Mine don’t really move apart from a tiny sense they are on a LF suspension, so not rock-solid but the S800 are a lot heavier than the S600. Andy will have done that - and underneath in the stand I would have thought (which you do if they are moved a lot) and they should be fine.
Concrete floor - positive.
Carpet - negative.
It is good to have the spikes free of anything trying to grip them so if there is a small clearance around the spike you will be fine.
I deliberately chose to avoid carpets under the speakers and have a smooth hard surface - polished Oak - to sit the speakers on their Fraim chips. This enabled me to move the speakers more easy to identify where they worked best in my room. Small adjustments away from rear wall or apart and toe-in make a significant difference to how these speakers present music and it was good not to be limited in finding the best spot.
Wow. Is that per Puck? That is more than the 4 Fraim chips together. Mass does play a big role.
This is taken from the Cymbiosis review
“Can the change of materials make a difference? Absolutely: the titanium Silent Mount SM5s are identical in size to the stainless steel SM5s but are considerably lighter. The reduced weight improves energy transfer and this is why the titanium version produces a better performance. Timing, dynamics and coherence are all improved and the image is more solid with instruments and voices well defined and accurately placed within the soundstage.”
“On the SM7 the large disc is stainless steel and the “cancel ring” is a specialised brass alloy.” - cymbiosis
They state that the lower mass helps with the energy transfer which with physics in mind does make sense and they say this improves upon key metrics. Using two different materials will likely change modal behaviour. I still think the idea of more mass will hold and give improvements. I’ll see if it’s cost-wise viable.
I was not aware that they were a two piece and bi metal design. so yes clearly more than just a fancy design and mass.
Then I doubt myself, so I’ve taken a different one out to check. Yes, it’s 247 grams or 8¾ ounces in real money on two scales.
The bit that stands out to me in the “review” is the use of two pieces, similar to the inner and outer platters of an LP12.
I have written about the effect before, LS5/9 on Something Solid stands. Originally the spikes went through carpet to Marley tiles on a concrete floor. You could feel (and with ears close hear) the uprights ringing. With the Silent Mounts on carpet the is greatly reduced and results in greater clarity, more fine details.
This is very interesting. As from my understanding. Fraim Glass when setup correctly has a lovely ring with a nice long gradual decay and this is how Naim engineered it so.
And from experience with DIYing many different contraptions have narrowed it down to the Traiangular support for the mild steel ball bearings the glass sits on. No other method achieves this ring the way those supports do. Other than having the bearing on its own on another hard surface without anything holding it in place. This makes balancing components almost impossible, trust me I’ve tried .
That is some impressive mass figures. I ran some simple calculations and this would equate to about a 62mm disc of 10mm in height of Duplex 2205 stainless Steel.
I had another “revelation” come up. What if I had some 60-80mm Machine screws and put some Metal inserts into the concrete then attaching the 62x10mm disc with a good amount of torque. I doubt you’ll get more inert than that.
Does anybody know the actual type of Stainless steel used in the Naim Fraim Chips? I’ve tried looking but to no avail. @Richard.Dane has previously mentioned that Naim did publish the stainless used in the Fraim components I’d assume it’s the same as the chips. But I couldn’t find this information either.
There were some posts in the old forum about this. IIRC one of the R&D engineers explained the choice of the different types of mild and stainless steel for various parts. Worth taking a look through the forum archive, although the search facility isn’t that good, sad to say.
Upon more research it is most likely that the Stainless steel that is used by the Ovator family of loudspeakers is AISI 316L, This is an educated guess from the properties described in the descriptions of the Ovator like anti-magnetic and surgical grade. I am in the process of asking a machinist for the estimates for matching a 62x10mm disc with 5 holes which will allow me to use stainless machine screws and Concrete drop-in anchors. providing an incredibly stable and inert platform. I’d assume the Fraim chips are slightly softer as they do marr under ovator spikes. With any luck, @Richard.Dane do these (AISI 316L) stainless numbers ring any bells?
@Darkebear does this sound like it may be viable? It will allow a very sturdy place for the spikes and be placed on a hard metal surface which in your experience is the way to go.
@916SPS If I decide to go with this plan the Discs themself will shame a mass of around 215g each so comparable to Silent Mounts
Might even paint it so it won’t stick out like a sore thumb. 10mm is also fairly close to the distance from my concrete floor to the top of the Luxury vinyl flooring.
Before I tried Fraim Chips I tried coins and I could hear them ‘sing’ with the speaker on them and the coin material imparted the same signature glare I did not like.
So the actual metal will have an effect - the Fraim Chip is also hollowed to not touch the floor under the spike but only around the rim. In effect it forms a controlled resonance and trying the Fraim Cip the ‘wrong’ side up dramatically changed the sound to be more low bass tight but at expense of the midband being spoiled, so I use them the right way up.
I say all the above to say it is a bit more complicated and not to assume anything. I think having the outer-rim taking the load and not the middle of the Fraim Chip seems to better damp them from ringing - also they are shaped a bit to control the resonance.
Once I found I liked the midband effects on vocals with the Fraim Chips getting any nasty resonances out of band I was happy with them.
The speaker puts a lot of energy over a broadband into the spike and anything under it will find its resonance and will ring. If making your own I’d give some thoughts to a good shape for them - also the material used.
Oddly, whilst cleaning the Fraim, I gave it a feel while some daft punk was on and I noticed the MDF and dual base don’t have a single feeling of vibration but feel the glass or the Metal footed components of the head stack and you can quite literally feel the groove. My intuition has its limits.
Fraim has a manged vibration approach - some components sing at intended modes but tuned away from what the Naim equipment modes and the wooden parts form the critical damping.
It is a mechanical filter with each shelf a stage of that filter. In any filter you do not want it over-damped or it stores anergy and sounds ‘slow’ or conversely to be under-damped or it will ring and accentuate resonanaces.
There are sweet-spots in filter design for both electrical and mechanical filters and you can tune them to get the best result - that is the physics of it. You can’t create of destroy energy but just control where and how it will go. I percieve the shelves operate in a way to allow the modes the glass to vibrate to let-out those vibrational bands of energy rather than just pump them into the Naim boxes, so they attenuate what gets inside the equipment as structural vibration.
Empty shelves - only have one in any fraim stack or they ‘talk’ to each other and you get coupled-vibrations and it is worse - but just one empty shelf improves the presentation. But you only believe that if you actually try it - then it is obvious.
The other effect is mismatced transmission lines, where energy is reflected at materials that have different mechanical conductivity. You are matching the stand spike material to the floor via a chip and the two things going on is energy passing through the spike from the speaker into the floor and not getting reflected back into the speaker cabinet - or controlling how that manifests to be out of band - and also the spike itself allowing the speaker cabinet via its base to flex in simple modes, which again can be predetermined in design and built into the way the speaker is mounted.
.