From HUG, by Alan Shaw, Designer, owner, Harbeth Audio UK:
Quite honestly, you are over reading the design, shape and styling of the stands. From our perspective as the speaker designers, the stand you show is just one of an infinite number of possible designs, all of which would almost certainly achieve good results.
During the design of the M40 I recall that I used IKEA tables, which had a flat top and four legs without the cross bars at the top or bottom.
The selection of a speaker stand must fulfil only two core criteria: raising the tweeter so that, ideally, the tweeter is level with your ear (very few users do this and hence very few users achieve the full sonic potential) and protecting the speaker from toppling over. With those criteria met, there is a very wide latitude on materials, shape size and colour.
One advantage of our relationship with Hifi Racks - very useful for the Bristol show last week - is the ease with which they can make longer legs for our stands. For example, we had never exhibited the M30 to a room full of mixed standing and seated folk before, and we calculated that we would need a few more cms. height, which they cheerfully obliged.
