Mapleshade Vibration Control For Speakers
Our Vibration Control System for speakers has three elements: brass footers drain vibration out of the speaker and down into a Speaker Plinth; air-dried maple Speaker Plinths receive and dissipate that vibration; and brass footers rigidly couple each Plinth to the floor below.We NEVER recommend using Isoblocks directly under speakers or as footers for Speaker Plinths. Here are the fundamentals:
• The physical movement of their drivers and the fluctuating electrical signal currents create unwanted vibrations (through both magnetic and piezo-electric forces) inside every speaker cabinet. Carefully controlled listening tests prove that these internal vibrations muddy the music signal far more significantly than external airborne or floor-borne vibrations.
• Mounting speakers on standard isolating and damping devices (like springs, rubber feet, sand boxes, magnetic suspensions, or air cylinders/bladders) traps the sound-degrading vibrations inside the speaker cabinet, exacerbating muddying of the music signals. For speakers, this phenomenon blurs image focus and creates muddied bass. This is precisely why we DO NOT recommend using Isoblocks under speakers. Isoblocks were design only to be used as platform footers for electronics mounted on hard surfaces.
• Hybrid isolation/coupling devices like Roller Blocks, IsoBearings, magnetic couplers, etc. purport to serve three essential functions—vibration transfer, vibration dissipation and external isolation—all in one convenient footer. Unfortunately, such all-in-one devices can serve none of the three functions well. They may change, perhaps even improve, sound a bit in one area, but with penalties in other areas, e.g better midrange detail but soggier bass, less edgy treble but slower, duller transients, etc.
Our Vibration Control System For Speakers serves the three functions using three separate components, each optimized for one and only one function:
• First, our brass footers are designed only to cleanly drain out as much internal vibrational energy as possible from speakers. We specifically optimized our footers’ shape, material, alloy, and mass to maximize the vibrational energy transferred out of the cabinet and minimize the energy reflected back. Fifteen years of customer shootoffs have shown they do so more effectively and sound better than any competing footer or hybrid at any price.
• Second, Maple Speaker Plinths serve as the optimal sink for receiving and dissipating the vibrational energy transferred out of the speaker by the footers. Surprisingly, exhaustive testing against every space age damping material and composite used in high-end platforms today shows solid wood (not plywood or MDF) to be better a sounding sink. And, among the wood species available, the same tests show maple to have, by a sizable margin, the most detailed and uncolored sound. (
Click here for more details on this and on the importance of air dried maple.)
• Third, Each Speaker Plinth is directly coupled to the floor by four massive brass footers pre-assembled to each maple base. This approach ensures the speaker and stand are rigidly anchored to the floor or subfloor. We offer four footer options, each painstakingly honed to offer optimal sound quality on different floor coverings. This is just one example of the attention to detail that has gone into the development of Mapleshade's Vibration Control System For Speakers.
