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RE: "New" Quads and Stands

Posted by josh358 on March 2, 2017 at 07:37:03:
Well, I think the trick in isolation is choosing a suspension that has the right resonant frequency, which in this case would be below that of the lowest frequency vibration of concern, e.g., 16 Hz (but that depends of course on the LF extension of the speakers and also the room and the Fletcher-Munson curve). And the compliance of the suspension would depend on the mass of the speaker. You'd presumably want to add damping to dissipate stored energy. And you'd want the platform on which the speaker rests to be massive and (probably) stiff, to reinforce the cabinet structure -- or maybe you'd want it to damp the cabinet?

I think the science here is pretty straightforward, what isn't as obvious to me is what works best in a given situation -- rooms differ, speakers differ, and how we interpret various stray sounds is quite complex, at one extreme we love the sound and feel of a vibrating wood floor and concert hall designers actually go to lengths to promote that, and at the other extreme something plastic or metallic that rattles drives us up the wall.
I mean, I've often thought that if you're playing a cello recording, the speaker should be spiked to the floor -- a cello is, after all! But a tuba would be a different thing, since there's a well-damped squishy support between the tuba and the ground.

So I guess my philosophy is that there is no single right thing -- a mat might be great with one speaker, terrible with another. Maggies for example aren't very massive and you can feel them vibrating, so the typical approach is to use a very rigid stand like the Myes and couple them to the ground -- that keeps the energy in the diaphragm and improves bass response. However, Peter Gunn has taken the opposite strategy with great success, and used a vibrating wood baffle on the Maggie -- basically the opposite of what the textbooks say to do! As with so much in audio, you have to try it and see what works best.