Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions What makes the perfect stand

I have made myself up a large stand several years ago. After living with it, I have concluded it is far from perfect. I am a woodworker so building something new isn't a problem.

My current thought is to make something a bit more modular. Just because the heights and widths are correct right now, doesn't mean that they will be in a year or two from now. So if I build something that can be adjusted for spacing between the shelves then that would solve that issue.

I currently have tempered glass shelves. They look nice, but I am wondering if they sound nice too? The idea of vibration effects the sound that you get, glass is a very reflective surface, so sound hitting it is reflected back off it so depending on the angle of the sound it can just as easily bounce back. We don't make speakers out of glass, rather out of MDF and for good reason. There is a consistent density throughout but I don't know what the sound properties are? Is it a reflective, abosorbion or transmission type material?

Then you get to vinyl records, and a turn table. Are you wanting that to sit on something that will absorb any sound vibration, or do you want it sitting on something very heavy and dense?

Cable management is also a consideration. Would you want all your cables to be run together in a single channel or would you want them each to be run seperate so nothing crosses each other?

All questions worth considering and need to be answered with weighted priority to build the perfect stand.

The shelves have to go. Your root cause problem then goes away.

MDF is largely reflective. That's why Andrew nearly poked his eyeballs out and lit his hair on fire dealing with standing waves in the M100. This answer is purely academic because, like I said, get rid of your shelves.

Regarding your turntable, get rid of it and your problem is solved.

Regarding cable routing, keep high current carrying conductors separate from small signal conductors and all will be fine. If they have to cross, cross them at 90 degrees relative to each other.

P.S. I have Axiom stands for my M5s and I like them. I'd like to see Axiom cost-reduce their stands without impacting their effectiveness.

For turntable, I went for "sitting on large and heavy but isolated with some sorbothane feet ( https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00AJ2FVHG ) between turntable and large heavy thing". Seems to be working really well so far... historically I have ended up mounting turntables on wall-mounted shelves to get enough isolation from the floor.

For shelves, I don't have a lot of answers yet (I need to replace the old coffee table I'm currently using at some point) but I noted that tempered glass seems to resonate at between 1KHz and 3KHz depending on thickness. Didn't seem like an awfully peaky resonance but if you really wanted glass shelves I guess one option would be to get laminated glass, ideally two different thicknesses with an absorbent layer between them.

Predictably, I'm thinking about building shelves from 2x* pine

The best thing I did for audio in my living room is chop up my coffee table and use it for firewood.

Agreed... I'm still thinking that I need to get as much stuff as possible out of the listening area. Used to think that having the power amp on the floor in an otherwise empty listening area was just for show but not so sure about that now.

John, the only things that should be in your listening area are guns and ammo. They really help with diffusion.

I thought you were going to say it solves the problem of Wife/Kids bothering you when you're in the middle of some serious listening.

I was wondering if you put a nice heavy slab of marble or granite on the top of a stereo rack, the weight would dampen any movement on the rack (If the rack was say 42" tall). just wondering aloud.

Quartz will provide improved attenuation of low and mid frequencies compared to marble or granite. For attenuation of highs, sandwich a Sealy Posturepedic mattress between two pieces of quartz.

Like this (from the old house so ~10 yrs old) ? The .44 Magnum didn't fit so I'll need to do a photo re-shoot once I get the LFR1100's unpacked.

I didn't think about impact on diffusion and sound so will do some testing when time permits