Best stands for Proac Response 2

At the time, I believe they were designed to be used with the Target R2 stands. They need something massive to be coupled to in order to sound their best. The R2s weigh about 75 pounds each, and when filled with sand, are basically immovable. That said, there are some newer stands that are probably comparable.

Warrenh & Theaudiotweak, sorry but you may have missed the point. The sand/lead, in this instance, is for mass loading, not "vibration absorption." (Yes Warrenh, I did read your review). The Target R2s are filled with sand or lead, thus creating a v.v. heavy object. The speakers don't sit on the sand (situations where sand as used to absorb energy), but rather on the metal top plate of the stand itself. The blu-tac is used to effectively couple your speakers to a heavy object--also *not* energy absorption. Frankly, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the ProAcs would sound better epoxied to the R2s, only that really messes with your resale value. Blu-tac is simply a removable substitute for glue.

Here's the real issue. When a speaker cone moves back and forth, it displaces air, and, on an ideally frictionless surface, would result in the whole speaker cabinet moving back and forth. As a practical matter, we don't put speakers on frictionless surfaces, but, notwithstanding that, there is some movement back and forth opposite to the cone movement; at a minimum, this damps the acoustic wave that travels to you.

You *cannot* minimize this by decoupling. If the cabinet is left free to resonate, the damping will occur. You *can* minimize this by making the energy required to move the cabinet so far in excess of what the displaced air is capable of moving that the movement is minimized. This is the theory behind spikes, cones, heavy speaker stands, and the blu-tac. You couple the speaker with blu-tac to the stand. You make the stand heavy--that way the speaker and stand act as one. To the extent possible, you try to couple the stands to the planet Earth with spikes. That makes it even more immoveable.

I read the audiopoints paper. Frankly, for all their talk of coulomb friction, they are doing precisely what I'm talking about. F = dP/dt; typically this means the bigger the mass, the more force required to move it. The idea is to create (in effect) the bloody heaviest "virtual" speaker you can. That way, the force imparted by the moving bits creates less displacement of the whole thing (i.e., damping). I don't care if you glue it or spike it together (er, that speaker cabinet probably has some glue in it, BTW), as long as the end result is something that, from a physics POV, looks like a larger mass. Cones work well, I'll grant you that. So does blu tac (blu tak, whatever) in certain applications (like the RS2/RS2 interface).

I hate to say it, but the marginal difference between filling your stands with their magic pixie dust and lead shot or sand is pretty negligible at best--the coupling is really the issue. To the extent sand or lead shot "absorbs" resonances, so will their "micro bearing steel fill." This stuff "absorbs" resonances by the action of friction--they rub against each other and generate heat, thus dissipating energy. This will happen no matter what you put in there.

All that stuff about transferring resonance to a point below the spike? 'natch. Its not a magic of their points, its a simplistic way of saying that if its coupled to earth, the large majority of the vibrational force at any moment (proportional to the weight of the speaker/stand versus the earth) is affecting the earth, not the speaker/stand.

BTW, its not "Ed," its "Eric." ; )