I have to pivot the big ATC’s that last 20cm or so into place by myself.
So some of the spikes took all 63kg of speaker weight.
I noticed a slight rocking once I had them back in place.
So I put the speakers on their sides again and was going to adjust them hight wise slightly.
About 1/3 of the spikes were bent a good 1/3rd of the way.
That didn’t surprise me at all, as my original ATC spikes also had a very slight bend of the spike tip. And they are quality hardened steel spikes.
That was caused by sliding them around on a hard wooden floor with spike shoes in my last house. They caught floorboard joins sometimes when moving them.
The joys of living alone…
I emailed Josh at Stack Audio and he’s of the belief that spikes are more for stability (I assume stand mount speakers that need a firm footing)
He said it’s no problem at all with having the AUVA 100’a just on the rug with no spikes - due to my speakers weight.
The thing you will have is different weights in different areas in each box, especially in power supplies.
This means placement can be critical for success.
In my case, ideally I needed footers that were as short as possible due to my tweeter vs listening position, so I ruled the 100’s out. The performance increases as you move up the models so thats why the 70’s over the 50’s.
My speakers are a bit unique in that they have dual opposed side firing woofers on each side of the speaker, this is said to be done to cancel each other out. So my improvements are probably smaller then vs other speaker configurations but I noted more bass & warmth to the sound but at the same time not losing any tightness/control/articulation. Natural timbre has improved & while the system always imaged extremely well, certain sounds that previous were more attached to the speaker location have now detached themselves.
I use Stack Audio Auva 50’s under my ATC SCM50ASL’s. I recently tested the 70’s also, but ended up keeping the 50’s. I’ve also owned GAIA II’s, which were at their limit with 50ASL’s so they didn’t work well. I’ve tried GAIA I’s and while they were quite good, I decided to continue with spikes + granite slabs back then.
Auva 50’s offer a perfect balance IMO. They partially isolate and partially couple the speakers so you get a nice balance between two worlds. What I noticed with 70’s was that they definitely isolate more, but at the same time you lose some punch and dynamics in the sound. Bass got too tight to my taste and lost some force. What 70’s did better than 50’s was slightly bigger and deeper sound, but I couldn’t get over the loss of bass impact. 50’s are better balance in my setup. I’m not interested in 100’s since they are so big and would look silly under 50ASL stands.
You don’t need to be a physicist to understand this simple concept (drivers should do all of the moving, cabinets should not move). In fact, I would not really consider this to be anything other than elementary thinking. Disclaimer…I have not tried any of the devices under discussion.
Speaker cabinets will still resonate and sing along with the speakers drivers.
Many designs have utilised a wobbly solution to channel out these cabinet vibrations.
Science? Is it ironical or you are serious?
Because those devices, like Townsend Podiums, are well acclaimed among audiophiles among the world. And science which doesn’t even take time to experiment is not science, it’s condescending closed mind science.
