Townshend Springs under Speakers

F2 is what they race to warm the crowd up for F1. The Townshend equivalent of F2 is Isolde. What I like about F1 we have a once in a lifetime battle of the greats in Hamilton vs Verstappen. The other thing I like about F1 is how it is so fast and responsive it hardly even seems fast and responsive. It seems almost not to be there at all. The F1 cables I mean. Mercedes and Red Bull make so much noise you know they are there. 

In that case Podiums first, for sure.

Good choices, I have them all, can't go wrong. Podiums typically have the biggest impact of all. Even people who already had pretty good stuff like Gaia still had big improvement going to Podiums. So I would think this will be about like that.   

Pods under components are very similar to Podiums under speakers, and they cost a lot less. It is kind of hard to rate these things but for the cost of one set of Podiums you get enough Pods to do about 5 or 6 components, which all together adds up to about the same total improvement, if you follow me.   

F1 are pretty impressive too though. Ozzy likes his better than any and he has tried a lot more high end cables than me.   

With all of these, the way they improve instrument separation is they eliminate a lot of resonant behavior that colors tone and alters each instruments individual acoustic signature or timbre. This makes each instrument sound so much more real and natural, this lets you hear each one a lot more clearly, and so they naturally appear more distinct or separate from each other on the stage.    

This is how I hear it at any rate. Because pretty much everything has these tone-shifting resonances it is easy to say they will all be better. But without hearing what you have, which one to prioritize, is pure guesswork. My hunch would be Podiums, Pods, F1. But it is likely a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Of all the various methods springs are by far the most reliably effective across a wide range of applications. Damped springs like Townshend are by far the most effective use of springs. So I have no hesitation in recommending them.

When it comes to complex specific solutions like this verity audio thing it is impossible to tell just by looking at it whether it is highly effective but costs a fortune, or ineffective but costs a fortune, or somewhere in between.

Only thing we can tell for sure they are using all these different materials because each one has its own peculiar sonic signature. This simply is the nature of vibration and there really is nothing anyone can do about that. What this means is all vibration control solutions inevitably boil down to one of two alternatives: either use springs to allow free movement, or use a combination of materials to try and achieve a sonically neutral or at least euphonic ringing.

Some of these complex materials combinations might work pretty good. When this happens they usually cost a small fortune, because of the complex engineering and construction. Also they tend to be much more specific in application, in other words might work great on one thing not at all on another. Springs in contrast are much more effective across a wide range of applications.

In other words what mitch2 said, you will just have to try it and see. My money’s on Podiums kicking major butt. But you never know for sure until you try.

MC I think questforhifi was suggesting that speakers with more rigid cabinets may benefit more from the podiums (i.e. not that rigid connection to the floor is better).

Ahh, okay. In that case then the answer is no. lol! We had some here, to be more rigid I think they would have to be solid tungsten carbide or something like that. Compared to my Moabs made of ordinary braced MDF the Podiums were about the same either way. Also these particular speakers, while the cabinets were a lot smaller and a lot more rigid and highly damped, they were so dense that together with their stands they were very close in terms of mass and center of gravity to the Moabs.    

I can see where it would make sense to think a rigid cabinet would benefit more. A speaker that is truly dead, almost all the smearing is ringing. Podiums eliminate ringing, there is almost nothing left. Should be bigger improvement than a less rigid speaker that still has a lot of residual cabinet vibration.   

Makes sense. In practice though it seems, if anything, to go the other way. But full disclosure, I have only a very few examples to go by.  

Podiums are a serious improvement regardless of what was used before. They are much better than ordinary springs like Nobsound. Several here have upgraded to them from Gaia and feel they are well worth the extra. So it is not just the isolation, but the vibration control aspect of springs that control resonance with tuned damping.     

questforhifi, You might want to read your own post again.

"I managed to pick up the Townshend seismic platform for my KEF Blades for less than what the Gaia i’s would have cost. Now given the amount of effort KEF has already gone to in making the cabinet inert (you really can leave a £1 coin on the top for weeks whilst it plays Prodigy at insane levels), I wasn’t expecting much of a change.

It was simply profound - as significant (maybe more?) than changing my whole digital front end + source + its PSUs.

and

Previously had Soundcare Superspikes - which were definately an improvement over the stock KEF spikes." 

So your "reliable user" started with KEF spikes, found Soundcare spikes were definitely an improvement, and then was shocked to hear "profound improvement" with Townshend Podiums.  

Sounds to me like the least rigid came out best, and by a lot.  

More rigid is definitely not better.

Nobsound will do 150lbs+ easy. $30. Springs outperform spikes, regardless of floor, period. Gaia outperform all spikes. But Gaia are only about the same as Nobsound, and not at all close to Townshend. Not just me saying that either. Search around, you will find people who have compared. I have compared all kinds of spikes and cones and springs. Nobsound outperforms all but Townshend, and the gap to Townshend is profound. Others have compared Gaia to Townshend, and the improvement is big enough they all feel Townshend well worth the extra. This leaves a huge gap where it is like the old saying, go big or go home. Only in this case, go home = Nobsound, you are still better than any cone or spike ever made.

Okay I get it now. EVP is confused and has conflated damping with isolation.

OC703 is acoustic panel. Great for DIY acoustic panel. But for under turntables, other components, and speakers? Nope. Nobsound are a far better choice. 

Technically it was the inconsistent unbelievable story-telling that was shown to be inconsistent and unbelievable. I am on record over and over again always believing anyone who says they can't hear. Never argue with someone telling you they can't hear. They know what they're talking about. 

Would that the reverse were true.

Spring footers under a dac seem about as necessary as wings on a pig. Unless you are perhaps on a ship in a storm, it doesn't make any sense to me. Under any normal circumstances, there is no reason whatsoever to expect it to change the sound. No more than it would help my computer run it's software better.

But...I'll leave it at that.

Promises, promises. But, you didn't leave it at that, did you? 

Why "seem"? If you actually tried it would be "know" not "seem".  

Why, "wings on a pig"? If you really thought it was this nonsensical why would you even try?   

"Under normal circumstances"? Why the qualifier? If you actually tried you would know the circumstances, wouldn't you?   
 

I’ve tried the pods under my amps and pre-amp 

Oh, so now you tell us? After promising to "leave it at that"?      

But, did you really? Pods are sized according to load. Your amp weighs exactly as much as your pre-amp? And in the beginning you said dac.   

Your story is as full of holes as they come. Zero credibility. I could say a lot more but will leave it at that. 

Thank you grannyring.   

and even then....

Yes holmz, sad to say it happens all the time. If I told you how it works you would not believe me. Suffice to say it is biased and counterproductive. Look around you will notice the same small group constantly posting off topic blather. Many of them have been here so long now they think they own the site. In effect they do, because they have bullied and deterred many from posting. Check out the recent Tekton discussion, where they mocked and attacked the OP for having the temerity to post a positive review.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/my-experience-with-tekton   
It is fine in their book to insult another member calling his room a "dungeon" like theaudiotweak did just above. That is just fine, and no one will ever be able to get that one removed. But watch how fast they remove this one for having nothing the least bit insulting, controversial, or even off topic. You did after all ask. This is the answer. But they can’t stand the truth, and so when you see it removed that will prove everything I just said is true.

Tom, Are you still trying to figure it out? Would you like some more help? What more can I do to help you figure it out, Tom? Please. Let me know.

the one we know is the Miller dungeon.

That's for sure. They work remarkably well, even in my dungeon. 

No grannyring I am not a Townshend dealer- or any other for that matter. It is like Whart laid out, they have one, but not much of a one, and people wind up going direct. Not that you need to apologize for anything but thanks again, appreciate the sentiment.  

What has happened, we have been talking about it. Hate to be mysterious and confusing but it really is like Mia said and all kidding aside it really is quite tiresome. Not you of course but a lot of em. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQh4YRw9H8&t=160s

French Horn. Not tenor. Never could sing worth a damn.

Thanks grannyring, appreciate it. But honestly, "this endeavor" no one even knows what it is- including me!

For the time being I am weighing my options. One of them being sell it all go off grid live the RV life a while. Seriously. Given it serious thought. Or move, TN top of the list, and build custom. Probably will do something in between. Could see my listening room transforming into a highly selective by-appointment boutique audio salon. Townshend, Origin Live, Audio Hungary and maybe even Synergistic Research would be a good fit, and the idea of taking Chuxpona on the road, could be fun.

First and foremost everything has to be a good fit. Forget shill, I don’t even "sell". When something gets me excited I tell people about it. So it can only be that kind of stuff. Also there has to be a need. That is why I say "maybe even" Synergistic Research. They make great stuff no doubt. But just how bad do they need another dealer? Townshend, Origin Live and Audio Hungary on the other hand, they have great products but no real market presence here.

I could go into greater detail but frankly so tired of having every word twisted around, no thanks. Especially since I really am just weighing my options. For now.

When I do decide, the good ones like you will be among the first to know.

With all due respect, this bunch is as reasonable as a pack of hyenas.

Good points all. But, forget trying to reason with them. They are not reasonable. Doomed to failure. All we can do is maybe use the attention they generate to help reach the great mass of readers. One thing (among the many) they never will understand, I wouldn’t have near the audience without their constant bickering keeping me front and center.

The only question that remains is when did he start the process of going from happy customer to rep.

I have nothing to hide. It is all in my posts. Go read through them all. There you will find I got excited about Black Diamond Racing Cones and was for some years their only retail outlet in the NW. If you can glorify my taking them around to demo and call that retail. This is all public knowledge.

Then also around this time I was learning from my great audio mentor and friend Stewart Marcantoni. Stewart made his money selling cars but his only real love was audio and so after years of normal high level audiophile type stuff he cut back from cars and started running a very select boutique type audio business from home. It was Stewart who introduced me to Caelin Gabriel back when Shunyata was just a dream, Ted Denney back when Synergistic was still pretty small, and a few others. It was Stewart who pulled the strings to get me into CES even though I really only had one very crude prototype to display.

As to "when did he start" I know the question is of course not genuine but born in jealousy. Anyone truly without an axe to grind would ask only, "Does the stuff perform as he says? Are his evaluations accurate?"

It does. They are. This only makes the haters rage all the more. Sad. So freaking sad.

Anybody remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules and Vincent are discussing why Marsellus Wallace had Tony thrown out a window? Vincent is adamant it was because Tony had crossed a line massaging Mia Wallace’s feet. Round and round it goes, and a very serious discussion it is. Classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD1CNqghN7Q

Only later, the one person who would know for sure Mia Wallace herself shows just how silly all the rumors are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQh4YRw9H8
In case you missed it the whole point of this post comes right at the end:

https://youtu.be/2HQh4YRw9H8?t=160

I have a couple of questions for you.

Without springs the cabinet causes the floor to vibrate. This vibration manifests as ringing that can be seen on a seismograph. It also manifests as a blurring of image focus and harmonic coloring that can be heard.

Are we to believe speakers ring in the sub-hertz regions and this noise actually transcends into audible noise that the human ear easily detects?

No. The smearing and ringing is very much in the normal audio band.   

The sub region thing comes from springs working down to very low frequency. How low depends on spring and load. The goal with our systems is to get it down to below where it matters for us, somewhere in the low single digits something like that.

"Ringing" is sort of a metaphor for a whole host of vibrations. It starts with the voice coil and driver. These excite the baffle and speaker cabinet. The speaker cabinet excites the floor, which in turn excites the walls and everything else.

None of this is a one-way street. Watch the Ledermann video for a great illustration of how vibrations travel up and down back and forth in complex patterns. "Ringing" is shorthand for this complex network of patterns.

The big benefit of springs, be they Townshend or Nobsound or whatever, is they allow the speaker alone to dissipate all this energy. This happens a lot faster with a speaker cabinet than a whole room. It is real easy, and pretty darn impressive, to do this and hear just how big a difference this makes.

I have always had the understanding that Sound Pressure Levels were the culprit that vibrates flooring and not speaker systems.

Yes and why can’t it be both? Surely it is. The mechanical aspect of it is however a lot more than people think. Heard it at my place, heard it even more dramatically at Brandon Wade’s recently. Mechanical transmission is huge. Have to hear it to believe it.

Its true. ;) There is ringing. Also no matter what happens the haters will see it only in the worst possible light. Definitely.

grannyring-

Well I have owned the Star Sound Sistrum and Townshend Pod products and have heard first hand the differences each approach has to the resulting sound. Speakers on a hard wood floor with crawl space under the house. The Star Sound Sistrum platforms were great. They tended to spotlight the highs and upper mids while speeding up and tightening the bass. Improved focus and inner detail. Less blurring of massed instruments.

The Townshend Pod products removed noise and made the music sound much more at ease and enjoyable. More natural if you will. They made the music more fun to listen to in my experience. That is how I experienced both methods of “isolation”. Just my experience and I realize this topic is more complex than my singular experience.

That is what I would expect just by looking at them. You’re a qualified reviewer in my book so there you go. If they want another one they are welcome to go ahead and send a set my way.

Thanks tweak1, Nobsound are indeed an absolute bargain. 

The bargain for the money is Nobsound, at $30 dirt cheap but better than most anything else until you get to Townshend.

At least I did give you the benefit of the doubt. Oh well.

If you look at the Townshend videos on You Tube there is one in a convention hall..and after they suddenly Cutaway from Jumping Jack Flash they show the speakers side by side..One speaker on the podium and one on points...there is 0 noise on either display. No seismic noise that day?

Here is one, where you can clearly see there is a low noise level on both, maybe slightly more on the spiked speakers on the left. https://youtu.be/7ew4dRUEm-k?t=30 But that is not the whole point. As has been stated many, many times, the main benefit is to remove ringing with the floor thereby allowing the speaker cabinet vibrations to dissipate out much faster for the cleaner clearer sound everyone reports hearing. Watch the video it is perfectly clear.

Here’s another one https://youtu.be/BOPXJDdwtk4?t=27 You can see quite clearly there is some background noise on both speakers, just a little more on the spiked one on the left. You can even see the one on the left make a little blip before Max stomps. just from moving his foot getting ready to stomp.

There’s a whole bunch of these. If you have one showing dead flat make-believe like you are saying please provide the link so we can check it out. I would sure like to see it.

This is so clear and easy to understand, especially for a guy as otherwise sharp as yourself, I kind of want to think you are trolling.

One thing I will say, the name Seismic put me off for a long time. Yes there are seismic vibrations and yes they probably do have some impact and yes these things are designed to filter out those sorts of vibrations. But the name is misleading in the sense the seismic part is a sideshow. The real benefit is eliminating ringing. That is what really accounts for all the great improvement everyone is hearing. Maybe that is what is throwing you off the way it did me?

Springs and floppy things allow the cabinet to retain information and resonance far to long.

Actually no, that is not what happens. This has been explained so clearly so many times it is hard to see this as anything resembling trying to understand. But for those who actually are trying to understand:  

Without springs the cabinet causes the floor to vibrate. This vibration manifests as ringing that can be seen on a seismograph. It also manifests as a blurring of image focus and harmonic coloring that can be heard.   

Springs break this mechanical connection eliminating the ringing with the floor. Townshend Podiums, by adding precision damping also eliminate harmonic and tonal coloration. Both effects are easily heard. This is not at all subtle. This happens regardless of the floor material. Concrete, wood, does not matter. Same thing. This happens when the floor is solid, and when the floor is flimsy and bouncy.    

So putting speakers on springs actually allows cabinet vibrations to dissipate faster and cleaner- especially when the springs are damped as in Townshend Podiums.   

The huge improvement in sound quality everyone hears is perfectly explained once you properly understand what is going on.

If the speakers are extremely heavy that is mass, which is in the kilograms, while the moving parts are cones and voice coils, are in the grams. What this means, if you know your physics, f=ma force equals mass times acceleration, you can have a hell of a lot of driver cone acceleration while moving the speaker mass only microscopically.   

Still, this microscopic movement matters. Because the finest details we hear are so low in level they correspond to cone movement measured in angstroms. Really, really small. 

Which might argue for rigid mounting. Except it turns out the bigger problem is once the mass does move it transmits this vibration down through the cabinet into the floor and from then on the whole speaker/room system is vibrating.

This ringing goes on a lot longer than if the same vibrations were confined to the speaker cabinet alone. It is the duration of the ringing and not the amplitude that blurs and smears and loses detail and dynamics. This is visually demonstrated by putting a seismograph (in the form of an iPad) on a speaker. The speaker on spikes shows obvious prolonged ringing. The same speaker on Podiums shows virtually no ringing. The sound we hear corresponds perfectly to this demonstration.

There is indeed some loss of dynamics. But there is also the same loss even when supposedly rigidly mounted on spikes or cones or whatever, even on concrete. This happens because of another physics feature, leverage. Drivers are always some distance from the floor. This distance is a lever arm. Anyone can prove this, simply push on the top of your speaker, believe me it will move. Push hard enough it will fall over, spikes or not. But even a small push of a fraction of a pound will with tall speakers leverage into lots of pounds at the base.

The speaker rocks. Either way. Virtually the same amount. Main difference, springs make it easier to see. Real difference, springs allow the vibrations to dissipate much faster. That is why they sound so much cleaner, in spite of superficial appearances.

a point you miss, and miss and miss….

Again with the insults. I am so done with you.

So the guy who has nothing to sell you call a shill, while holding up as a paragon of impartial virtue a guy you know DOES have something to sell. Then after calling me a shill you have the gall to throw the low reading comprehension retort.    

in my attempt to not promote a competing product 

How about instead of attempting to promote or not promote any product you attempt merely to promote the truth? Why not give that a shot? For a change?

The ultimate goal is for the speaker to be held in space as rigidly in space as possible so that any movement in any of the speakers drivers is not modified but a facsimile of what came from the amplifier.

He may be right about this being the "ultimate" goal. Theoretically, at least. In a perfect world.     

In the world we live in however there is no infinitely immovable anything. Everything however hard and stiff and damped always winds up moving and vibrating. Vibrations being what they are in the world we live in some of them reflect right back to the driver, while the rest causes the whole mass to vibrate in sympathy. Just the way it is, and no amount of theoretical "ultimate goal" gonna change it one bit.  

That is why these things work. Everything vibrates no matter what, and so it turns out to work a whole lot better to let them vibrate but in a way that is isolated from everything else.

Until you put his speakers on Podiums, and hear the profound improvement. Okay maybe not even then. But those still open to learning and with a desire for better sounding systems regardless of what else it might imply, those people will definitely hear it and be happy and want it.

Read actual user comments. Wobbly floors, solid floors, concrete floors, does not matter.