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Floorstanders over Suspended Hardwood-Help Please

I have a pair of Silverline Sonatas that weigh in at about 120 pounds each. When I lived in my previous home, I used a set of four points under each speaker over a thick carpet and an equally think pad. I recently moved and these speakers will now be in a room with suspended hardwood floors. There is a berber carpet over a portion of the room and under where the speakers will be placed. With their weight, the Silverlines will drive the points right through the berber and couple with the hardwood. Bad.

I need to find a solution and have thought of three possibilities:
1) Find a very thick pad to place under the berber and use the points like before.
2) Use discs under the points directly atop the berber. Stable?
3) Get some 1-2” slabs of marble, using iso-pads between the marble and the carpet and points/discs between the speakers and the marble.

I have tried using slabs under other floorstanders over carpet and always found them to be less than rock solid in the vertical plane.

Do any of these approaches seem best, or are there others to consider. Please keep in mind that I do NOT want to spend several hundred dollars on platforms such as Sistrum, etc.
motdathird

Showing 2 responses by hdm

hdm
1,055 posts
 
Not that anyone will agree with me, but I am using floorstanders over berber over a suspended hardwood floor and would recommend the following.

Buy 2 sheets of laminated or "security glass" 3-4" larger than the footprint of your speakers and use vibrapods between the glass (directly on top of carpet) and the speakers. I would recommend using a slightly higher weighted pod at the two front corners (use 4 pods or 5-I use 4-3 is simply not stable enough) to compensate for the "front heavy" nature of the speakers with drivers at the front.

I find this set-up to be much more relaxed and musical than spikes and this makes for some interesting reading:

http://www.vibrapod.com/Reviews/tas.htm

I concur with the reviewers findings.
hdm
1,055 posts
 
Audiobugged: Laminated glass (as opposed to tempered) poses no threat to kids as it is actually two layers of glass with a very resilient type of glue between the layers. It is quite thin (about 1/8" to 1/4") and will not shatter or break unless it's really subjected to violent stuff (that's why it's called security glass). It is also virtually unnoticeable, cheap, and because it's thin doesn't present problems as a result of raising the speaker too much off the floor. In this application, (carpet, suspended floor, etc) which is exactly what Mot describes, I really like it.

I had my speakers spiked through the carpet into the floors before and would never go back.
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