Audiophools...

[nuffink]

They're easy enough to recognise. They got the golden ears and the brown noses as a set.

[Hunter]

I wonder how my solid wood stands standing on 2 inches of expanded polystyrene on a wood floor fare....

Ditch the polystyrene. Spike the stands into the floor and I reckon it should sound considerably better.
On the other hand I'm not one of those claiming to have some kind of golden ears.
You might well be better advised listening to one of the number of self appointed audiophiles on the forum.

The foam blocks are there so my downstairs neighbours don't shoot me through the floor because of the bass...

[Meffy]

Hunter, wouldn't a layer of half-inch steel plate do better?

[Hunter]

Hunter, wouldn't a layer of half-inch steel plate do better?

[Meffy]

/me has lived in places like that... heh...

[Kingston]

Hunter wrote:
But hang on there is one big monitor company that recommends blu tack under your monitors instead of ceramic cones etc, can't recall which one but i remember reading it in SOS and chuckling because thats what I do already...


More than one. It acts like a constrained layer.
Constrained layer damping is what all the monitor manufacturers would be doing if Sony didn't hold the patent on it. The sad thing is that Sony don't utilise it and it's probably an unenforcable patent due to prior usage. But who can afford to take on Sony's lawyers.

Sooo, what should I put under my new monitors (will have them on my desk) - or should I just not put anything underneath them?

Cheers, Jo

Depends on the desk.
If it's likely to act as a sounding board then decoupling may be your only option. Ideally you should buy or make some stands. The kind that can be sand-filled. If you've heard (or measured) the difference a decent pair of stands can make you'll realise they're one piece of audiophile gear that isn't voodoo.

If you do have to put them on a desk place them, if possible, over a leg.

Like I said earlier, I have actually measured the response of these monitors before and after the decoupling. It was better, but not as much as I would've liked. I also have extremely sturdy stands which can be filled with rocks and sand. I haven't done that yet because frankly, I'm happy with the sound (and the measured response too).

The mic was behringer ECM8000 measurement mic which isactually designed for this purpose.

Then again,
there's an odd dip in the 110hz region, with even a harmonic at 220, either of which I have no clue about. It's there regardless of the squash balls and doesn't seem to move when moving the speakers around either. (I should really start a "troubleshoot kingston's room and monitors" thread, but not on this forum). It's definitely not the monitors (dynaudio bm6a).

nuffink, why does genelec sell squash balls to put under their newest monitors if they're so bad? http://www.genelec.com/news/news.php?year=8020

Yes, the material/size is actually identical to a squash ball and it's the same size for the whole range.

[nuffink]

Like I said earlier, I have actually measured the response of these monitors before and after the decoupling. It was better, but not as much as I would've liked. I also have extremely sturdy stands which can be filled with rocks and sand. I haven't done that yet because frankly, I'm happy with the sound (and the measured response too).

The mic was behringer ECM8000 measurement mic which isactually designed for this purpose.

Cool. Post it up.
What kind of graph did you plot? CSD, ETF, Wigner distribution maybe?

[nuffink]

nuffink, why does genelec sell squash balls to put under their newest monitors if they're so bad? http://www.genelec.com/news/news.php?year=8020

No idea.

[Kingston]

Like I said earlier, I have actually measured the response of these monitors before and after the decoupling. It was better, but not as much as I would've liked. I also have extremely sturdy stands which can be filled with rocks and sand. I haven't done that yet because frankly, I'm happy with the sound (and the measured response too).

The mic was behringer ECM8000 measurement mic which isactually designed for this purpose.

Cool. Post it up.
What kind of graph did you plot? CSD, ETF, Wigner distribution maybe?

Haha, nothing fancy like that. It's voxengo SPAN with near default setting (infinite peak hold of course).

I used sine sweeps and white noise and they both gave the same result graph. Will post in a bit.

[nuffink]

Like I said earlier, I have actually measured the response of these monitors before and after the decoupling. It was better, but not as much as I would've liked. I also have extremely sturdy stands which can be filled with rocks and sand. I haven't done that yet because frankly, I'm happy with the sound (and the measured response too).

The mic was behringer ECM8000 measurement mic which isactually designed for this purpose.

Cool. Post it up.
What kind of graph did you plot? CSD, ETF, Wigner distribution maybe?

Haha, nothing fancy like that. It's voxengo SPAN with near default setting (infinite peak hold of course).

I used sine sweeps and white noise and they both gave the same result graph. Will post in a bit.

So, frequency domain only then?

[Kingston]

At sweetspot, no squash


At sweetspot, squashballs


At sweetspot, no squash, mic moved back 50cm


At sweetspot, squashballs, mic moved back 50cm




Somehow with the squashballs the response seems to even out across the band to around 1-2khz. The same can be heard as a "more controlled sound". Nothing happens to higher frequencies (of course), and transients seem to stay the same. I won't bother trying to measure it, that much I trust my ears.

So if you know what's up with the (around) 111/222/444 harmonic thing, please help.

[nuffink]

EDIT EXCUSE ME WHILE I EDIT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO POST IMAGES

Post the URL, select it all and press the button up there marked Img.

[nuffink]

So if you know what's up with the (around) 111/222/444 harmonic thing, please help.

At a guess (and believe me without seeing what's happening in the time domain it's a guess) I'd say that your monitors are rocking gently on their squashballs at their resonant frequency of about 55hz. The harmonics of this rocking are causing those dips.

Still, you keep on trusting those ears.

[Kingston]

So if you know what's up with the (around) 111/222/444 harmonic thing, please help.

At a guess (and believe me without seeing what's happening in the time domain it's a guess) I'd say that your monitors are rocking gently on their squashballs at their resonant frequency of about 55hz. The harmonics of this rocking are causing those dips.

Still, you keep on trusting those ears.

You're blind or can't read I don't know. The first measurement is WITHOUT SQUASHBALLS. The third one also.

(I just knew this would be the wrong place to post this kind of data, unfortunately it had to be you that proved it, nuffink)

[nuffink]

So if you know what's up with the (around) 111/222/444 harmonic thing, please help.

At a guess (and believe me without seeing what's happening in the time domain it's a guess) I'd say that your monitors are rocking gently on their squashballs at their resonant frequency of about 55hz. The harmonics of this rocking are causing those dips.

Still, you keep on trusting those ears.

You're blind or can't read I don't know. The first measurement is WITHOUT SQUASHBALLS. The third one also.

(I just knew this would be the wrong place to post this kind of data, unfortunately it had to be you that proved it, nuffink)

Why are you spitting your dummy?