Speaker Spike Philosophy

Assuming you bolt your speakers to your new maple bases, you can then have some fun trying several different supporting footers and listening for changes and preferences. Choices could include spikes, and also decoupling products such as one of the Herbie’s products like threaded stud gliders, giant fat dots, puckies, or giant fat grounding bases; or springs as MC suggested. A good source for springs, that has a multi-input search tool is Century Spring.

@mgolpoor - the  PRIMACOUSTIC product sounds similar to the A/V Roomservice EVPs that have won a bunch of Absolute Sound awards.  The AVPs could probably be closely imitated through DIY using Owens Corning 705 fiberglass board sandwiched between sheet aluminum or your choice of hard material.  At the end of the day, all of these decoupling products are some form of damped spring.

Discs under spikes are probably as close to decoupling as to coupling.  The KEF discs are 18mm in diameter or about 250 mm squared in area, which is probably about 100 times the area of the tip of a spike.

sokogear - assuming the steel disc is rigid and doesn't deflect, the stress will be spread uniformly over the area of the disc.  That is how structures work, like a column load being supported by a square footing, and is why they use discs in the first place - to spread the load out so the spike doesn't poke or dent the floor.  If the disc is not exactly rigid (although I believe they are), then the load will be somewhat higher under the concentrated point.  You are correct though that it is a lot of load over a small area.  If I were to support my 180-pound speaker/stand assembly on four 18mm diameter discs, the resulting pressure under the discs would be over 100 psi or over 16K psf, so maybe that couples the speaker....I don't know.

It is really quite astounding just how good ordinary springs can be when resonance is minimized by tuning the spring to the component load.

Exactly what I have found.  Use the correct spring constant and appropriate maximum spring load compared to the actual load, apply damping, such as loosely applied thin heat shrink with a hole in it (what I use), or maybe foam inside of the spring, and you should be able to reduce the natural frequency of the damped system to below the audible band.  It was a little more than $35 though because it took me a few tries to get the correct combination of springs.  Other "design" considerations include what spring diameter and compressed height you want, as well as what number of spring coils might work best for the height of spring you are using.  There are lots of choices.  With speakers it is good to know the front (under the baffle) is heavier than the rear due to the weight of the drivers so two different spring constants may be necessary.  Another thing helpful to me is that my main speakers and my two subs all use Sound Anchor stands, which provide a rigid base for the springs to act against.

Employing isolation techniques, one merely protects one component from interfering with another that it is in direct contact with. Isolation increases the effects of Coulomb friction by building resistance between the mating surfaces. With regards to airborne resonance, isolation principles serve much like the dielectric material in a capacitance device, essentially turning the component into a giant Resonance Capacitor. This is not the opinion of our company, Star Sound Technologies, LLC but rather that of the average graduate - level physics textbook. Minimizing the resistance (as caused by Coulomb friction) via a mechanical grounding process is the only logical way to compensate for the effects of Mechanical, Electrical and Airborne resonance within any given system.

This stuff wears me out.  How many illogical analogies can be made in one paper....how many times can you say "Coulomb Friction"....why not just say, "only our product will fix the problem you didn't realize you had....."  Props for persistence though...

@ausaudio - I may have misunderstood your response but I am not the salad guy, just the guy tapping out after seeing enough pseudo-scientific rhetoric used to try and sell audio stuff. 

BTW, Coulomb was an 18th century engineer who is best known for Coulomb's law, which addresses the proportionality of electrostatic forces of attraction and repulsion.  The scrapyard guys who lift old cars using an electromagnet are probably thankful for Coulomb.  His name also defines the SI unit of electric charge.  He did do work in friction, and Coulomb friction is a model used to predict the direction and magnitude of the friction force, and acceleration, between two bodies with dry surfaces in contact, taking into account the relationship between static and kinetic friction, and how those may act with respect to a system where there could be a variety of contact surfaces and loading situations.   I am skeptical as to the applicability of the model to spiked audio equipment platforms, at least in the manner portrayed.  Of course, my impressions of their marketing scheme has nothing to do with the success and value of the products they produce with respect to spikes, platforms, and more.

@sokogear - If you want a taste of the Townshend isolation products without the cost, take a look at my system page, which shows pictures of individual springs that are damped using very thin-wall heat shrink (somewhat loosely applied) with one or two small holes to allow air to escape.  Other benefits of the heat shrink damping is that it creates a better bond with the bottom of your speakers or speaker stands and it protects the bottoms from being scratched by the bare springs. 
One source I liked using is Century Springs, which have an easy to use spring finder feature where you input the spring parameters you are looking for and are provided with a list of springs meeting your parameters.  I have teed up the search feature for you in the provided link.  Expect to pay about $6-$20 per spring.
Otherwise, try Nobsound.

@sokogear - I forgot reading about how much you like the Townshend platform under your turntable, so you are indeed familiar with the benefits of their products and the principle.  Since it seemed from your posts that cost may be an issue (relative to the price of your speakers/system) I shared what works for me at a fraction of the cost. 

Some of this audio stuff seems like a Zeno's paradox where each step is half the distance to the wall.  At what point are you at the wall, even though you never will be, and what is each subsequent half step worth?