Speaker stands

Posted by: lemarchand on 11 January 2002

Hello everyone. I would be interested to know your opinion on speaker stands. What is better, solid heavy stands or light ones? Is there any pattern such as "heavy speakers match with heavy stands and the opposite"? It is said lately that the old and "bad" theory is that very heavy stands wreck the sound. What I am curious about is why then Proac recommends Target Audio speaker stands if I remember well? Target has gone bankrupt anyway, so Proac has no actual benefit in doing so!

Thanks in advance.

Posted on: 11 January 2002 by David Quigley

....but my pro-ac 1SC's sounded better when I filled the Targer stands up with sand. There are Target knock-offs around so their backrupt status should not have too much impact.

Posted on: 11 January 2002 by Steve Toy

Some speakers sound better on heavy stands, other speakers sound better on lighter and more rigid ones.

A few years back when I had B&W601s atop Atacama SE24s, the sound improved significantly when I filled the stand columns with dry sand.

However, I have heard what placing certain small speakers on lightweight frame type stands can do for PR&T and tune...

Rega Aras sound better on Custom Design Walking Frames - that I know from experience!

It's always a nice day for it Have a good one!
Steve.
It's good to get back to normal.

Posted on: 11 January 2002 by Justin

. . .with what has been said so far. Different speakers work better on different stands depending on make and model.

I can say this, however. The proac monitors actually "require" heavy stands. When I first purchased a pair of 1sc's, I started them on light Linn fraim types. The best way to describe the sound was "difuse" and "light". The speaker was just awfull. I mean really horible. It was just a think amorfous block.

I then purchased a pair of Atlantis heavy stands (BTW, I though these were the stands Proac recommends). This was quite an improvement, and made the speakers sound like they were worth the 1700 I had paid for them.

Judd

Posted on: 11 January 2002 by JohnS

I believe that, much like electrical impedance matching, speakers might benefit from being matched to the stands. So, if your speakers have a low resonant point (<10Hz) then they might sound good on light and rigid stands which have a higher resonant frequency (>10Hz), which would prevent sympathetic resonance. And vice versa.

Or else the engineer in me just wants to rationalize the whole thing.

-John