Speaker Spikes - Working Principle

I also use ISO Acoustics Gaia under my speakers, and there is no doubt that they improved the sound over spikes. They don't decouple fully, but work well in that direction, and, along with the likes of related Townshend products, reduce the "smear" that results from vibration, and also improve the focus of bass response.

The disadvantage, at least for some (not in my case), is that hard-coupling devices like spikes do transmit more bass energy to the floor, and some listeners prefer to have that visceral feedback, which is reduced with the use decoupling devices.

Springs/ Townshend products suit me best. I suppose it’s like many things audio, a bottomless lake of options and definite maybes. 
 

Hope you all have enjoyed the Holidays and wish you peace in the new year. 

I am having second thoughts about replacing carpets with hard wood floor in my listening area after reading this thread and one other thread where low rumbles are a major problems and headaches. My wife wants to replace carpet with hardwood flooring including my listening area. To date, I had no issues from floor reflections to unwanted vibration creeping in to my audio signal path whether I played LPs or CDs. My Thiel 3.6s are on factory provided carpet piercing spikes and my TT stand also have spikes and anchored to the floor board.

I feel like 2024 is going to give me headaches we replace the carpets. I am planning to use a rug between speakers and my listening position to control floor reflections. But now I see another whole set of problems are going to creep up on me (LOL).

Wish you all Happy New Year!

So much BS in here ^^^^!!!!
 

Spikes under speakers serve to MASS COUPLE the speaker to the mass of the floor. It helps to change the resonant frequencies of the cabinets by adding the mass of the floor to the mass of the cabinets. Whether or not it makes an audible improvement is highly subjective. But in the case of underbraced cabinets, it can help. It’s as subjective as cable lifters, mono block amps on stands, speaker cables, and component spikes. One definite advantage of mass coupling is using metal wood screws to mount a turntable shelf to the wall studs. It greatly lowers the resonant frequency of the shelf supporting the turntable.

This is my thought when trying to overcome the debate of coupling vs. isolation.  My experience of having floor stander speakers on a second story suspended wood floor with carpet was a challenge. I tried spikes, no spikes, limestone pads with spikes and no spikes and Herbies gliders.  The floor would pick up vibrations and transmit them causing some strange room nodes in the bass.  I finally mitigated the problem by using Townshend podiums which de-coupled the speakers from the floor.  So I'm a big fan of isolation at least in my situation.