Cheap Speaker "Isolation" Solution for 300 lb. Speaker
Good Afternoon All,
I am looking for advice on a cheap and simple isolation solution for large, heavy (325 lb. each) floorstanding speakers.
I've read much advice on granite or marble slabs, multiple layers of cork, springs, etc; while this has been helpful, it is neither a cheap or simple solution.
Ultimately, I am looking to protect my wood floor from damage these very heavy speakers might do, as well as decouple the speaker from the floor in order to reduce bass resonance (I am in an apartment complex and worry about noise complaints). I've looked into sorbothane pads, but they never seem to be able to hold this much weight.
Thanks!
I am looking for advice on a cheap and simple isolation solution for large, heavy (325 lb. each) floorstanding speakers.
I've read much advice on granite or marble slabs, multiple layers of cork, springs, etc; while this has been helpful, it is neither a cheap or simple solution.
Ultimately, I am looking to protect my wood floor from damage these very heavy speakers might do, as well as decouple the speaker from the floor in order to reduce bass resonance (I am in an apartment complex and worry about noise complaints). I've looked into sorbothane pads, but they never seem to be able to hold this much weight.
Thanks!
Showing 7 responses by teo_audio
The dampers from teo audio are world class. Big time. Put them up against anything, in a technical and test oriented set up, and in a sound quality test, and they will win out in all ways and areas of testing. Go ahead, call me on it. Test them to your hearts content. Good luck with that. :) When one of those pads is loaded with about 45lb per square inch, that is just perfect ...and it acts like 2hz damped spring/buckling isolator. I can take one and drop it on its edge and it will bounce like crazy. When I drop it flat... it just goes ’splat!’ and stops. I can make a video to illustrate. In the earliest example of their use...Mark Doehmann of continuum (at the time) had a chance to play with them when their turntable was first introduced at the NYC show.... and he thought they were pretty dang special. If people want we can have people pay $500 for them by adding the jewelry part and hiding the damping material inside... but that would be less than honest in my book. |
The Teo Audio diamond isolators don’t exactly look robust, but the description certainly fits the bill, as I absolutely need the bass dampening considering my apartment situation. The site doesn’t describe much though, I can’t find info on the max load weight per pad or the price on these. Somewhere around 100-125lbs per pad is when they are at their optimal, as in the entire pad is being used. On both sides, with flat connectivity to the two full surfaces of the pad. The way to use them with light audio gear is to spike/cone the gear and then place the center of the dull tipped cone (do not want to rip the material) in the center of the pad. And then you have maximum force in a small part of the pad. This gives a nice xyz type of damping effect, overall (the surface of the pad curves in and captures the cone tip) , and the preamp, cd player, etc, will be 2hz lossy spring damped. From both sides, essentially. Isolation and damping, combined. sorbothane? No. Left that stuff in the ditch over 25 years ago, never looked back. FYI, Taras, the other half of Teo Audio, his professional or day job, is doing world class acoustics and mechanical isolation, etc work. He’s the guy the best firm in Toronto calls in as the cooler for jobs they can’t tame. The firm who calls him in is probably the most original and oldest running company on the planet in taming all the known forms of mechanical and acoustical noise. Taras has done the acoustics on about 60 films and there is near a 100% chance that most of the readers here have heard his work, as some of the jobs are permanent acoustics installs for recording studios (Film, TV, etc). He’s taken on jobs that the best in acoustics refuse to touch --and walk away from. Their record (other acoustics firms) is one of not offering refunds for failed jobs (contracts state zero guarantees) and Taras always guarantees his work. If that does not say ’absolute unit’ in the world of acoustics, I don’t know what does. So good that the NRC can’t touch his skill set. 100% serious here. What I’m trying to say, is, that we say - the pads work. And that’s what stands behind the statement. A hard damper like a magnetic one, or even done with elastic stranding, or springs of some sort... with hard shiny aluminum attachment... does not damp anything, really, it merely isolates. The diamond dampers (just a convenient marketing name) works from both sides. It damps the connectivity to the given surface, so it isolates and it damps the device that is sitting on the pads with something analogous to their primary isolation function. double duty. It is incredibly effective, and quite correct in what it does. The problem comes when people are so used to gear with noisy chassis that they’ve tuned their hearing and their system design/build/choices to the sound of rattly noisy gear with poor isolation. So they try the dampers and some say the sound is too dulled. And we have to agree and go along with that... rather than state the obvious prior point. Which is... ’go back to the start of the entire endeavor and set off on the correct foot from the get-go’. As one now has a better noise floor which means a better and greater dynamic range, so one is listening to less noise, noise that was previously mistaken for being signal. Ouch. The upside is that the door is open for better. Discernment is required. In the case of this very large and heavy speaker, a total of 12 pads might be in order. Six per speaker might be the trick. Isolation will be the result with a side order of a bit of noise removal from the speaker cabinet. |
a pm might be in order but for the record, about $150 for the 12 pieces, in this case. This is the only time I’ve pushed this product. We tend to like to keep it on the quiet side so we can use it to make audio miracles - where no one can understand how they came about. Think of it as a secret weapon made public. It started snowing crazy levels of big fluffy ones, right now, and I just happened to be listening to... |
teo_audio You added to my original screed, which maligned its interpretation and meaning. I said: The thing that is closest to equivalence of final result when using the diamond dampers, is a precision/lab grade anti-vibration wideband safe table. Ie, indicating that the safe table, to compare with..should also be of a wideband nature, as in wide frequency bandwidth of isolation. The natural tuning frequency of the dampers is 2hz. They move closer and closer to that ideal with regard to being a excellent lossy spring, as the load or mass per sq inch increases. Which is the why of the recommendation of using a cone on the bottom of smaller lighter gear. More pressure in a smaller area, with the attendant curving in of the surface and material, toward the tip of the cone...which enables the same effect, with a lossy characteristic in multiple directions, instead of just the vertical. If one pushes down on the corner of lets say a preamp, and the premap is on round tipped cones (read: not razor sharp), with the cone tips centered on the damping pads (large side of the cones blu-tacked to the preamp chassis), and then one lets go of the corner, they get pretty well one half cycle of motion in the preamp. Or (to clarify), if one tries to ’bounce’ (Up-down, left-right, front-back) the preamp, in any way or any rate of acceleration, when it is on the damping pads (with said cones), they get pretty well just the single damped half cycle. (return to center) |