|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
98.234.142.40
Happy Thanksgiving to all !.. I am having trouble finding 12mm carpet spikes. 6mm yes, 8mm yes.. 12mm....NO. I really don't want to use adaptors. Does anyone know of a supplier for 12mm spikes ?
Favorite Driver: Whoever is sponsored by B&W
Follow Ups:
Have you considered making you own? Not hard to do if you have a good metal file. Cut the threaded rod to length and file the appropriate points. I use two wood blocks to hold the rod in a vise to protect the threads while filing.
Excellent idea. Eficion has said they will send me a set, if they make things difficult I will go this route.
Favorite Driver: Whoever is sponsored by B&W
What do spikes actually do?
My speakers have them, but aside from damaging the floor I keep wondering what the logic behind their use is.
Anyone here with a proper explanation?
Spikes can do a number of things...Perhaps the primary reason for the use of spikes is carpet piercing. Spikes pierce the carpet so that speakers can rest on solid flooring and won't rock or wiggle so much. Some would even say that, without a solid footing, speaker cabinets (the faceplates of which are platforms for the drivers) can rock back and forth slightly in response to driver excursions. It is thought that such an unstable or reactive driver platform can affect the pistonic behavior of speaker drivers in an audible way.
Stabilizing spikes are also used to partially decouple the speaker cabinet from the floor, in order to affect the vibrational behavior of the speaker cabinet. Cabinet vibrations can "color" the sound by affecting driver behavior and/or by producing audible cabinet resonances, so by manipulating or controlling cabinet vibrations we can eliminate or alter the "color" of the sound we hear from the cabinets and the drivers.
Many people claim to hear differences between spiked speakers and unspiked ones. Some manufacturers design their speaker cabinets to resonate a certain way when they are sitting flat on a hard or thinly carpeted floor, "coupled" to the floor. Other cabinets are designed to resonate a certain way when up on spikes, "decoupled" from the floor. Following manufacturers recommendations usually yields the best results.
Spikes will definitely damage flooring, beneath the carpeting or otherwise. If spikes are to be used on hardwood floors always protect your floors with spike platforms. Coins, thin slabs of metal or hardwood, etc.., can be used as hardwood floor protectors. Dedicated speaker platforms are also used, some prefer hard slabs made from granite, concrete, etc.., while others prefer more absorbent platforms designed to reduce or prevent the excitation of structural floor resonances.
Edits: 11/27/14 11/27/14 11/27/14
Thanks for the answer. I appreciate that the speaker cabinet should be as stable as possible, but have a hard time wrapping my head around the notion that the pointy end of the spikes because they concentrate the weight of the speaker on a very small surface couple it to the floor and, I guess, the structure of the building.
On the two pairs of floor standing speakers I have the spikes can be reversed in order to use them with the blunt end of the spikes in contact with the floor. Doesn't the greater surface in contact with the floor couple them just as well to the floor?
The Thiel 3.5s I had for many years were some of the first speakers with a rather massive front baffle to reduce any tendency for the drivers to excite the cabinet and always made me wonder why I was using spikes with them.
So I guess I simply still wonder what the physics are behind spikes, but like everyone (or just about) on this site I follow the practice but do it out of habit and not conviction.
Maybe I still wonder and still don't really know if it is an effort to decouple from or couple the speaker cabinet to the floor and structure of the building although I go with the flow on this one.
... Listen with the spikes attached and then listen without the spikes attached.
Do you hear a difference?
Smile
Sox
It all get's a bit confusing, no? It is confusing because, in most instances we are coupling AND decoupling simultaneously, to one degree or the other.It is impossible to fully "decouple" the speaker cabinet from the floor (or the wall, or the ceiling, or wherever the speakers may be...), but with spikes we can decouple MOST of the speaker cabinet surface from the floor. The spikes will continue to act as a concentrating, two-way energy transfer system no matter what we do, but vibrational energy will now be forced through tiny points of contact rather than relatively large and flat points of contact. When vibrational energy from the cabinet meets the tiny metal spikes, some of it is shed or released into free air, some of it is transferred into the flooring material, and some of it is reflected back into the speaker cabinet.
When you change the size of the floor contact area from full to pinpoint, the part of the cabinet bottom not touching the floor is more free to vibrate in a manner different from the way it might do if the entire speaker bottom were touching the floor.
Every coupling/decoupling scheme produces it's own signature resonance characteristics. It is probably impossible to completely eliminate resonances, but we can control or alter them for the better... or for the worse.
If it is true that cabinet vibrations can "color" the sound of speakers then it might be equally true that altering the vibrational characteristics of the speaker cabinet in various ways can alter the sound of the speakers in various ways. This, in a nutshell (pardon the pun), is the basic idea behind the use of vibration control and energy transference in speaker tech.
Edits: 11/27/14 11/27/14
....you have been baited, and didn't realize it.
Oz
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
I mean, one must be beyond retarded, to use spikes in a manner that leads to damaged floor...
"Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it. The more things you believe, the less mental activity. If you believe something, and have an opinion on every subject, then your brain activity stops entirely, which is clinically considered a sign of death, nowadays in medical practice. So put things on a scale or probability, and never believe or disbelieve anything entirely."
--Robert Anton Wilson
....and apply it to "all (fill in the blank) sound the same......
Oz
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
If we say we believe in not believing, we have believed.It might be better to say that we THINK we should not believe in anything but that we are *not entirely sure*...
Edits: 11/27/14
Long shot:try.construction suppliers. People like Hilti sell ramset.guns which shoot threaded studs.into concrete. The studs come in various.lengths and treads. Last i checked they had metric thread.
good luck
Check Adona, they may have it.
"Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells."
... searching on European sites, I'm afraid.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: