I've had these for about ten years in listening rooms of various sizes. They work. They're unconventional, but they do make a bigger and wider sound. It's the difference between throwing sidearm and coming over the top. |
Got a pair of Mapleshade Bedrock Ultra's yesterday and been playing with speaker placement. So far the product does as it claims. I am using a $200pr of Cambridge Audio S30's with them and i can't believe the sound that is coming out of these things. My room is only 12.5ft x 11ft and i always had a 45hz peak and quite a bit of midbass suckout. I ran some tests with tones and a decibel meter and i still have a peak at 45hz but the midbass is back and i went from a 13db difference between 45 and 80hz to only a 5db peak. The soundstage is wider and the center image is great. Working on the tilt back now, right and left image is a little low. Hopefully i can get it right. |
When seated your ear level should be between mid and tweeter. |
I'm pretty sure most speakers were designed with tweeter height as a priority. Most speakers put the tweeter above the mid/low driver(s), some put them under, some put them off to the side. It's not a random placement of what looks best.
Most recommend the tweeters at ear height. Some people are sensitive to that, and prefer the tweeter above or below that. Room acoustics have a big impact on this as well, as does toe in.
At the end of the day, no two room, speakers, and sets of ears are alike. Experiment and use whatever works best for you. Trying them on the floor and tilting them up doesn't cost anything if you use stuff around the house to get an idea of what's going on. Same can be said for raising or lowering the speakers. |
Many, if not most, speaker owners manuals of the higher end, do speak of tweeter height, at least what I have experienced. But more importantly, they speak of the listeners sweet spot, along with speaker/room interaction. |
there is no optimum tweeter height from what i know. some people like at ear level, some at below ear level, or higher then ear level. all subjective i guess. |
Cio52 wrote:
Mapleshade has very good advice on their website and they back it up with a money back guarantee. The low height and tilt back set-up has to do with the Allison Effect (floor boundry bass reinforcement) and time alignment (think Vandersteen or Thiel speakers). The brass footers and wood plinths drain internal vibrations keeping the sound clean. This is a win win if you try them out.
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Tilting speakers back don't time align them and tweeter height is very important to things like perspective and size. I cannot see this working better than stands that place the tweeters at the optimum listening height.
regards, |
i got a pair of mapleshade stands coming this week. will give impressions once i get them. |
I have wood floors and borrowed some Paramount Zeeba speaker couplers for my Lansche No. 5 speakers. The improvement was astounding. I am definitely going to buy a pair.
Greg |
When on carpet, spikes help the steadiness of the box to not move front and back when the woofer is pulsating, which is always. Never worked for me on carpet without spikes of some kind. |
Putting full range speakers on floor does seem to deepen the bass, in my experience, but adds so much resonance that the sound at least in my experience ends up sounding confused.
(or is it me that is "confused"? Quien sabe....).
Art |
I use small full range speakers in a small room. I had them up on stands to bring the sound to ear level. Then switched to floor mount on 'tilted' stands. The bass is incredible. I should mention the speakers is John Blue JB 4's.. As I write this I'm listening to the Eagles long road out of Eden album. The bass is much deeper with floor stands. For my room : 10 x 16, speakers on the floor is much better, with tighter, and more responsive bass, and a smooth mid and upper range. It make it feel like You are sitting in a club with the band right in front of you. |
I have a low ceiling in my basement 84" so I like the sound with the tweeters lower than ear level. I have 20" monitor speakers and 12" stands and also dedicated 16" stands and I prefer the lower stands much better. I also have them tilted up with old school Audioquest sorbothane dampers. I've also experimented with the speakers on the floor tilted up and I like that presentation as well. I think it all depends on the room but for me with the low ceiling, low stands sound better... |
Funny this came up just one day after I placed my Grand Veena speakers right on the floor without their spikes.
The GV have been reported to be a bit shy in the bass.
Not now.
In fact all the frequencies seem a tad more robust.
The speakers are tilted back already for time alignment so no need to fuss with that.
I need to spend a few more days running spikeless with the speaker sitting on a carpeted(not thick pile)concrete basement floor.
Maybe it's just the difference in height to my ears, but I don't think so, as the tone never changes with the spikes even when I sit upright or stand up.
I know this goes against the grain and harkens back to the days when spikes were just snake oil to the purists, but there is something to be gained this way with my set up.
Has anyonelse had any similare spikeless experiences? |
Artmaltman, Or a book shelf close to the wall which happens to be a room boundary and room boudaries support low frequencies. Except most folks pull the speakers a few feet into the room distancing the speaker from all room boundaries. The floor is another room boundary and could give the listen the sound they are looking for while maintaining the improved imaging of placing the speakers into the room. |
I suppose one could argue that regardless of the effect, the speakers were developed and voiced for traditional floor stands? |
12-20-10: Onhwy61 wrote:
The concept is well grounded in theory. It greatly reduces the floor bounce cancellation effect. You may or may not like the resulting sound. Nope. It changes the frequencies that are most affected by floor bounce and/or SBIR but it does not minimize the influence unless you have a favorite frequency. Kal |
I agree with Kal. I have tried many of the tweaks advocated by Mapleshade, and my experience has been less than positive.
I have tried may different speakers on the floor, albeit with thick cutting boards underneath and not Mapleshade products. No good for me. I would have to say the same thing about their advice regarding speaker and seating positioning. Me no like.
Maybe these guys have better ears than I do, or are using wildly different gear than I have, or I've just been doing it wrong all these years. |
Getting the tilt angle the same is critical. |
Mapleshade has very good advice on their website and they back it up with a money back guarantee. The low height and tilt back set-up has to do with the Allison Effect (floor boundry bass reinforcement) and time alignment (think Vandersteen or Thiel speakers). The brass footers and wood plinths drain internal vibrations keeping the sound clean. This is a win win if you try them out.
People often change/upgrade. They go from monitors to floor standing, floor standing to monitor, then to cone/planar/electrostatic, etc. What the guy did before, during, or after makes no difference because their room and equipment has nothing to do with your room and equipment. Also, the people who sell their stuff on the Gon seem to come out OK. It's what makes this a fun hobby. |
The concept is well grounded in theory. It greatly reduces the floor bounce cancellation effect. You may or may not like the resulting sound. |
I tried out some for a VERY short time; sounded strange. Sold them on here; saw them for sale again in a short time. So that is three votes [ origional seller, me, guy I sold them to] no. They violate a well known principal of speaker design that most speakers, even large ones like B&W 801s, sound better with air under them. |
I get much better bass, and overall a better balanced sound by putting my small speakers on the floor, and I am just using 2 inch thick cutting boards with spikes, and ceramic cones under the speakers for the tilt. |
The idea behind the Mapleshade stand is to maintain tonal balance by not distancing the speaker from a critical room boundary, the floor.
I own a pair of Meridian M2 active speakers with dedicated stands. These stands also position the speaker close to the floor, approximately 12", with a tilt mechanism to aim the speaker at the listening position. With this set up the user must use a laser pointer to insure the speakers have the same amount of tilt.
This gives you the best of both worlds. Definitely worth trying with your speakers. |
I liked the Bedrock Stands in my medium sized room. Money back guarantee and good resale value too, if you use them for a while. I also used them successfully with small floor standers without the extreme tilt back. |
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Mapleshade has lots of unusual advice.
Kal |
