Speaker Isolation Pads And Stands Are Snake Oil?
You say there is no such thing, then you explain how to decouple the speaker, with books. Yet still when i go to another room I can hear the bass sounds that are transmitted via the structure of the house. The improvement in performance going to the Herbies Gliders was gob-smacking! You cannot begin to imagine how profound this one modest change in the system was. I was using foam previously, but moved to sorbothane hemispheres, huge difference.
At least this way the effects of the room etc will be minimised. Swapping out the speakers and adding an isolation product means you are dependent on a memory of what it sounds like and that is highly unreliable. See the link below for the speaker decoupling chart. I admit I didn’t do any kind of measurements and I can’t move my speakers too much so long story short I asked myself if decoupling the speakers would help. It seems it will but I will have to test it by myself.
You also have the guys who sold their expensive ones because using a phone book or a rotten log from the backyard sounded better. Let's just say I'm not surprised to have read professionals in that crew stating the exact opposite conclusions from the same set of facts. Audiophiles don't exactly operate in the same reality as the rest of us. Audio vector speakers have spring dampened feet on some of their speakers. With the springs under the speakers this "triangle-shaped" soundstage completely went away!
Aluminum and wood are low-resonance materials that are commonly used in the construction of speakers. Speaker enclosures can affect the ability of the membrane. There are a couple ways to stop distorted sounds by speaker decoupling, one of them being minimizing enclosure vibrations so the speaker is not directly lying on the floor. Wooden floors, for example, are usually very loud and it is possible to hear every single movement. This is why the rubber inside of tennis balls are commonly put on chairs and other objects to keep vibrations to themselves. Decoupling your speakers from the floor prevents the transfer of unwanted vibrations.
Much more than each little movement when your pet is laying down on your lap with all of its weight spread out over a much larger surface area. So it's the exact same principle at work when you use spikes/cones/feet beneath your speakers. With spikes in place, the weight of your speakers being applied through only those four very small points means that those points "dig" much deeper into the surface beneath them. Therefore, if you use a smaller surface area for the points of contact, all of that gravitational force studio monitor stands is now being exerted via that much smaller surface area.
Just how far you need to decouple is best judged by listening. One good indication could be how well the bass is playing notes after some decoupling. For example soft rubber pads/foam will decouple more than hard ones, but both will decouple hundreds of times better than wood on metal. Walking across a room, or simi going by, the floor shaking, is different than a speaker introducing bass harmonics. Both shake, both vibrate, both are bad, but they are not the same. The Western response to the pandemic has unveiled how fragile our liberal international order is under stress.