room is ringing. In other words, the situation is we can either have the speaker alone vibrating and ringing, or we can have the whole room and everything in it vibrating and ringing. The second is much worse. Springs are the least bad answer. Townshend springs with optimal damping are even less bad than that. |
I just looked up dweeb:
- a boring, studious, or socially inept person.
Spell it any way you like, there it is.
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The most cost-effective DIY for your situation will be a laminated wood platform a couple inches bigger with springs at the four corners. The first one I built was using springs sourced by searching around eBay. This is a pretty good way to go but it does call for a good deal of searching to find the springs with right dimensions and stiffness.
No matter what springs you use, and whether you use a single spring or multiple like Nobsound, it is critical that they be sized to compress about half way under load. Too stiff, they won't compress enough, they won't provide enough isolation. Too soft, they will compress too much. Read noromance's springs under turntable thread, you will see a whole bunch of us noticing the change in sound and how good it can be when this is fine tuned. Mahgister is the champ, he has used weights to tune his to the ounce.
I still have some plain springs under my subs. Gave up on these larger type springs in favor of Nobsound simply because Nobsound makes it easier to tune by adding or removing springs. Also you can make additional footers for your leftover springs. Simply use a 1/4" drill bit to replicate the Nobsound dimples to stick the springs into and you can have all the footers you want from MDF, wood, acrylic, whatever.
Study the Townshend Podiums to understand how to build your platforms. The key is to have the springs come up through the corners into a tower. This allows you to keep the whole thing very low profile. Did this with mine made of MDF, floor clearance was a fraction of an inch, total height increase less than an inch. Three quarters of that was MDF. Use a much stronger hardwood laminate and you could get by with probably 1/2" but it must be laminated for strength as well as vibration control!
This will be quite good. But I have to tell you, to be honest, nowhere near Podium level. With springs you will hear much more detail, the speakers will disappear, and a layer of grain and etch and grunge you probably never even suspected was there will be gone. With Podiums this gets even better, but the improvement in tone, the ability of each individual instrument to sound so much more like it really does, this has to be heard to be believed.
I have some springs Rick sent me, don't need them now with the Podiums. They are sized for Moabs, will work with anything around 120-170 lbs. If rixthetrick doesn't want em back I could send em on to you, if they will work. Otherwise Nobsound, all the way.
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You have a pretty good grasp of the basics of vibration control. At least in terms of- yes the mass of the speaker is so great compared to the moving mass of the cones, etc the cabinet isn’t going to move hardly at all. So holding it fixed isn’t really relevant. But if we were going to try and hold it fixed the last place we would do it is some dinky spikes way at the extreme far end of a lever arm. So you got that part pretty good. Nevertheless, if you do try different things and compare you will hear there are indeed real differences. Just about any spike or cone will be better than what you are planning on doing. Will tell you why in a minute. For now just accept that whatever you can imagine, I have done it at one time or another over the last 30+ years and not only with speakers, but everything else from the amp to the conditioner to the freaking step down transformer under the floor. The best solution of all, and for all of these, is springs. Why? Because: ringing. No matter what we do, no matter how rigid or massive, no matter if it is wood or concrete or carbon fiber, it is gonna vibrate. Look at my system. That rack is solid concrete, 4" thick cast concrete shelves with 1" of sand and 4" solid granite. The legs are cast concrete. People will say you don’t need this or you don’t need that because: concrete floor. Such people are so full of it they don’t even know. Concrete transmits vibrations just fine. I know from experience. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367Each material has it’s own inherent vibration characteristics, the speed and frequency it vibrates at best or most, and also the ones it vibrates at least or damps. The vast majority of vibration control on the market today (or ever) is nothing more than people played around to find a combination of materials that resulted in a favorable or benign acoustic signature. Hard to explain, maybe even harder to understand. But play around with these things enough you will hear it. The speaker (or other component, they are all the same) does not need to be held rigid. Quite the opposite. It needs to be free to move, and as independently of the environment as possible. Why? Because when the component is the only thing vibrating then the vibrations it generates settle down so much faster. Any coupling to the environment, be it a shelf or floor or whatever, and it will set the whole system to vibrating, and those vibrations will take a lot longer to settle down. This can actually be seen via a seismograph on a speaker. https://youtu.be/BOPXJDdwtk4?t=8 The key element in all of this is that the spatial information that tells us precisely where a sound is coming from is extremely subtle and low level. Ordinarily the ringing created by the speaker/room vibration system smears a tremendous amount of this detail. When something as effective as Townshend Podiums are used they break this ringing feedback cycle resulting in a tremendous improvement in clarity and detail. I can tell you from actual experience the plan you have will be no better, and maybe even worse, than nothing. Bolting maple to the bottom of the speakers will only add a little mass, but not very well damped mass, so it will mostly add smearing. Putting spikes under it will not help at all. Better in fact to put the spikes on the speaker, and the maple on the floor. You can experiment if you like. Most guys sorry to say come here pretending to ask but really already having their minds made up. Hope that’s not you. I am not kidding. That idea is not good. Springs are so much better a solution that even dirt cheap Nobsound springs are better than just about anything else you can do. They aren’t perfect. They require a bit of experimentation to determine the correct number of springs to tune the sound to what you want. Then more experimentation and tweaking to get them level. But in terms of price/performance they will beat just about anything. About the only thing they will not beat, not even close, are Townshend Podiums. These are engineered with just the right amount of damping to tune out the tonal aberrations that would otherwise be a problem with springs. I tried all this stuff. That was your requirement. I actually did it all. Springs are way better than anything else- except Townshend. Podiums under your speakers will open up the sound stage deep and wide, with so much detail you will wonder if it really is the same speakers. Truth of timbre will be like a whole component upgrade. Notice the one guy in the video said they had what they thought was a room problem with bass modes. I had the same thing. Was just about convinced I was going to have to break down and try bass traps. Put Podiums under my Moabs, hey where’d that bass resonance go? There is still some room resonance, but it is so much less it is hard to believe. I am now convinced a huge amount of what we consider room acoustic problems are really rooted in the speakers exciting the whole room to vibrate by not being properly isolated on springs. |
