Just got our own pair of the Solidsteel SS5’s for the 19’s. We love them
Even though they are amazing stands just as they are I was going to fill them a little to add a bit of mass
However I just had an email back from a guy called Roberto at Solidsteel and they recommend not filling the SS5’s or SS6’s as apparently they achieved their best results unfilled…Solidsteel investigated this together with the University of Bologna and only the SS7’s showed a performance improvement by filling
So do I fill the SS5’s or not… any guidance much appreciated
However, you’ve nothing to loose so try it yourself & if you don’t like it, simply pour the filling material out again.
Most manufacturers & dealers appear to recommend filling the stands legs to about half to three-quarters full, to avoid deadening the sound.
One tip. If you do wish to try filler, use a cheap plastic funnel to pour it into the legs. It saves a lot of swearing when the filling material goes everywhere except where you want it to go!
I had a pair of natural finish SS6 (ie not painted) and to me they did seem to “ring” a bit. I bought an icing bag from a poundland type shop and used that to fill them and for me they sounded much better after. I cant remember how much atacama I put in them, something like third to half full. I measured out 3 lots of same weight so each leg was same rather than guessing.
If its a question of additional mass, then you could try hanging weights from the stands. If the benefits come from adding damping materials inside, then that is what you’ll need to do. Be that sand, lead, depleted uranium or gold as we go up in density, but changing the damping properties too.
No offense meant. But this type of audiophila nervosa and worrying intensely about minute details, is one of the reasons I have taken a breath from this hobby.
It would seem that those manufacturers believe it’s beneficial for their customer to hear their stands resonate with the music. The company that makes my stands fills and seals them with general purpose kiln dried sand right at the factory, and trust me, there’s absolutely no deadening in my system.
It’s tempting to defer to what the manufacturer says, but their advice often conflicts with real world experience. Some manufacturers say cables don’t matter, some say their speakers sound the same with grilles on or off, some say the metal connector strips on the speakers are just fine, and so on.
If it was me, I would experiment with filling the stands to between a quarter and a two thirds full, but no more. Having done much experimentation in the past - overfilling really deadens the sound - I have a fair sense of what sounds right.
Being both obsessive and lazy, I filled my Custom Design FS104 stands with Atabites following the golden ratio, so 62%, which sounds good enough to my ears that I’m disinclined to tweak it further.
By not filling up the stands you are inducing a resonant frecuency, which means the stands will color the sound as they hum along with the speakers. I’d rather just listen to the speakers.
