I've had some atacama piano black stands for a while withe bw cdm1se speakers. I've never filled the stands with anything because the seemed quite heavy to me. Any advice? Does it improve performance? How? What to fill them with?
this is something I am interested in, I have dynaudio stands with dynaduio 110's
Sorry for crashing you question but it is a good one which I hope will be a cost effective upgrade
in my admittedly limited experience i have found that filling stands with sand or similar does improve the performance. i found that the bass became more focused(tighter) and the soundstage is more defined when i filled my stands. i guess a logical explanation for this is may be that once filled with sand your speakers are (more)isolated from your room and no longer have a hollow chamber resonating under your speaker?
Model shops sell "liquid lead" . Tiny ball bearings which you can use ver effectively. Also a cheap option i have used in the past to great effect. A paver from the garden centre under the stand. (6 quid the pair). It's especially effective if you have a wooden floor.
hope you rapped the pavers in carpet before you put them on your floor! not sure the ball bearings are a good idea as they might have a tendancy to move about (rattle) in the stand - also might be pricey if you have large stands. i used builders sand in mine (which i packed in nice and tighly) cost me 4 quid!
No hard rules. You can 'over dampen' a system or speakers by filling stands. It depends on the speaker and your preferences. Give you an example; Had some lovely ruark sabres a long time ago and filled the speaker stands with dry sand. Sapped the life out of the system. Emptied the sand again and had nice, clear, reverberant and dynamic music again.