Townshend Audio ones Through

georgehoffman60-

Following MC I replaced my Gaia’s with the podiums and I was very surprised at the improvement. IMHO they work very very well with Full Range speakers and ribbon cables (In my case the wonderful silversmith Fideliums). Hard to imagine a more “live” sound. PRAT is amazing. Like others I thought I had vibration solved until these. Thanks MC 

You're welcome. My pleasure. It really is hard to believe the effect these things have- until you hear it!

xenolith- Lotta nice folks in the boutique audio world, but I certainly view John and Max and Sue Townshend to be among the nicest. 

That has been my experience as well. Including combining one Pod with Nobsound. Played around with a lot of different combinations. One BDR Cone with 2 Nobsound springs, 1 Pod 2 Nob, 3 Pods 1 Nob, etc. Not so much to find out, but more like you did, now what can I do with this leftover Pod? lol!  

That kind of thing is how I got the idea to put them under my crossover. One of my better improv moves, for sure. Learned by playing around with them like you just did. 

Turntables are all different. Mine because of the rim drive motor works best with Pods under the BDR Source Shelf. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Yours may work best on a Podium, or Platform, or Pods. So much depends on details. Now with a lot of experience I am pretty good at figuring this out for myself. Even now though I run it all past John. Now you know why. He's the best! 

Those are BDR Round Things. I have a lot of BDR from back in the 90's when it was pretty much the best thing around. So for years they were under everything. Pods and Podiums are a lot better, hugely better. But they can be used together. In my case since I already have them it cost me nothing. But if I didn't already have them no way would I buy, and that is why I don't even hardly mention them any more. It is such a chore moving the speakers around I haven't even tried to compare, just use em as much out of habit as anything, to be honest.   

The Round Things under the Podiums, different story. Those I did try both ways and they do make an improvement. Not enough to be worth buying though. If you use them on carpet I would just look for some nice looking furniture gliders, anything that will slide on carpet as that will make small adjustments a lot easier. 

Good Ale We Seek!  https://youtu.be/4YxXQd3y6ow?t=61

I have a difficult room with different ceiling heights and much glass. As a result I get an over abundance of the bass range in the 20 hz to 120 hz range. Do you think the podiums would help tame this down?

I’ll be surprised if they don’t. See my comments elsewhere, I was definitely surprised to find a lot of what I assumed was room acoustics went away once the speakers were on Podiums.

What I think happens is, a lot of what we think of as room acoustic problems is really speaker vibrations going directly into the floor, where it travels through to walls and ceiling. So the whole room is being excited and vibrating directly by the speaker. This is in addition to acoustic energy.

Put speakers on Podiums and all this mechanical vibration energy goes away leaving only the room acoustics to deal with. The difference is huge! My room had a good amount of undamped bass boominess that went away once the speakers were on Podiums.

It is the Townshend damping engineering that accounts for this. The reason I am sure of this is mine were on ordinary undamped springs before they were on Podiums. On springs I got a lot of improvement in clarity and detail, with a nice reduction in grain and glare. The sound became a lot less fatiguing, just with plain springs. But the bass boom was pretty much unaffected.

When they went on Podiums everything got even better, plus there was a huge improvement in tone or truth of timbre. It is pretty obvious this is due to eliminating a lot of resonance that colors instrumental textures. Bass sounds a lot more clean and clear, even more articulate than it was- and with a DBA it was pretty darn articulate to begin with!

I should note that so far only the Moabs are on Podiums. My subs are still on ordinary springs. So just the Podiums alone was enough to make a big improvement in reducing boominess in my room. Working on getting the subs on Pods- but I have 5 subs, that is a lot of Pods!

Based on what I have seen together with what people have told me I would think a lot of your problem is vibrations going from the speakers through the floor into walls where it gets the glass vibrating, and the glass is not stiff like sheetrock it is almost like a driver or drum the way it moves. If that is indeed where a lot of your problem is coming from then isolating speakers from floor might be an even bigger improvement in your room than mine, and it was significant in mine.

The Podium feet are a sort of hard rubber. It can slide on hardwood but not easily, not unless your speaker is very light.  

The thing about them is each corner is a spring that must be free to move in all directions. Because of this they don't slide around like anything normal you would be familiar with. It is best to put them right where you want them to be, and then put the speaker on them. The included instructions are clear on how to set them up and get them perfectly level. 

Your speakers aren't attached, they sit on the Podium. Same as they would sit on the floor. No difference. The springy rocking only happens when you tap them. In normal use even playing music quite loud the speakers do not move at all. So no reason for them to be attached. 

Mine are on BDR Cones with Round Things, exact same as what I was doing before. Only now the whole thing is on Podiums. You can see how it looks here https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367  

You can also use furniture gliders or other similar stuff under the Podium feet. Mine are on BDR Round Things, and there are others using different sorts of gliders there. They are pretty flexible in terms of it depends what you like and what kind of floor you have. 

One of the best parts is once you get them on there it is super easy to get them precisely level. Before using Podiums I had to use shims and even then it was hard to get perfectly level. With Podiums the knob at each corner turns silky smooth and getting them level is easy and fast. Best of all once you do get them perfectly set up and level they stay put!

samgar2,
Podiums are impressive. At the time when I did my review I had tried them based on how well ordinary springs work, and also from having used Pods under my turntable, amp, and phono stage. Podiums are pretty expensive and I wasn’t aware of hardly anyone using them. Pods use basically the same technology so this was a good way of checking them out before stepping up to Podiums.

Then on the review several people posted their experience, which were all like mine, excellent. Some had already done so before but it is hard sometimes to search around and put it all together. We wound up with a pretty wide range of speakers, both in size and cost, all of us real happy and hearing pretty much the same improvements. The main one for me being a freedom from tonal coloration that makes every instrument sound so much more distinct by revealing its natural harmonic structure or timbre. Pods have the same effect but Podiums even more so.

If you are considering them you might want to check it out. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/townshend-audio-podiums-the-full-review  
If you decide to get them I highly recommend you contact John Hannant at Townshend. John Hannant is who I think you meant by John Townshend. I gave him the dimensions and weight of my Moabs and he got me the perfect size Podiums.

Technically no, the first one was about Townsend not Townshend. Still, coulda been worse https://youtu.be/oCLtaK7KLEM?t=123