![]() ![]() They dig through the carpet and not only make contact with the wooden floor beneath them but they also dig into the floor, which is why they’re longer and sharper. Speaker stand spikes are designed for one single use in mind – to be used under speaker stands that are standing on a carpeted floor. How does that makes sense? This is the main reason why people are confused. Coupling is a thing of the past.īut coupling is what speaker stand spikes are for, which are meant to go under your speaker stands (as opposed to spikes that go under your speakers to decouple). That’s why decoupling creates a tighter bass response and a better stereo image, because speakers are designed to accommodate their own vibrations. Most woofers are designed with heavy cabinets in mind that don’t allow recoil from the woofers to vibrate the overall speaker, and the micro-vibrations that are left are taken into account in the design and shape of the cabinet. The second point is why you have audiophiles swearing that spikes make their speakers sound better, worse, do nothing, make it not better or worse but just different, etc. They don’t realize speakers are tuned to their cabinets and are meant to vibrate.They think speaker spikes are the same as speaker stand spikes.Okay, so the reason people swear that these spikes do two opposite things is two-fold: Their goal is the same as foam monitor isolation pads, to decouple so vibrations can’t be passed around.Īnd that leads to the two points of confusion for audiophiles when it comes to these spikes. But it’s much easier and cheaper to decouple them, and that’s why speaker spikes exist and take on the shape they do. There are some extremely effective and legitimate methods of coupling speakers to a structure to avoid vibrations. If the goal was to couple the monitors to the stands, then what you’d want is to increase the mass of both while increasing the contact surface area, and then put rubber bands around the two and stack some concrete on top. I’m sure you can see why that’s a poor analogy already. This is the exact opposite conclusion, and they support their arguments using analogies to football cleats that help a player get a better grip on the playing field. Now, at the same time you have audiophiles saying that the purpose of speaker spikes is to couple the speakers to the stands or desk surface. I hear if you make them out of compressed magical pixie dust it sounds even better! Typically you’d use four of them to create a sturdy base, but some people swear using only three sounds better even though they risk their speakers toppling over. These spikes are shaped like cones that have a wide base and then reduce down to either a point or a ball bearing, and the purpose is to reduce the surface area of the points of contact between the spikes and the speaker. And that makes sense, because decoupling is isolating and that’s obviously the purpose of the spikes based on their design. The entire reason for doing this is to decouple the two structures so that vibrations can’t pass between the two and affect the quality of the sound emanating from the speakers. Speaker spikes are little cones that are used to separate your studio monitors or entertainment system speakers from the object they’re resting on. Let me summarize the online conversation first for the sake of other readers. You also have the guys who sold their expensive ones because using a phone book or a rotten log from the backyard sounded better. Then, of course, you have the guys using ones that costed $10,000 dollars, made out of brass and a pure gold core. Sean, that’s a great question, and I agree, nobody in the audiophile world seems to be able to agree on what these spikes do or how they do it. Are these legit or just another audiophile fantasy? And that makes me think it involves magical thinking. In my adventures online I saw people swearing by speaker spikes, and honestly they look amazing.īut nobody could articulate exactly what they do or how they do it. I have some monitor isolation pads that look okay but they’re still foam. I’m always thinking about the way my studio looks as much as how good it sounds. I’m glad to have taken that frustrating journey because it has helped me better the answer to this question, which is now deeper and longer than the original email exchange: What Do Speaker Spikes Actually Do? Should I Be Using Them? Question: It was getting me confused too until I realized where and why they were going wrong. Audiophiles don’t exactly operate in the same reality as the rest of us. ![]() Let’s just say I’m not surprised to have read professionals in that crew stating the exact opposite conclusions from the same set of facts. I had formulated and sent my own answer back before reading some opinions on a few audiophile forums. We received a question recently that nearly drove me bonkers as I started to think more about it. ![]()
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