Marble, slate, granite, MDF or other material slabs under speakers?

You could have founded less expensive. I have one under my Melco, paid 80 euros for it.

FR, I did a lot of looking. 3”x 15”x 18” solid hard wood, kiln dried, finished, with threaded inserts. I could have gone with Maple but it wouldn’t have looked as good and it wasn’t much cheaper.

The most important is that they look fine and work good. But indeed, 450 dollars is not really a cheap tweak.

IsoAcoustics Gaia II on a springy old floor.

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Do the Gaia compress when squashed?
Is that to stop vibrations coming up from the floor into the speakers?
Or mainly to stop the movement of the drivers transferring energy into the floor?
Or is it to keep the speakers stable as the drivers move?
Or all of the above?

The Gaia do not compress (maybe a mm or two). The basic idea is to keep thee speakers from exciting supporting surfaces that can create interfering noise. The website has technical details, white papers, etc. All I know is when I added them every sounded better.

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I’ve just 2 granite kitchen worktop protectors for my Neat Xplorers. I’m finding the bass is a lot better than before when they were on carpet. Maybe that’s because the Xplorers have a downward firing bass speaker underneath.
Anyway for £36 I’m well pleased with the results

Isoacoustics Gaia 3 on springy wooden floor - that’s all I needed

I had a nice pair of slate bases made for my Shahinian Compass speakers by a company Slate Audio to my own design about 25 years ago. They have mirrored all the chamfered edges of the loudspeakers. Each base has 3 spikes that rest on the concrete floor. I was convinced at the time that the bases made them a bit tighter and faster but that is probably what I wanted to hear! I mainly got them made for the aesthetics and to protect the cabinets from the hoover!

About a year ago I had the cabinets re-veneered in walnut (previously oak) by a company Audini - [www.audinni.com], upgraded both drive units to Mk 2 spec, re-capped the crossovers and recovered the grilles. Pear Audio were incredibly helpful getting me all original parts at a fraction of the cost of upgrading the speakers to Mk 2’s. Would love some Obelisks but the Compass are an ideal size and look cool. Sound great on a CDX, XPS, 82, Supercap, 250.


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Well, just collected 2 slabs of 30 x 350 x 350mm Broughton Moor green slate from Gordon Greaves stone mill.

It’s beautiful to look at.

And sounds lovely.

Definitely better SQ than the previous Slate roof tiles I was using.

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The slate is more inert And less bright than the glass or marble I tried.

But not dead like the concrete slabs I tried.

But it’s softer than marble or granite.

Softer materials might be less clear in sound, but also less harsh?

Also, could softer allow the 4 spikes to bed in to slight dimples made by the spikes vibrating over time?

Might this in some ways be better than a much flatter toughened glass surface as it is never possible to get 4 spikes perfectly level by hand??

@Xanthe do you have any thoughts about slate vs glass or granite or wood or MDF as slabs?

What have you got between the speakers and the stone?

Nowt.

Should I have something?

I see, I’m not familiar with SL2’s would they normally sit on spikes?

Sorry, yes, the SL2s and are on their normal 4 spikes.

I think I’d be inclined to still use spikes but sitting in to cups of some sort, as I say I’m not familiar with them so maybe other SL2 owners will chime in.

Good idea.

I may try some cups again with these slabs.

I have recently tried Silent Mount SM7s and Naim Chips on various types of tiles.

The SM7s were consistently better, but very expensive.

And in the end on the slate tiles I then had they weren’t clearly better than spikes directly onto the slate.

Thinking about it now, I may try some metal coins or discs or small metal plates on the slate at some point?

I’m currently experimenting with the patented Hollow speaker isolation system, trials are going quite well. I’m using a sandwich of 50c coin, large tap washer, 50c coin and another tap washer. So the spike sits on the top coin and second washer sits on timber floor

Hi @JimDog,

Sorry I really have no idea what’s going to work best under any specific type of speaker in any specific room with any specific type of floor.

In my case I have older suspended wood floors and so I went for considerable mass (35kg ceramic plinths under each speaker - all 3 of them).

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Or some soft material like cork. Cork cups. Or hard wood cups.

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