Maybe it's a silly question, but I don't know the answer, and that's what these forums are for right?
If speaker stands are composed of wood vs. metal, will that affect speaker sound reproduction/performance in any way? Basically, is one better than the other?
HIJACK
On a similar subject - anyone know where a guy can get a set of 7" stands? Bought a set of near fields for the audio system... need a way to get them off the desk to ear height.
Bren R.
TNTguy,
While there are some audiophiles who would argue that the stand material contributes to resonances, as a practical matter, I have never heard it, nor have any of my former listening panel colleagues at the National Research Council in Ottawa, when we did some blind bests using various supports for bookshelf speakers. In addition to wood and metal supports, we even included a stack of hard-bound books as speaker supports and heard no differences (for the record, they were a bound set of journals of the Acoustical Society of America that resided in a large bookcase in the NRC listening room).
While you certainly don't want any speaker stand to resonate, bookshelf speakers do not have strong enough or deep enough deep bass output to cause any audible resonances in a stand.
Stands with a hollow central support pillar, including Axiom's metal stands, can be filled with bags of sand, lead shot, or non-resonant material for increased stability as well as to guard against any possibility of resonances. If you look at the physics of it, any bass resonance in a stand that might result from a bookshelf speaker would be at such a low level that it would be undetectable with music playback.
Regards,
Alan,
You have no doubt then never heard how an obsidian and whale bone set of speaker stands can really open up the nonclemature and widen the feral staging and really allow drivers to breathe and perspire. And the sheer speculation of the transient waveform models - it's truly breathtaking.
Bren R.
BrenR,
I understand those stands are very hot commodities up in Nunavit. Not a bad idea. Perhaps each set of stands could be "tuned" to a particular speaker.
Oh, try racksandstands.com for short stands. There's another site like that (name escapes me) with a similar name. I once sawed down a pair of old wooden stands with my Homelite chain saw during my lumberjack phase.
Regards,
Regards,
Thanks everyone for the info.
In reply to:
Oh, try racksandstands.com for short stands.
Thanks, Jack and Alan - tried both... their short stands are the Bose cube-type ones. Don't think they'll hold up to a pair of MA-20Ds on them. I'll have to make due with the Zip Disk (hey, they have a use!) and BetaSP tape stands I have jury-rigged until it's warm enough to run a saw outside.
Bren R.