Post by ChrisB on Aug 19, 2014 21:57:46 GMT
I've thought for years that there's a problem with the way that we use speakers. Hi-fi folks are obsessed with stopping extraneous movement and vibrations in their various bit and bobs of equipment but, as far as I'm aware, hardly anyone has deliberately addressed the biggest problem I can see with the whole theory.
Speakers are surely subject to more vibrations and opportunities to move than any other item in the system. And they really need to stay put.
Stands and spikes help a bit, but they generally work in the wrong plane to do the most good in this respect.
We've got a (or some) whacking great piston(s) pumping against atmospheric pressure and, given the law of equals and opposite forces, the direction that speakers want to move is in the axis of that movement - i.e. backwards and forwards. But we don't do anything to counteract that force. Surely this can't be a good thing?
We should really be bracing our speakers against a solid vertical object!
The taller the speaker, the more solid the brace.
The newer Quads have a diagonal bracing rod going from the top of the speaker to the back of the base but that's the only example I can think of that specifically addresses the problem. Of course there are incidental exceptions and partial exceptions to this: speakers with doubled up drivers wired in-phase would be an exception (not many of those about - only Mirage M1's and M1si's that I can think of). Partial exceptions would be the lesser Mirage speakers of old, like my M3si's and things with upward facing drivers, where they are braced against the floor, like Isobariks, some of the old Allison (and similar) designs and those weird looking omnis with cone shaped delfectors.
This used to bug me a lot and in the last house we lived in where we had wooden floors, I drilled through the boards and bolted the speakers down to them with threaded bar screwed into the spike bushes. Without lashing up some sort of horrendous looking frame arrangement, this was the best solution I could come up with at the time. Solid floors now though!
Speakers are surely subject to more vibrations and opportunities to move than any other item in the system. And they really need to stay put.
Stands and spikes help a bit, but they generally work in the wrong plane to do the most good in this respect.
We've got a (or some) whacking great piston(s) pumping against atmospheric pressure and, given the law of equals and opposite forces, the direction that speakers want to move is in the axis of that movement - i.e. backwards and forwards. But we don't do anything to counteract that force. Surely this can't be a good thing?
We should really be bracing our speakers against a solid vertical object!
The taller the speaker, the more solid the brace.
The newer Quads have a diagonal bracing rod going from the top of the speaker to the back of the base but that's the only example I can think of that specifically addresses the problem. Of course there are incidental exceptions and partial exceptions to this: speakers with doubled up drivers wired in-phase would be an exception (not many of those about - only Mirage M1's and M1si's that I can think of). Partial exceptions would be the lesser Mirage speakers of old, like my M3si's and things with upward facing drivers, where they are braced against the floor, like Isobariks, some of the old Allison (and similar) designs and those weird looking omnis with cone shaped delfectors.
This used to bug me a lot and in the last house we lived in where we had wooden floors, I drilled through the boards and bolted the speakers down to them with threaded bar screwed into the spike bushes. Without lashing up some sort of horrendous looking frame arrangement, this was the best solution I could come up with at the time. Solid floors now though!
