Zero WAF stand but cheap.

quote:

---

All bits apart from the spikes can be found in B&Q

---

All bits? It looks like four pieces of wood, and ... er ... four spikes. Did you use any glue?

Thomas

Andrew

Andrew Randle
Currently in the "Linn Binn"

[This message was edited by sceptic on FRIDAY 22 February 2002 at 17:43.]

quote:

---

When I have the time I will give out the details and you can try it yourself

---

You must be an extremely busy man if you can't find the time to post those specifications

Cheers
Ade

As for the parts, just the wood, four tee nuts to fit the spikes and some posidrive screws if you are bold enough to pierce you precious carpet (mine needs replacing anyway). No glue needed and I suspect it would add unhelpful stresses to the wood.

While I would agree that it is agrigultural and unsightly it has to be more stable and inert than almost any other stand I have come across. I would encourage anyone to have a go knocking one up before they spend 10-100 times as much on getting someone else rich.

Come on some of you current and potential Mana, Fraim, Hutter and Quadraspire owners, are you bold enough to try something like this out? I'll bring it round to you if you're in the London area. (I'm only goading you on cos I can't get a home demo of stands any other way)

John (Who has yet to find a single speaker in the wife's library of Good Housekeeping magazine)

With some painting and sanding, I'd bet it'd have higher WAF than some of the bigname stands out there!

I guess you could put a table or frame above with further spikes to where my 135 sits in the photo, but i just think that will introduce instability. I have a feeling that the reason this thing sounds good is that there is no large flat surface to resonate like a sound board.

The isolation from the single set of spikes seems enough on my suspended wooden floor.

As an aside, I took all of my kit and had the space in my spare room to separate it out as widely as possible across the floor. Each bit of kit had its own little cheapy table and the cable lengths were the only limitation. It was worth the effort.

DIMENSIONS

The wood used should be say a couple of inches wider and longer than the kit being placed on it. This helps keep the centre of gravity away from the cross beams.

SPIKES

I used a variety, and found zinc Tee nuts to suit down at the DIY store. I just took them down there and tried them until they fitted. The best spikes were from Linn as used on the bottom of their Kan II stands (circa 8mm).

CHEATING

It is true that the stand is isolated from airborne vibration, but wow, what a sensible thing to do if you can! This stand was also good in the same rrom as the speakers and when comparing it to others on headphones won the day by a long margin as well.

A stand in the true spirit of flat earth perhaps as it certainly takes up a lot of real estate.

PHOTO

Here is a photo of the joints, if they can be called that.

I can knock up another if anyone wants a trial some time against their Mana.... Fraim.... blah blah

quote:

---

the top crossmembers have to rest on the bottom front to back ones or it will fall. They stop the bottom ones from rolling sideways.

---

Ah of course, silly me.

I wonder how balsa wood would sound?

I'd like to try your idea soon, when I get some extra time...

cheers

mike

Good luck Mike.

Maximum respect from Kanland. If you can be bothered, try moving the kit closer together for a listen so you can tell us how much of the benefit is from getting the kit fully separated.

Regards
Steve

What an ignoble end for a superb machine such as the CDS11 to end its days on a pile of batons.

That lot makes Mana look good.

Regards

Mick

You haven't met Mick yet. If Mick says it's ugly you should chuck it in, John. So sorry, mate ...

Are tee nuts threaded 'receptacles' for the spikes? Do you think it would be possible to build a three- or four-tier stand like that?

Thomas

I tried the separation of components gradually, starting where I thought the transformers would cause the most trouble. Keeping the XPS and Supercap as far as possible from the CDSII and 52 was very beneficial. It seemed to bring a greater sense of ease to the sound, less cluttered and simpler following of interplay between performers. Moving the 135's away from the 52 and the supercap away seemed to be as important as keeping the supplies away from the source. I have taken this up to the limits of what the cables allow and will move things closer together later when I have got the best I can achieve in other areas.

I don't care a great deal about the looks of the layout until I know the relative merits of each aspect of position, stand etc.

I'm convinced that the stand for the electronics is rather like a car suspension. The lighter the bits that can move the better (alloy wheels etc)as long as rigidity is preserved. Wood has the added advantage of having little sonic signature of its own and not effecting the magnetic fields of the transformers. For this reason I don't think that stacking is beneficial to the items on the bottom of the stand as they carry the weight of all the others. Also the transformers have the widest hum fields in the vertical plane (I think).

Mick

Do not despair for the ignoble end to this CDSII. At least the beast will be able to concentrate on doing more of what it is best at, playing music well. When people come to listen to my kit all they ever see is my Kan's. I try not to let them see the kit. It is irrelevant to the sound. I know that some people drool over the looks but I cannot do that at the expense of the main purpose of buying the kit in the first place. In due course I hope to listen to a Fraim against this set up. I for one would be pleased if the Fraim won, but I can see compromises in a Fraim that can be avoided if I ignore the visual beauty. Of course I could end up with one Fraim base per item but the cost!

Thomas

The tee nuts are threaded nuts which are designed to grip wood if they are pressed into a hole in the wood of the right diameter. The disc on one side of the nut that grips also serves to spread the load across a wider area of the wood. I have used larger washers to spread the load further. In theory they could be used to spike the base of floorstanding speakers most effectively. They are quite commonly available in good hardware stores.

Master Will

As for productions time/costs much depends upon where you get the wood but about £5 for 2 metres of 35mm X 70mm. The tee nust are about £3 and the spikes I already had on the base of some old speaker stands. I suspect you can buy new threaded M8 or similar spikes from most Hi Fi stores of repute. You just have to kmake sure that the T nuts will fit the spikes. Each one takes about 30 mins to knock up. Could easily go into production.

I got the idea about 6 months ago when looking at the Isoblue website. The first one I built was with MDF sheets on the base beams. This was much improved when I swapped the MDF for 4 mm aluminium sheet. I realised that the mass and rigidity of the cross beams was important.

I can also see that unless you are happy to hide your kit away in a large spare room this approach will not suit you. I did find that the stand works well even when close to the speakers in the same room but am uncertain that stacking would work well. It is quite a trip hazard.

John

Most of her friends are blown away by the sound and she is secretly quite proud of what I do. I came home one evening and there was quite a party underway to some African Lingala music. Great jangly guitar dance music.

What really made her laugh was finding me posting the photos onto this thread. She can't believe that you lot out there might be interested. I think the laugh might have been one of relief as it wasn't porn that was taking my interest after all!

John

quote:

---

I think the laugh might have been one of relief as it wasn't porn that was taking my interest after all!

---

Oh John, we definitely do porn here. Check this out.

Thomas

You mentioned that you might consider a Fraim. I can give you an idea of the benefits of one relative to a pair of 2 tier sound org stands in a system almost identical to yours since I've just been demming a few possible upgrades.

Start point was LP12/Valhalla/Circus/ARO/17D2 on Mana Phase 4 with 82/SC/250 on sound org plus KanII's (also have 1's and Briks but not used for this test).

First I added a 52. After warm up it gave more detail, extra delicacy, more natural presentation and substantial bass extention and weight. A big improvement. Then I added the 135's which gave more punch scale and PRaT. Nice but nothing like as big an improvement as the 52. Then I added the Fraim. This basically seemed to magnify the improvements from both pre and power upgrades i.e even more bass extension, realism and especially coherence although no extra detail. Music now made more sense. Easily as big as the Jump from 82->52, probably more so. The coherence thing was similar to going from a hicap to s/c on an 82 - the hicap being jumbled in comparism. In decreasing order of vfm it's Fraim>52>135. Ymmv.

If you got something like this from your supports you may not need a Fraim. If you didn't then check one out.

Regards
Steve

I noticed that the CDS II feet had slightly depressed the surface of the balsa and I can't imagine that this is a good sort of mechanical boundary.

This is all rather a shame as I'm fond of balsa woods amazing strength to weight. I'm sure that if the surface could be hardened it would be better than pine because of less energy storage. Need to read up on the transmission of vibration through such interfaces (gulp!)

Multi level stands.

I don't like the lack of stability or box interaction that a multilevel stands will bring, but in the interests of other peoples domestic restrictions I'll give one a try soon. I was thinking of doing it rather like a nest of tables, where one sits inside the next. I think I could get to three levels of naim like this without the width getting out of hand.

Remote control repeater.

I remove this from time to time and really can hear no effect upon the sound. This has always surprised me as the RF must be considerable. I have a mains spur and ground spikes for earthing which have removed the effect of mains interference. They probably reduce my kits vulnerability to the repeaters RF output. I was thinking of rigging up a couple of mirrors instead. I tried an Xmas tree silver ball at my sisters which worked well. Need a small window into the next room really. Slightly excessive attention to detail and diminishing returns perhaps.

Just a note for Mike Sae: Is the Lack table any good for LP12. I've got one and will spike it using the Tee nuts as it is such a simple solution.

John

P.S. Burying the wife alongside the goundspikes would probably improve earth conductivity!! Methinks the Law of diminishing returns cuts in just before this ?!

Thomas