The ultimate speaker tweak

[Grandpaw]

Bingo and I were talking about different tweaks to get your speakers to sound better. It was suggested by someone here to get good stands so he did. It was also suggested to fill them with sand to improve the sound, so we did that.

We read that speakers that have a faster response sound better. So we thought that we might want to remove the regular sand in the stands and replace it with QUICK SAND and that it might make the speakers have faster response!!!!! What do you think? Jeff & Bingo on a quest for better sound and expanding our technical audio knowledge. You just never know what brilliant ideas you can come up with when great minds work together. LOL

[Dusty Chalk]

Now that's just silly.

[superdougiefreshness]

When a silly putz is around, I always think its smart to us something like Silly Putty....LOL........

[Grandpaw]

Another thing I was wondering about.... Do you think if we packed the sand down that it might make the base sound tighter? You know, I think I might be turning into an audiophile, or maybe it just might be all these pain killers I have been taking lately, Jeff

[icarus]

Packed sand Quicksand, cement, marbles what ever you want to stuff your stands full of, if it works for you it works for you, but while your at it try excrement, i heard that works wonders as well. hahaha go get him gran paw

[emorphien]

I think I'd rather spend my time and money working on room acoustics

That's currently my next course of action.

[Florian]

Different densitys can very well change the sound of the speaker, also how it is coupled with the floor. The responce will never be faster or slower, drivers cannot be fast or slow. A frequency is a frequency, but the distortion levels and added sonics from the room can give you the perception of a slower and faster sound.

[Bingo]

Well...all I can say is that if anyone took Grandpaw seriously, they are surely ready to be committed. Grandpaw and I got a laugh out of the quicksand reference and was hoping to share the fun with everyone. By the way (I don't like BTW) my sand filled stands are still standing. I accept the fact that audiophiles believe that stands filled with sand improve the sound - but I am unable to tell anyone excatly what the improvement in sound is.

Bingo

[texlle]

Fill your stands with lead.

[MikeyBC]

Fill your stands with lead.

Yeah, thats what i first thought...its called lead shot consisting of tiny lead pellets, much heavier and denser than sand.

[E-Stat]

The responce will never be faster or slower, drivers cannot be fast or slow.

True, but heavy woofers with lots of inertia can be relatively slowish to stop - resulting in poorer pulse response. The music has stopped, but the driver hasn't. That is the achilles heel of the larger hybrid ribbon and electrostatic designs I've heard with large woofer towers like the IRS, Nola Grand Reference, Martin-Logan Statement, etc.

rw

[GMichael]

It's nice to see that real helpful hints can come from such a thread. But didn't you notice that this was a joke?
Hey Paw,
Next time try filling them with sonic snot. Let me know if you don't know how to make this at home.

[Florian]

True, but heavy woofers with lots of inertia can be relatively slowish to stop - resulting in poorer pulse response. The music has stopped, but the driver hasn't. That is the achilles heel of the larger hybrid ribbon and electrostatic designs I've heard with large woofer towers like the IRS, Nola Grand Reference, Martin-Logan Statement, etc.

rw

One of the reasons the Grand subwoofers are all build by Apogee combined with motion sensors to syncronize the subwoofer with the bass ribbon

[E-Stat]

One of the reasons the Grand subwoofers are all build by Apogee combined with motion sensors to syncronize the subwoofer with the bass ribbon

The woofers in the IRS were servo driven too. It helped, but...

rw

[PeruvianSkies]

an interesting thread that has gone on much further than I had thought when I first read it.

[Florian]

The woofers in the IRS were servo driven too. It helped, but...

rw

Yes, i can see that. Not all hybrids suffer from this tough ;-)

[GMichael]

an interesting thread that has gone on much further than I had thought when I first read it.

Yeah, who would have thunk it.

[Bingo]

I will agree that this has gotten more replies than I exspected. After reading some of the tweaks over the years that people come up with I thought I just might throw in a little hummor and list some of my ideas. You might note that I did put LOL on the end of the original post and on the second post I spelled tight BASE like this instead of BASS.

I guess I will make one more observation. Several places that I have read mentioned adding spikes to my speakers to improve the sound but after much thought wouldn't you think that having a surge protector that was designed to eliminate the effects of spikes would render them useless.

Just some thoughts for the not so serious audio listener, Jeff

NOTE: I am over at Bing's house using his computer because mine is not working! Jeff

[Dusty Chalk]

I guess I will make one more observation. Several places that I have read mentioned adding spikes to my speakers to improve the sound but after much thought wouldn't you think that having a surge protector that was designed to eliminate the effects of spikes would render them useless.

(groans)