Leo Kottke is a frequent guest on this show, one of my faves.
Speaking of Minnesota, Magnepan is still thriving. I quite like their low end speakers, no problems with too much bass there either.
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Contrary to what Patrick posted, I think this makes perfect sense. Sound travels faster in solids than in air, guestimating for a wooden floor something like Mach 4. Spikes work just like the bridge on a guitar, coupling vibrations from the enclosure to the huge soundboard formed by a wooden floor.
Under the right circumstances, you could well hear the sound coupled through the floor earlier than the direct sound.
Perhaps spikes are OK for a really solid concrete floor but inner tubes, quash balls or springs for decoupling a seriously heavy plinth with a wooden floor. Very good decoupling is is way better on wooden floors. I like to see the speakers gently rocking at about 1hz 
About cabinets, I'm sure Wilson are way ahead of anything I tried, but I got good results with 1/2" concrete bonded to 1/2" MDF and also 10mm aluminum bonded to 1/2" MDF. Both these are far better than 2" wooden work top I tried once.
About cabinets, I'm sure Wilson are way ahead of anything I tried, but I got good results with 1/2" concrete bonded to 1/2" MDF and also 10mm aluminum bonded to 1/2" MDF. Both these are far better than 2" wooden work top I tried once.
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I heard the Sasha 1.5 years ago at Music Lovers in Berkely with some friends. It was really enjoyable. There was a real presence and realism to the sound with good recordings. My friend Dawn got a real kick out of the finger snapping on one cut. it sounded like they were in the room. Probably a good choice in removing the sub. They had a Wilson sub with it and integration was not the best, just okay. William Kline really went out of his way to get things set up for us, really nice guy!
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What one does with 'simple' speakers can be transformative ... 30 years ago I did DIY stands of my "own design" which was all about mass - from observation, and instinctively. Created a column of concrete blocks, glued together, with all internal cavities filled with fine sand, the base was spiked in a triangle configuration, through the carpet to the concrete slab floor - when moving, these concrete columns were a major exercise in taking care, . B&Ws on top, then mass loaded them with vast quantities of book volumes, in a huge stack, on top. Yes, of course it looked ridiculous, everyone had a good laugh when first seeing it - but it worked. The 'flimsy' B&Ws now had an authority and true weight to the sound, which made the monsters in the showrooms I visited at the time sound quite pathetic.
I would push on the behemoths in the hifi shop, and they would bounce around like a hatstand - do the same with what I had at home, and up to a certain level of thrust it felt like pushing on the side of a bank safe.
What it got me, was the potential for 'big' sound ... when all was in alignment the sound stage expanded to enormous size, and completely overwhelmed the house ...
. B&Ws on top, then mass loaded them with vast quantities of book volumes, in a huge stack, on top. Yes, of course it looked ridiculous, everyone had a good laugh when first seeing it - but it worked. The 'flimsy' B&Ws now had an authority and true weight to the sound, which made the monsters in the showrooms I visited at the time sound quite pathetic.I would push on the behemoths in the hifi shop, and they would bounce around like a hatstand - do the same with what I had at home, and up to a certain level of thrust it felt like pushing on the side of a bank safe.
What it got me, was the potential for 'big' sound ... when all was in alignment the sound stage expanded to enormous size, and completely overwhelmed the house ...
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The point I'm trying to make is that, if our goal is reproduced sound that is similar to live sound, then some structure-borne vibration should be part of it. Put a bass drum between your speakers and have someone play it while you sit in your usual listening position (not really, I think we can consider this a "thought experiment"). You will feel a lot of drum "sound" in your feet. There is nothing wrong with that.
Before someone points it out: yes, I am contradicting myself. I am not convinced that spikes are the best thing on a hard floor, especially a wooden floor, because I think they couple too much vibration to the floor, which resonates. But going to great lengths to minimize structure-borne vibration is a waste of time because none is as bad as too much.
As for reflections from floors, ceilings, walls, furnishings, etc: You already know what your room sounds like. You can understand someone speaking in that room, and if someone plays an instrument in that room it sounds "normal". So if your loudspeakers accurately reproduce a decent recording of music in that room, it will sound "right", if the speaker has similar dispersion characteristics to the live voice/instrument, and if early cabinet diffraction doesn't swamp the sound of the room.
Can you tell I built Linkwitz Pluto speakers?
The problem with most "monkey coffin" speakers is that the sound of the cabinet (reflections, refraction, resonance) swamps the sound of the driver and the sound of the room, the 2 things that are "right". The most interesting graph on that page John posted was not the flat panel resonance graphs, but the cardboard tube graph. And that was a 12" diameter cardboard tube, not a 4" diameter ABS tube with a vertically-firing driver on the end of it.
I've played around with many ideas, in my head, about to do with carcases over the year - but haven't progressed much further than that. The ideal, for me is zero vibration and sound transmitted through the surfaces when the accelerator is flat to the floor - the little plastic enclosures actually do surprisingly well here, if coupled to heavy mass.
The real requirement is to dissipate the energy that the structures supporting the drivers have transferred to them. Mass damping does it, and conversion to heat via viscoelastic materials will do it. Either you move the vibration to right away from areas which add spurious sound, or convert it to something benign.
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But this can be fixed - a standard tweak I always do is to stabilise the carcase sufficiently that that it plays an extremely minor role in the proceedings ...
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That's something I've never found to be a problem - the technique I use is to make sure the sound directly created by the drivers is clean enough, and then subjectively any sort of sound refraction and the like issues don't play a part. At least for me. My brain can easily discard spurious responses of this type, unconsciously - I don't need the cabinet to do it for me.
Hmmm ... let's go to an "expert" - Diffraction from baffle edges
and ...
... and that is exactly my experience ....
Been there, done that. Cap/lower shroud tensioner, aka rigging screw or turnbuckle, accessible through the driver openings.
(tensioning was a lot easier than getting them in position)
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Richard (abraxalito) just pointed me to this, Despacio: The 50,000-watt sound system designed for discerning audiophiles | Ars Technica ...
John, this is for you ...!!
John, this is for you ...!!
Try this sometime, if you have any kind of cabinet in your room with a door on it, play a cut with the door closed, and then with it open. Its not about reflections of the door, its about the cabinet resonating with the door closed. Opening the door kills the Q and the ringing. This could even work in a nearby room, if the cabinet is located at a standing wave peak. Try it, its free!
mikem,
I know a friend of mine who did use tension and compression rods to load some large enclosures that were used in PA but they were made of plywood and not MDF. MDF as you said would soon lose tension as it is just not very stiff and creeps over time. You would just produce waves in an MDF enclosure after a short period of time.
I know a friend of mine who did use tension and compression rods to load some large enclosures that were used in PA but they were made of plywood and not MDF. MDF as you said would soon lose tension as it is just not very stiff and creeps over time. You would just produce waves in an MDF enclosure after a short period of time.
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