Is Spiking Necesarry?

Addendum to my last: When Robert castigated "rubber type materials" one wonders if he’s referring not only to rubber itself but to things that bounce like springs and things that are not hard and rigid, things like Herbies Tenderfeet and constrained layer dampers that employ "rubbery" viscoelastic material as well things like bicycle inner tubes, air springs in general, bungee cords and squash balls. Because if that’s what he’s driving at then that puts a whole new light on things and demonstrates he really doesn’t gronk the whole vibration isolation thing and mechanical low pass filters in particular or even constrained layer damping and is in dire need of a seismologist.

Some counterpoints to Robert’s last post. First, no one is marginalizing or bashing spikes. Second, no one is recommending placing anything, speakers or otherwise, directly on carpet or rubber type materials. Robert’s long and winding post was effectively a Strawman argument. Finall, the argument is not really coupling vs decoupling as Robert suggests. The real challenge for audiophiles is how to integrate, to combine coupling with decoupling. You know, like I've been suggesting here on these threads for many years. One must allow vibration to escape the component or speakers and dis-allow seismic vibrations from coming up into them. 

Cheers

The energy that goes down can’t come back up because it gets dissipated in the floor, a much larger mass. However, seismic type vibration can still go up. Fortunately, the spikes have such a small contact surface area it’s a much better situation than some things. The problem for ANY coupling device is that very low seismic type frequencies can still affect the component since the entire house is shaking, thus the component - by necessity -shakes right along with it - in all six directions of motion. Hel-loo!!

It’s the Out of Phase track. Move the speakers a little at a time. Start with speakers about 4 feet apart and slowly move them apart. Would you believe most speakers are set too far apart? I suppose we must think soundstage will be improved by moving them farther apart. "When it sounds like my voice is coming at you from all around the room" (when the sound is most diffuse) ...the speakers will be in the absolute best locations for when the system is in phase. It probably goes without saying that room anomalies should have been dealt with prior to using the speaker set up track, in order to be able to get the Full Effect of the voice coming at you from all around the room with no specific directionality. As the room acoustics improves so will the clarity and drama of that track.

Mr. Clone OP, to circumvent the whole problem of continually moving the speakers around to try and get the best sound why not just cut to the chase? Use the speaker set-up track on the XLO Test CD to find the absolute best locations for both speakers. You’ll never have to move them again. Using this method on the XLO CD is much, much better than trial and error, which is really like trying to solve 4 simultaneous equations in 5 unknowns.

Only if your guests are having trouble loosening up.