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Tough Nut Cones Isolation for loudspeakers, brilliant solution over spikes

I wanted to share with everyone an experience I had with trying to decide how to decouple my Arendal 1723 THX Monitors and their stands from the floor. 

Most of us know now that the days of thinking metal spikes were the best idea are over. It generates immense pounds per square inch of pressure into one point and all that energy is then transferred to the floor.... the last thing we want to do with speakers. Many mid-fi to high-end loudspeakers now ship with isolation footers/feet instead of spikes.
I happened across a FANTASTIC video from Jay's Iyagi:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32DrKCqLWkk&t=788s 
Immediately upon watching that video, based on measurements from Jay, I contacted Derrick at Tough Nut Cones in Canada. So for $170 per stand/speaker I bought the Medium Cones. Derrick and his wife were amazing to talk to and deal with. 
So I now have them installed.... the sound is truly brilliant. And the cones are just "pointy" enough that they work on both solid floors and carpeted floors (as I have) and they look really wicked under the stands.

audiotruth

Showing 2 responses by cbrez

cbrez
100 posts
 

Thanks for sharing and congrats on the results you’ve gotten. It’s also always good to hear about some reasonably priced components in audio.

Based on @buellrider97 thread about footers and some general interest in trying something other than spikes on the stands of my Dynaudio speakers, I built some spring based footers. After an initial total failure, I got a second version working and after I installed them, I was floored at the difference over the supplied spikes. Better instrument definition and soundstage placement. Bass had better definition as well, but I found I had to adjust my sub a bit after I spent some time with the footers. I’m guessing that had something to do with the floor coupling with the spikes.

i’ve not tried any other footers previously, so can only compare to the spikes, but it’s been a real difference.

cbrez
100 posts
 

Thanks for mentioning that @audiotruth. Right now just on some very cheap springs from Amazon, but I do have some additional plans to build footers there as well. Yes, always good to keep the neighbors happy. Thank you for putting this back in my head!

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