Speaker isolation options

As part of the next phase of dicking about tweaking my speakers, I’d like to explore reducing the amount of bass being transmitted into the floor.

My Duos can produce a fair whack of bass power and go decently low, however with my room sat on a suspended floor above a basement below, you can feel the bass coming at you through the floorboards to some extent.

So this got me thinking about experimenting with isolation products to reduce this and hopefully get a small improvement in clarity.

The Duos sit on a large frame with adjustable height spikes -

One option is to remove the spikes and (probably requiring thread adapters) fit something like Iso Acoustic Gaia I.

Any other options worth considering?

I think @Mrs_Maureen_OPinion has/had some things for that.

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Soundcare Superspikes.

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The very fellas, thank you.

Coupling to the floor may not be the way to go? I used to enjoy Max’s demonstrations of these

image

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Agree, that’s why I’m looking for something to isolate/ damp.

I used to buy massive granite paving slabs

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The townshend isolation bars look really interesting, think a few people on pfm have used them on floorboards with great results.

Keep looking for a secondhand isolation platform for the TT but they’re like hens teeth.

Indeed isolation is what you need.

What Max did is to make a good-looking but painfully expensive version of the squash-ball-in-a-castor-cup platforms many of us experimented with. They work.

What works better IME is Auralex’ ‘Platfoam’ - designed to go under drum kits, used underneath some stone slabs to spread the load evenly: didn’t just reduce conducted sound, the overall sound was tangibly better.

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I have a pair of Auralex Gramma isolation platforms that you are welcome to try.
I am Whittlebury on Saturday if you are going or if a ‘taxi’ can be arranged if anyone else is going who is reasonably local to you.

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I’ve used platfoam, townshend podiums, and isotek gaia’s

The platfoam is very good for the money, bit wobbly, the podiums are probably the best but very wobbly, and £1200+, the gaia’s do the job for me and are £400-600, and not wobbly at all. Sticking with those even if I move and have a concrete floor one day.

If going townshend I’d go for the podium platform over the bars, because the bars are a pain in the arse to align, and move about.

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Can’t have anything unstable or wobbly. The Duos are 95kg each and are tilted forward slightly as per AGs recommendations to get the best sound.

Also needs to not change the height too much either as that could make getting them to point directly to your ears more difficult.

I had Unos on the platforms they are not wobbly at all
Rated to 135Kg

Did you remove the AG spikes?

Yes of course.
Spikes don’t isolate, they couple
You wouldn’t want to put bloody great holes in the platforms either!

It’s always possible, but I left no space between the foam pieces, and found a couple of inches thickness of stone or concrete slab on top made it perfectly stable, even with tall, thin speakers. The overall platform size needs to be pretty wide. I guess the ideal solution would be to make a false sub-floor as per its intended use.

A compromise I found worked well was making a ‘sandwich’ of stone slabs with sorbothane between them - not as good at stopping bass transfer, but no movement either…

It’s worth experimenting with DIY solutions first - or you can end-up wanking a LOT of ££££ up the wall to no good effect.

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I often wondered if 50mm of kingspan/celotex under a paving slab would work well

I probably should wonder about more important things

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The Pods on the Townshends are rated for differing weights, they are also height adjustable. Getting this right will assist in Wobble. I’ve got some Auralex Gammas here and they still wobble slightly if you knock into the speaker.

95Kg will make the decoupling options a fairly short list.

A cheapo trial with Sorbothane (Large) might be interesting

I suspect it might work rather well. All that ‘Platfoam’ is is a moderately dense closed-cell polyurethane foam…

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This. The smaller platforms are made to isolate guitar amps, so they can handle plenty of weight.