Townshend Pods with subs

This is kind of an addendum to my Pods and Podiums reviews. When rixthetrick turned me onto springs we thought they would be great under subs. The reasoning was not only will the subs sound better, but they will prevent a lot of energy going into the turntable muddying up everything else. There is a lot of truth to that but every situation is a little bit different and mine with a 700lb solid concrete and sand turntable rack is probably one of the more different situations around. 

So I was not surprised when going from BDR Cones to the springs did not make a huge difference under the subs. (Under the Moabs, different story.) These were by the way a mix of some plain springs bought off eBay, and some Nobsound springs. My experience with them under all my other components taught me the advantages of springs (isolation, elimination of ringing) but also the disadvantage of harmonic resonance when the springs are not properly damped. 

This is all by way of explaining why the subs were the last ones to get around to trying with Pods: I just wasn't expecting that much of an improvement.  

Well, I was right about that, sort of. In terms of "bass" or what most would call bass, the definite bass notes you can hear as bass, this was indeed cleaner and faster with less overhang than before. But that's not what hit me. What really got me right away was this powerful sense of the walls and room and speakers disappearing even more. It was kind of like the needle goes back down on the same Roxy Music track, only now we are in a vast space easily 3X as big as before! Like before was a big room, now is a cavern.  

This was a bit puzzling at first, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. One of the best things about a DBA is the way all this quality low bass helps reproduce the sensation of being in a large space. Large spaces just naturally have the ability to convey very low frequency long wave vibrations in a way small spaces simply cannot do. So no wonder then that when we do hear these sounds accurately reproduced our brains just naturally report back that we are in a large space. This is where the sense of envelopment comes from. 

Pods under all five subs improves this and in doing so just naturally improves this sense of space and envelopment. I don't know what it would be like with just one- and am not about to wrestle mine around enough to find out! But wow do they ever work great with five!