Am I crazy????? Try THIS

Xenithon & Eldartford, I find your certainty on this issue refreshing, I've always suspected as much but have paid hommage to the speaker manufacturers who supplied their speakers with spikes (over 20 years ago!) and gave that reason (smearing from speakers boxes moving due to the pistonic action of the woofers) for their use. They never even mentioned the benefits that many now attribute to spikes and isolation devices.

I have a question for you. Assuming the correctness of your statement, if you were putting speakers on an uncarpeted concrete floor (covered by vinyl or thin hardwood) why would you ever need a coupling devise, such as spikes? And, if you were putting the speakers on a suspended hardwood floor why would you use spikes if they served to transmit vibrations from the speakers to the floor which would then resonate and add to the sonic mix.

I guess I just don't know what the benefit of spikes must be, except when used thru carpets to creat coupling with the floor beneath. What I have noticed is that there are a lot of advocates for spikes and a lot of reasons why they work in all sorts of applications other than coupling thru carpet. I've never expirimented - I've always had suspended hardwood floors and chose to decouple the speakers. Whats the straight scoop here?

Love the feedback. Glad to know this has been tried successfully.

thanks all,

rf

newbee spkes where designed to penetrate carpet. For bear floors use tip toes. this increases dramtically the pressure (PSI)seen by the floor making it much more difficult to vibrate the speaker.

The main benifit of spikes is to create a stable and solid base for the speaker. No floors and no speaker bases are perfectly flat. By using 3 spikes, this creates a "tripod" type mount that can't rock in any direction.

My guess on hanging the bookshelfs is that the benifit of getting them up to listening height is more benificial than a solid mount. I doubt this would happen with larger speaker/woofer cones. I would like to hear your comparison of hanging vs. a good stand with spikes.

Don't forget that there are two things you can do with speakers and floors: couple and decouple. It all depends on the underlying floor material, room acoustics, speaker characteristics etc.