Spikes on carpet

[admin_exported]

I am wondering what people do with speaker spikes on carpeted flooring. I have stand-mounted speakers sitting on thick-ish carpet. Shall I get different (longer?) spikes? Shall I get some of the these little boxes/"shoes" that one can get from ebay, etc.?

Thanks

 

[Andy Clough]

I allow the spikes on my speaker stands to pierce the carpet so they get a good grip on the floorboards underneath. If you don't want to do that, you can always put a coin under each of the spikes, which is what we suggest for those who have wooden floors and don't want to scratch them.

 

[visionary]

do you think there's a difference in sound quality if you use copper coins or silver coins to stand your spikes on

 

[Andrew Everard]

visionary:do you think there's a difference in sound quality if you use copper coins or silver coins to stand your spikes on

Yes, but only if the coins are six-nines copper or pure silver.

But seriously, the whole point of the spikes is that they go through the carpet and 'ground' flooorstanding speakers or speaker stands to the floor below (in the mechanical, not electrical, sense of course). So using coins on carpet under the spikes kinda negates the the whole point of using spikes, and you may as well use soft feet. Some manufacturers provide domed feet as an alternative to the spikes.

For preference, however, use spikes long enough to go through the carpet and any underlay to the wood or concrete or whatever below.

 

[visionary]

I can't see that soft or domed feet would work? I was amazed when I swapped my Tannoys from cheap stands with castors

to using Atacamas with spikes. As you say, Andrew, surely the whole point is to make the whole thing more solid. (New Year res, I WILL get some Atabites or similar to fill the stands).

 

[Andrew Everard]

My point being that if you're going to use spikes on coins on a carpet they will have no effect, so you might as well use soft or domed feet which will prove more stable should the speakers get knocked.

 

[Anonymous]

currently my speakers spikes are pressing on to coins on the floor, will there be any diff replacing coins with carpet? i realised one of the spike is not firmly pressing against the coin due to slight uneven ground. Will it affect the sound quality?

 

[Andrew Everard]

What kind of flooring do you have at the moment? And solving the second problem is just a matter of altering the length of the spikes to level things up.

 

[Anonymous]

my flooring is Terrazo tiles

 

[Andrew Everard]

Then I would use coins or purpose-made spike cups/shoes,

and alter the length of the spikes to level the speakers so they don't rock, as they will if one spike isn't in contact with the coin/cup/shoe.

 

[jodydodd]

As andy said letting spiked pierce in the carpet provides stiff support and is responsible for improvement in the voice quality of speakers too. If You are doubtful regarding the process so call a professional and get it done within minutes.

 

[roger06]

My spikes used to penetrate the carpet into the wood beneath as Andrew suggests. However, some research led me to question the affect of this on bass so I now have the spikes on shoes and each speaker stand on a marble chopping board - or actually 'worktop protector' from Tesco.

For me this is an improvement. The bass is cleaner, tighter and more controlled. I am by no means disagreeing with Andrew (I wouldn't dare!) it's just what's worked better for me.

 

[Al ears]

Not wanting to disagree with Andrew either I would say you have to experiment.

In my old house the speakers were downstairs and spiked through carpet to contact (ground) to a concrete floor, this was fine.

However, on moving to a new home with speakers upstairs I found this arrangement to be detrimental to sound quality as here they were spiked through carpet to a modern chipboard-type floor panel.

At reasonable volume there was too much in the way of vibration being transmitted into those floor boardings.

Rectifying this problem by fitting rubber (sorbothane) feet to the speakers improved things significantly, in my opinion.

Go experiment

OOps. Just realisedwhen this was first posted. Anyway hopefully it will be of some use to somebody.