[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by smsrini

Is this with spikes for the speakers stands or without ?

Normally if you care about the audio quality, you'd have the speaker spiked won't you?

[smsrini]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

Normally if you care about the audio quality, you'd have the speaker spiked won't you?

Yes, I was told that with spikes, the sound that gets transmitted to the floor is minimal to the extent that it should not disturb anyone. So I'm surprised that with spikes, the bass in your case had your neighbours complaining..

Must be a very high end rig you have..

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by smsrini

Yes, I was told that with spikes, the sound that gets transmitted to the floor is minimal to the extent that it should not disturb anyone. So I'm surprised that with spikes, the bass in your case had your neighbours complaining..

Must be a very high end rig you have..

Not very fancy - its a pair of usher be718 bookshelves with a mccormack power amp. It does however produce a bit of bass for something that sits on stands.

[cranky]

Originally Posted by smsrini

Yes, I was told that with spikes, the sound that gets transmitted to the floor is minimal to the extent that it should not disturb anyone. So I'm surprised that with spikes, the bass in your case had your neighbours complaining..

Must be a very high end rig you have..

That is not true.

The spike is a one-way mechanical diode (fancy name for a transmitter). It has one pointy end and one flat end, correct? It is very efficient when transmitting vibration from the flat end to the pointy end. The other way, it is very inefficient.

The purpose of the spike is to couple the speaker/stand tightly to the floor to ensure it drains extraneous vibration (occurring on the speaker outer shell and internal structure). By contrast, it also ensures the speaker is not affected by the vibration in the floor structure.

By spiking a subwoofer it usually helps tighten the bass by transmitting the excess energy to the floor. If anything, the energy coupled to the floor increases with spikes.

[smsrini]

Originally Posted by cranky

That is not true.

The spike is a one-way mechanical diode (fancy name for a transmitter). It has one pointy end and one flat end, correct? It is very efficient when transmitting vibration from the flat end to the pointy end. The other way, it is very inefficient.

The purpose of the spike is to couple the speaker/stand tightly to the floor to ensure it drains extraneous vibration (occurring on the speaker outer shell and internal structure). By contrast, it also ensures the speaker is not affected by the vibration in the floor structure.

By spiking a subwoofer it usually helps tighten the bass by transmitting the excess energy to the floor. If anything, the energy coupled to the floor increases with spikes.

Wont surface area play a role in the amount of vibrations that get transmitted to the floor via the pointed end ? smaller area => less transmission of sound/vibration.

[cranky]

Doesn't quite work that way.

Given the same pressure, what is the likelihood of getting a hole in your hand with the two sides of a paper pin? Why does the pointy end prick? Why does the other ball-shaped end not?

Bernoulli's principle.

[vivek_pinkoo]

I have bought Denon 1612 with Quadral Quantus 5000 speaker system with SUB 63 DV aktiv.

Will any one suggest whether it is good setup? I have been listening this for last two weeks and so far I am ok with it.

[smurthy2807]

Originally Posted by smurthy2807

Any members with either the SR5005 or 5006, please let me know - wanted to check on a few configuration matters.

Cheers/Sri

Morning - I need to connect my receiver to the Internet but have an issue with router being in the bedroom and not wanting to lay Ethernet cables between that and the receiver in the living. Any ideas about hardware for wireless solution to this? Is there a wireless switch of sorts that I can connect to the receiver which logs into the broadcasted wifi from my router?
Thanks in advance...Srikanth

[Harbir]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

Normally if you care about the audio quality, you'd have the speaker spiked won't you?

Not necessarily. It depends on the surface the speaker is sitting on. If it its carpet, you want spikes so that the speaker can concentrate its load down to the floor through the pile of the carpet.

It its on wood, spikes help to do the same thing and couple the speakers mechanically to the floor, reducing cabinet vibration which are damped by the floor. But its not necessary. THe speaker just sitting on the floor is also fine, whether in direct contact or sitting on rubber feet.

If the floor is hard stone (granite, marble etc), then spikes are no desirable. Then you want rubber feet to mechanically isolate the speaker from the floor at best. At worst, you want the speaker to sit flat on the floor. pointy spikes are bad for sound when used on a hard stony floor.

[cranky]

Originally Posted by smurthy2807

Morning - I need to connect my receiver to the Internet but have an issue with router being in the bedroom and not wanting to lay Ethernet cables between that and the receiver in the living. Any ideas about hardware for wireless solution to this? Is there a wireless switch of sorts that I can connect to the receiver which logs into the broadcasted wifi from my router?
Thanks in advance...Srikanth

You need a wireless repeater. I have a Netgear WNDR2000. Some routers can be set to operate as repeaters as well. The AVR can be connected to one of the LAN ports on the repeater.

Didn't see your earlier question, but I do have a 5005 and have spent some time configuring it.

Originally Posted by Harbir

If the floor is hard stone (granite, marble etc), then spikes are no desirable.

This would be because?

If the resonance of stone floors is a perceived issue, the spike design itself takes care of that by not letting the floor couple back to the speaker. You do need a floor protector of some sort, I admit. Spikes also help with levelling a speaker, as most manmade floors aren't always perfectly straight.

There is sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that cabinet resonances colour our perception of sound. At the end of the day spiking or not does, to a large extent, depend on personal taste, and not just the physics of the whole thing.

I have heard opinions that spiking to concrete floors makes the sound cold and hard. that is the sort of opinion one would ascribe to personal preference and not accurate reasoning.

[Harbir]

no speaker (except some particularly impressive subwoofer from the top of the velodyne range, or similar), can induce resonance in solid stone floor because the floor is damped too well.

The only purpose here is to provide the speaker with a stable platform that couples the speaker mechanically to the floor in order to allow the floor to contribute to damping the cabinet. A hard stone floor does not work with spikes because the spikes cannot dig in and their area is too small for the weight of a typical speaker to provide a good coupling between floor and speaker.

Spiking a speaker and then putting it on a floor protector is NOT as good a solution as using rubber feet.

I have a pair of B&W 803s and a pair of NHT 2.9s and both came with both spikes and rubber feet to be used as appropriate on the floor in question

Spikes are appropriate in some situations, not in others and its not just a matter of personal taste either.

[cranky]

That is the point of the plate under the spike.

The trouble with rubber feet is that it is never really as stable as solid metal, no matter how hard the rubber. The coupling is never really there and the speaker weight shifts during bass passages.

Ideally one would want to anchor the speakers to the floor itself using concrete but that is not always possible. And as for not being able to generate resonances in stone or concrete floors, it is less to do with the quality of the floor than with the inability of the speaker. A unit with reach down to 30Hz and played reaosnably loud will easily make a wall/floor register resonances.

The only purpose here is to provide the speaker with a stable platform that couples the speaker mechanically to the floor in order to allow the floor to contribute to damping the cabinet.

QFT, and that is exactly why rubber never really works.

[Harbir]

Originally Posted by cranky

The trouble with rubber feet is that it is never really as stable as solid metal

This has not been remotely close to my experience in the 25 years that I've been dabbling in high end audio.

[cranky]

While that may be, rubber and metal offer two opposite properties: Damping and coupling, respectively.

Regardless of environment and floor, only one of the two methods will work for a given speaker. Some speakers are designed to be coupled and some to be decoupled. Some don't really care and as long as it's stable mechanicaly either might work.

The only way to find out for sure is to use a cabinet accelerometer and measure/listen/compare. In absence of such direct testing, it is probably best to err on the side of caution - which for me is to make it as stable as physically possible. Rubber thus omits itself - except in some very specific designs.

One way out of the dichotomy is to use metal ball ends. We get near perfect energy transfer with none of the pitfalls of a pointy spike. This cannot be used on speakers because of the tendency to move, but a bit of flattening takes care of that too.

[Harbir]

Originally Posted by cranky

In absence of such direct testing, it is probably best to err on the side of caution - which for me is to make it as stable as physically possible. Rubber thus omits itself - except in some very specific designs.

It certainly does not omit itself. I trust that NHT and B&W will supply appropriate design and quality rubber feet for their speakers.

Furthermore, given the lack of knowledge of how a certain plate on the floor will interact with the floor below it and the spikes above it, I see no reason to assume that this solution is more reliable than rubber feet as the more safe choice.