Sand filled speaker stands

I have just built some sand filled speaker stands following these http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/stubby_e.html instructions. The build was quite easy and they are really sturdy but I'm a little confused about some things. First I have some auralex mopad’s that my monitors were sitting on before, should I use these in conjunction with the stands or just place the speakers directly onto the stand? Also the designer mentioned that he installed carpet spikes for isolation rather than decoupling. I have hardwood floors and would like to come up with a better solution. Thanks for your help, Terry

I would look into these: http://www.soundanchors.com/page20.html And I think you're supposed to ditch the mopads.

I'm checking out home depot today to see if they have something similar, im also looking for some small rubber feet to see how they perform. I tried the speakers without the mopads and didnt notice to much sonic difference. I then ran EQ wizard and the results varied only a little, but there was a deep null @400hz without the mopads. Dont know what would cause this but i'll be testing more in the next days. Thanks for the help -T

Hijacking thread... I'm gonna buy the parts to build my stands Its recommended 1.2m for speaker position, but that its speaker height right? So i should make my stands 1.2m MINUS the height of the speaker right?

jbassino wrote:

Hijacking thread... I'm gonna buy the parts to build my stands Its recommended 1.2m for speaker position, but that its speaker height right? So i should make my stands 1.2m MINUS the height of the speaker right?

Are you going for "tweeters at the same height as your ears"? A) Measure the height from your ears to the floor when comfortably seated in your studio chair. :mrgreen: B) Measure the distance from the center of the tweeter in the speaker to the bottom of the speaker. Subtract B from A. Build your speaker stands that high.

Its recommended 1.2m for speaker position, but that its speaker height right? So i should make my stands 1.2m MINUS the height of the speaker right?

My answer is probably too late to be useful, but the 1.2m height is neither the top nor the bottom of the speaker: It is the recommended height for the acoustic axis of the speaker, ie, the theoretical axis along which the speaker propagates sound. It's hard to find where that is for most speaker manufacturers, since not many of them bother publishing that. It will be somewhere between the woofer and the tweeter, usually closer to the tweeter. If you can't find the data for yours, it probably isn't that important anyway, for small speakers: Even if you just guess that the axis is half way between woofer center and tweeter center, then you won't be off by more than an inch or so from reality (unless you have large speakers). Worst case: you can always move your chair up or down a couple of cm. to find the right spot, after you have finished, if you didn't guess right. So you should build your stands such that the acoustic axis of the speaker is at ear height, which is generally 1.2 m above the floor. If you can't do that for whatever reason (such as computer monitors in the way, or room geometry, or whatever), then you can raise the speakers up higher and tilt them down by up to ten degrees, such that the acoustic axis still intersects your ears at about 1.2 m above the floor. If you tilt them, you need to take care that you don't create reflections off the desk or console surface. - Stuart -

Well yeah too late but my stands works wonderfully and I hear great things through them ! Anyway... Im always moving arround while I work you know.. thinking. moving myself along with the music, going to the rack and move a few knobs. all those things, so really. the perfect spot wont work for me anyway. Bottom line: I made my stands, I think they sound good with my speakers on top, and thats all really matters