Help us develop the best Speaker Stand in the industry!

[admin_exported]

My name is Stu Whisson and I am an experienced sound engineer and have worked, a natural off shoot of that, is that I am an audiophile too. One of the biggest issues with any system is isolation of the speaker from the rest of the room.

I am in the process of working with some very skilled designers, to help me develop a unique speaker stand. As fellow audiophiles and followers of this forum, I would like you guys to be involved in the development and progress of this unique project.

If you are interested, please let me know by simply letting me know what you think are the main issues you have with your current speaker set up, what you have and what current stands do you like and why.

I want to make this as interactive as possible. As a result, I will be posting intial 3D renders of our intiail thoughts and work further with your feedback and disucssions. Should the product actually reach production, those involved will get the chance to try the units for review too, plus of course we will be sending them to What Hifi for review also.

If you want to be involved, simply answer the questions above and don't forget to comment on other peoples thoughts on this matter.

I look forward to your help.

 

[tino]

I have no stands at the moment, simply because I cannot find ones that are aesthetically pleasing enough at a decent enough price. Also the top plate of most speaker stands is way too small - how about interchangeable ones? If they didn't look like ship in dry dock surrounded by scaffolding that would be nice. I do like the GamuT L-3 speaker stands, but they are quite pricey. However they are made of the same stuff that speaker cabinets are made of - solid MDF - rather than acoustically ringing metal. And they don't need a bag o' sand to make them sound better.

 

[Anonymous]

1. Make speaker stand out of stuff like wood or metal or similar, in a shape that allows you to stand a speaker on it and it still look ok in the room.

2. Charge a 5000% mark up to the consumer, making all sorts of ridiculous claims in your adverts, strategically placed in various high end magazines and populist nonsense peddler periodicals.

3. Budget decent amount for back handers and boozy lunches for hacks at said mags to secure 4 or 5 star reviews.

3. Job done. Sit back and laugh. Retire at 50.

 

[Andrew Everard]

3. Budget decent amount for back handers and boozy lunches for hacks at said mags to secure 4 or 5 star reviews.

3. What a quaint, old-fashioned and entirely erroneous view of the world you have.

3. Job done. Sit back and laugh. Retire at 50.

4. Comes after 3.

 

[Anonymous]

3. Budget decent amount for back handers and boozy lunches for hacks at said mags to secure 4 or 5 star reviews.

3. What a quaint, old-fashioned and entirely erroneous view of the world you have.

3. Job done. Sit back and laugh. Retire at 50.

4. Comes after 3.

You got me on the last point, but as for the other - well, you would say that, wouldn't you? I bet they put your kids through college and 'sort' your wives out while you're at the office as well. Buy you some more time to listen to those 24 bit recordings of Michael Bublé.

 

[John Duncan]

well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

Ooo this is my absolute favourite logical fallacy.

 

[altruistic.lemon]

You got me on the last point, but as for the other - well, you would say that, wouldn't you? I bet they put your kids through college and 'sort' your wives out while you're at the office as well. Buy you some more time to listen to those 24 bit recordings of Michael Bublé.

What a thoroughly unlikeable person (I think I'm not allowed to use the word that sprung to mind, but it rhymes with trick) you seem to be. You're off my Christmas card list.

 

[tino]

I want to make this as interactive as possible.

What's your brief (you only mention speaker isolation) and what's your price point? Anything more than £150-£200 and you will lose mine and possibly a lot of other interest. What materials are you considering and what are your benchmark products? Again, if it looks like dirty grey scaffolding pipe, or a miniature Blackpool tower then, in the words of Theo Paphitis, I'm out.

 

[altruistic.lemon]

Glass or acrylic would be interesting, and perhaps in white as an option. Not sure how that'd go sound-wise, though, but that's your department.

 

[AlmaataKZ]

to the OP -

What is the design basis and statement of requirements for a (good) speaker stand?

What shoud it achieve, technically?

What parameters are used to describe and measure performance?

Are you going to quantify these parameters?

What is the correlation of these to acoustics and human perception?

Or if you are after 'what styling will sell?' -

- I like natural wood finishes, simple, elegant designs. Alternatively, glossy deep colours work for some styles. Do not like shiny stuff - often looks cheap.

Are you trying to sense 'price point' info and other marketing type?

 

[tino]

Glass or acrylic would be interesting, and perhaps in white as an option. Not sure how that'd go sound-wise, though, but that's your department.

+1 and throw in some MDF or cast concrete ... should be able to make some very interesting shapes and finishes with those materials. And they wouldn't need me to spend £20 on sand, or Termites (or whatever they are called).

 

[tino]

PS Why is thread in the Headphone section?

Anyhow, here's what you can do with some cement and a bag of sand mixed with water, or a couple of paving slabs and an angle grinder. Although whoever made these obviously didn't think about protecting their shiny wooden floor from his/her concrete creation. If the concrete were polished I think it would look quite nice .... hmmm.

 

[Sliced Bread]

Great thread:
My bug bear with both stands and floorstanders is contact with the ground. 4 spikes means that unless your floor is perfectly flat the stand will wobble and therefore the benefit negated (even if its a *tiny* wobble). Yes, spikes are adjustable by twisting them, but after years if practice I still cannot get this right. I'm probably seriously compromising the bass capabilities of my speakers.
The solution: either a tripod (similar to that posted earlier) or a very clever adjustment system for the spikes.

Good luck

 

[Sliced Bread]

Glass or acrylic would be interesting, and perhaps in white as an option. Not sure how that'd go sound-wise, though, but that's your department.

+1 and throw in some MDF or cast concrete ... should be able to make some very interesting shapes and finishes with those materials. And they wouldn't need me to spend £20 on sand, or Termites (or whatever they are called).

An awesome idea.
I'm just a little worried that it would cost the business a fortune to ship them.
But I love the idea.
How about white marble

 

[tino]

An awesome idea. I'm just a little worried that it would cost the business a fortune to ship them. But I love the idea. How about white marble

Not as daft as it sounds. However I don't know about the acoustic qualities of concrete but they can't be any worse than the usual scaffold pipe construction. When I was much younger I helped/hindered my dad to cast those decorative concrete blocks for a garden wall (it was the 70's ). It was a doddle to do, and you could get a very elaborate/strong design and smooth finish.

Marble would be very pricey, but you could make them from the reconstituted marble that they make cheap(er) fireplace mantles from.

 

[pwiles1968]

Height options at a must for me, large top plate, good spikes to go through carpet and underlay with easy adjustability of spikes must be stable

 

[tino]

Has the OP gone AWOL? Thought you wanted some interactive discussion? oke:

 

[CJSF]

Mmm . . . where does this put me with my hands on history??? I still got plenty of ideas spinning around in the brain . . .

Designing, building and marketing the award winning 'Foundation Classic' stand 1985, changing the way stands were designed to look, although not the way most sounded, still an old cynic? Producing a stand in the 'Foundation Designer' that was often more expensive than the speakers it supported . . . always putting my money where my mouth was in demonstrations.

If you want cheap, than a stand is unlikely to work very well, it has to be properly considered, doing a similar job to a tone arm on a turn table . . . :?

I still stand by my original 'non mass' mass damping theories, these ideas still work, one is still using them to this day to damp my various HiFi components to very good effect.

CJSF

 

[Anonymous]

Please put aesthetics at top of the list. At best most stands look like some form of scaffolding. Good looking stands are the relatively new dedicated stands for the B & W PM1 or the Acoustic Energy Reference 1's. These two at least look nice.

 

[CJSF]

My mantra was always, 'keep it simple stupid'. Things these days seem to be so over designed to no good purpose . . . to many knobs, buttons, posts and curves. This certainly seems to often apply to the current breed of speaker stand, commonly looking like an oil platform thrown together by a demented primate?

CJSF

 

[Anonymous]

Hi

I would be very interested in helping you,

First thing I would like to know is what price level you are looking at, your not going to buy a £1000 stand and put a pair of QA 2010i on it, any speaker £200 and below needs the stand design to be simple, attractive and cheep. But as the speaker price goes up so can the stand price, more isolation points in the design, speaker cable systems and power cable for active speakers etc...

One idea I have, who said a speaker had to be supported from below, a plate fixed to the ceiling with small but strong cables to a speaker plinth so the speaker simply floats in mid air I think it would look pretty cool, could look good in the right room, and the design could be simple and cheep.

As you may gather I do think outside the box on most things, the best innovation normally comes from thinking outside the box.

 

[tino]

One idea I have, who said a speaker had to be supported from below, a plate fixed to the ceiling with small but strong cables to a speaker plinth so the speaker simply floats in mid air I think it would look pretty cool, could look good in the right room, and the design could be simple and cheep.

As you may gather I do think outside the box on most things, the best innovation normally comes from thinking outside the box.

You are thinking above the box instead of below it

 

[tino]

Most if not all speaker stands are of a passive design relying on the dampening / isolation / rigidity of the support to do its work. I wonder what active support techniques could be employed ... in the automotive industry, there are such things as active engine mounts or magneto rheological dampers which you can actually tune and control to suppress vibrations within a given (lowish) frequency range. BTW I'm guessing this would not be cheap!

PS I claim rights to the above idea :type:

 

[plastic penguin]

I hope any stands could look stylish rather than a ghastly overweight metal tube with a huge plate stuck at the bottom and top. Most stands look as if they've been designed by BP.

 

[Anonymous]

I always liked the ESPOS ES14 stands I have...custom made for the speaker so they fit perfectly, spikes on top as well as under neath, look quite nice (no big scaffolding tubes).

May be your perfect stands need to be adjustable in size then...