Townshend Seismic Podiums

don't believe me? - put a heavy dumbbell on your acoustics - the sound will deteriorate - it will become jammed ...

However, just like isolation produces a decolouration by helping to limit cabinet resonances, placing a tuned mass damper with absorbtion materials atop of the cabinet will realise equally a significant increase in performance.

@serjio - I know you didn't mean speaker cabinets, and your discussion has merit, I am just trying to point out one exception.

Tuned Mass Damper, some of you might want to look that up, those of you holding onto rigid methodologies. You can be stuck in the methods of the past, but once you have tasted superior engineering practices, make no mistake, you will go to church (so to speak).

@pengun & clearthinker - boing boing sounds abso-flaming-lutely glorious!

I was able to borrow some for a month while a friend was building his house. I was blown away. I build custom speakers. So I got out my accelerometer to measure vibrations of the cabinets. With and without were VERY different in the cabinet vibrations. And it was very audible. ONLY cost prevents me from purchasing my own. YMMV, but I git measurable results to back up what I was hearing in my own system.

Nobsound springs are under $30 per set of four. They are not damped, and this results in some amount of resonant behavior coloring the sound. It is however almost always low level enough to not be noticeable- except when compared to Townshend which are optimally damped and therefore have a huge reduction in coloration and greatly improved natural timbre.

My speakers, amp, turntable, everything went from Cones to springs to Pods and Podiums. The improvement at each step was not subtle. Not at all. I dare say no one would prefer Cones to Nobsound, and am even more certain everyone would prefer Podiums to Nobsound- or any other undamped plan spring. I can totally believe you were blown away. Try Nobsound, they are not on the level of Townshend but you will be shocked how good they are for the money.

I didn't like the floating nature pods for floor standing speakers, and I have my turntable on a Townshend platform which works great.

For speakers however, I put mine on top of solid, multi layer platforms that drain the internal speaker vibrations/distortion to the floor, in my case a suspended wood floor where this type set up works best because of how the platform drains the noise to the floor. You can also put the platforms on top of roller blocks for more isolation if you want, but then you get that floating effect.

Check out Symposium audio - they have different levels of platforms and you can talk to the owner Peter about your situation - he is very helpful and sensitive to budgetary needs and probably has come across your exact situation in his 29 years in the business doing the same thing.