Easy speaker placement

[Black Stuart]

Finding the sweet spot for speaker placement has always been a pain in the proverbial. Most of us have speakers that are heavy some have speakers that can induce a hernia.

Then there is the accepted wisdom/ perhaps b/s about how to deal with energy transmitted from and to the floor. Today I found something that definitely helps with placement and maybe helps with the energy transfer problem as well - castor trolleys.

Visiting my local Aldi I saw two types of these, square and rectangular. As I plan to externalise the passive x/overs (active x/overs later) I c hanged my mind from square to rectangular so I can site the x/overs as well.

As Aldis/Lidl sell the same products across Europe - economy of scale, they either have been on sale or will be in the UK, I think it is something that should be of interest to those with speaker based systems - apologies if anyone has already tried this idea.

@ €9.99 each they are a steal, each is capable of supporting 250K. They are described as MDF but in fact are HDF and are covered with a non slip finish, are L570 x W290 x 18mm.

The room my speakers will be in are suspended timber with T&G pine that are is no way ideal. These trolleys are a really good solid construction, I shall have to experiment with continuing to use the excellent Norwegian Soundcare feet or not.

The ideal situation would be a ground floor primary build where it would be easy to decouple the approximate area where the speakers would be situated from the rest of the floor build. Either that or decouple where the equipment rack was to be sited. Either way would enable bass with lots of welly to be played.

Externalising the x/overs has to be beneficial and by siting them on an effectively damping material should yield a clearer more defined sound - let's see.

[bob orbell]

Concrete floor here Stuart, , no problem no boom just music, suspended wood floors are the pits and nothing will fix it. Bob

[bikerhifinut]

Originally Posted by bob orbell

Concrete floor here Stuart, , no problem no boom just music, suspended wood floors are the pits and nothing will fix it. Bob

And theres me moving my kit upstairs to a new room that has a pitched ceiling at the speaker end...... I suspect the joiners going to be complaining about the number of screws used to fix the flooring to the joists. Mind you he is up to speed with my obsession with loose or otherwise creaky flooring and is himself critical of badly fitted flooring especially in modern houses. ho Hum at least i will have space to put a pair of ESLs in the new room. I don't think excessive bass will be the problem somehow.
It is what it is, lifes full of compromises.

A.

[Greg.]

I have a suspended wooden fully carpeted floor in my listening room which is also our lounge. The floor being made with soft Pine allowed my spiked WAD KLS3 speakers to slowly sink through the carpet and nail themselves into the wood flooring, dulling the sound. The solution was to screw large cross head screws directly through the carpet into the floor and then to located the speaker spikes into the cross on the head of the screw. It works very well sound wise with good tight and detailed bass. The problem with this method is you have to be sure of your speaker placement before you do it because there is no option to move the speaker positions afterwards.

Subsequently, I have changed to using 15mm slabs of polished Marble laid on the carpet with the spiked speakers on top. I chose the Marble colour to blend aesthetically with the carpet. This seems to work equally well as the previous system and it has the advantage of allowing easy speaker movement to obtain the optimum performance in the room.

The Lidl/Aldi Dolly Trolleys will work just fine. I have one for moving heavy items around the house. Remember, Tannoy have for years fitted their higher end cabinet speakers satisfactorily with furniture wheels.

[Black Stuart]

Bob,
concrete floors are just as much a problem for bass response as suspended wooden floors.

Suspended wooden floors = flabby bass and unwanted vibration for equipment racks.

Reinforced concrete floors will, without decoupling send sound waves back up into the speaker giving bass a hard unnatural edge and has the same effect on equipment racks.

In Spain we lived in two apartment blocks, both built with typical reinforced concrete frames and floors and walls built with awful clay blocks. So bass travels through the concrete, aided and abetted with the reinforcing steel into the walls = terrible sound which is when I bought my first h/amp, the WAD one followed by the Bada PH12.

If you live in an apartment block do all your neighbours enjoy your choice of music? We were lucky in Andalucia, we were surrounded by young Spanish families and we all 'shared' our music by day - the young wives (all gorgeous BTW) really liked my Reggie and Jazz. Luckily the vecinos downstairs all worked but at night it had to be the h/amp.

The best floor is reinforced concrete with wooden battens and thicker than average t&g oak but pine is cheaper. If bitumen DPC sheeting is cut for placement under the battens the bass will be firm with no unnatural sound waves/vibration travelling back up.

It's a shame I can't use the lounge downstairs - it's built like most houses at the time 1965 - reinforced concrete lintels with clay blocks laid within and a concrete screed laid over/wooden battens and and pine t&g - esta la vida/that's life.

At least the house is detached as in French detached - 30ft on each side, so when Angela is out I can really rock n roll.

biker - here in France you can buy veneered HDF sheets - the veneers are really nice. Not a lot more expensive than the best pine t&g. If you've used good quality timber joists doubled up and bolted through, this will make a big difference - just a thought.

[bob orbell]

If you live in an apartment block. No Stuart, no way, I did live in a well made semi. with mother and farther, I then met Janet and we bought a semi with suspended floor, , we then bought a detached bungalow with solid concrete floor on the north side of Kettering over looking fields with a small stream at the bottom of the garden, nice, you may not believe this but, the footings are 12,yes 12 feet deep because there was a small reservoir a few yards upstream, we bought this because of it's nice location, detached and solid floors, the music sounds very good. Bob

[Black Stuart]

Greg,
when we were living in Hove we had a lovely huge lounge with a high ceiling BUT a suspended wooden floor and the standard UK carpeting. I too used a similar solution having tried the posi-headed screwsystem first, mine were concrete slabs.

The trolley's 18mm HDF provides a good solid base and is covered in a tough textured finish. When we moved to the mainland I brought with me about 5 sheets of bitumen sound sheeting, the castors themselves are of a tough plastic so I shall use patches of the b/sheeting undeneath, this should work well - suck and see.

The extra length of these trolleys is a bonus, plenty of room to place the external x/overs. The biggest pain for me with a sound system is the dusting, anything that makes this easier is great. Building my own equipment rack I deliberately made the bottom shelf extra deep so I could place the dis. block there. As for a piano black finish on my Kenwood deck, it shows every single speck, driving me mad.