This is my thought when trying to overcome the debate of coupling vs. isolation. My experience of having floor stander speakers on a second story suspended wood floor with carpet was a challenge. I tried spikes, no spikes, limestone pads with spikes and no spikes and Herbies gliders. The floor would pick up vibrations and transmit them causing some strange room nodes in the bass. I finally mitigated the problem by using Townshend podiums which de-coupled the speakers from the floor. So I'm a big fan of isolation at least in my situation.
Speaker Spikes - Working Principle
Vibration damping obvious makes sense (in speakers just as well as in cars).
That involves 'killing' (converting into heat, through typically internal friction) kinetic energy. So any sort of elastic material (rubber has lots of internal friction) makes sense.
And then there are spikes. Using a pointy hard object and pair it with a softer, elastic material (to deform, and kill kinetic energy) can work; think metal sharp spike into carpet or wood floor.
But what is the idea behind pairing fairly unelastic metal (brass for example) with similarly unelastic (brass, stone, etc) material (example photo provided)? Only thing I can come up with: LOOKS good and makes owner feel good thinking its an improvement (works only for Audiophiles though),
Even more curious: are they ENGINEERED "spikes" (vibration dampers or shock absorbers) for speakers that are TUNED for the frequency (and mass) that needs to be dampened? Can piston style fluid dampers be designed for the high frequencies (100, 1000, 10000 Hz) using geometry, nozzles size and viscosity of the fluid?
