Scottmoose
500 Club - QQ All-Star
Something now for the DIY minded (and no; I haven’t joined the lunatic snake-oil fringe, TNT-Audio or an asylum) –just a few ideas to try out if you feel so inclined. I suspect most people here will have run across versions of these before –new they are not; but they can be quite useful, so I thought I’d share the variations I’ve tried out recently. None involve opening up your gear –they just make the most of what it is in stock form, and, like all of the best tweaks, they are cheap. You can buy commercial versions of each: for a massive price. You pays your money... 
First up; speaker placement. Especially in quad set-ups they often end up in the corners of rooms, leaving you with four huge soundstage holes, and, often, rampant bass-frequencies. Assuming you can’t move them, there’s little you can do about the soundstage holes that invariably occurs with this layout, but there’s plenty you can do about the bass-boom. Bunging ports where appropriate with foam-rubber, cork or cotton-wool helps –no news there, but there are other things you can do if it’s still a problem, or there are no ports to bung.
Get hold of some cork flooring tiles (around £6 per square meter, which isn’t bad), lightly sand them, then line the area of wall(s) behind the speakers with them, which will damp down quite a lot of the resonance, and it can look rather good if done well too (always a bonus, especially if you are married… ). Remember to try it out first though by blu-tacking them in place, or you might find things have gone too far the opposite way. Much better than mucking about with expensive or ugly diffusers.
Don't like cork tiles? An 'artistic' version coming up then: you know those arty patterned fabrics you can buy -the 'modern' art varieties that look like refugees from a Robert Fripp Radiophonics album cover? Thought so. Make a frame out of 2 by 1 or the ilk, then staple the fabric over the top using a staple gun. If you can't find a pattern you like, white fabric with some fabric paint is cheap enough... Stuff the hollow of the frame with cotton-wool or some other sound-deadening material, then mount on the wall behind the speaker. Crazy, but it works, and even looks er...interesting. Artistic, that's the word (I did this when my girlfriend complained about the bottom-half of the room being cork. She prefered cladding, which reflects too much sound: I had little option in the matter.)
Still with speakers, if you’re running bookshelf or stand-mounters, make sure they are spiked or clamped with blu-tack to whatever they are sitting on. Stands or floor-standing speakers will both also benefit from sitting on top of something other than just the floor. Like a sand-box.
I built four, out of plywood. Choose a size slightly larger than the footprint of your speaker (1 ½ inches all round should do the trick). Side pieces should be around 4 inches high. Glue another cork tile to the bottom (won’t make any difference to the sound, but kinder to your floor) Fill it up with sand, and put on the top panel, after ensuring it’s level. Spike your speakers to it, and Bob’s your mother’s new ‘Gentleman friend’. Larger versions work under normal hifi racks too, if you want to try it out.
Supports. Most hifi racks cost a bomb, but they aren’t that great anyway, so if you can’t afford one, don’t panic. Most cheerfully allow vibrations to pass through their structure –the very thing they are supposed to prevent; and the majority of decoupling systems on them don’t work either. Harsh but true.
A solid shelf, on the other hand, rigidly attached to a supporting wall, does nothing of the kind and is worth trying out. I built five, again out of ply, attached to standard wall-brackets. Total cost: £37, including the brackets and some wax for the ply. Next bit: get some more of those cork floor-tiles, and glue them to the upper surface of each shelf. This will have far fewer vibrations than most hifi racks. If you want to go another stage try this: in the plumbing section of your DIY store, get hold of the largest soft rubber washers you can, and use these to support a sub-table (built the same way as the shelf, minus brackets) then plonk the electronics on that. Three washers per shelf should do it, and you’ve got an almost ideal platform for your electronics, especially turntables.
Finally, cables. I’m a renowned sceptic, but there are still some useful cheap tweaks here. Shielded or no, make sure they all have a nice ferrite clamp on to minimise RFI, and if your interconnects aren’t of a sensible design (shielded, with decent conductor area), get some that are. £20 will do it, if you look around; or £12 if you fancy building your own with cable and phono-plugs from a store like Maplin. By all means pay more if it’d make you feel better, (though poorer) but you won’t get any real improvement. Clean all the contacts in the system too, so you’re not suddenly going to loose your signal. Worth doing every few months.
First up; speaker placement. Especially in quad set-ups they often end up in the corners of rooms, leaving you with four huge soundstage holes, and, often, rampant bass-frequencies. Assuming you can’t move them, there’s little you can do about the soundstage holes that invariably occurs with this layout, but there’s plenty you can do about the bass-boom. Bunging ports where appropriate with foam-rubber, cork or cotton-wool helps –no news there, but there are other things you can do if it’s still a problem, or there are no ports to bung.
Get hold of some cork flooring tiles (around £6 per square meter, which isn’t bad), lightly sand them, then line the area of wall(s) behind the speakers with them, which will damp down quite a lot of the resonance, and it can look rather good if done well too (always a bonus, especially if you are married…
). Remember to try it out first though by blu-tacking them in place, or you might find things have gone too far the opposite way. Much better than mucking about with expensive or ugly diffusers. Don't like cork tiles? An 'artistic' version coming up then: you know those arty patterned fabrics you can buy -the 'modern' art varieties that look like refugees from a Robert Fripp Radiophonics album cover? Thought so. Make a frame out of 2 by 1 or the ilk, then staple the fabric over the top using a staple gun. If you can't find a pattern you like, white fabric with some fabric paint is cheap enough...
Stuff the hollow of the frame with cotton-wool or some other sound-deadening material, then mount on the wall behind the speaker. Crazy, but it works, and even looks er...interesting. Artistic, that's the word (I did this when my girlfriend complained about the bottom-half of the room being cork. She prefered cladding, which reflects too much sound: I had little option in the matter.)Still with speakers, if you’re running bookshelf or stand-mounters, make sure they are spiked or clamped with blu-tack to whatever they are sitting on. Stands or floor-standing speakers will both also benefit from sitting on top of something other than just the floor. Like a sand-box.
I built four, out of plywood. Choose a size slightly larger than the footprint of your speaker (1 ½ inches all round should do the trick). Side pieces should be around 4 inches high. Glue another cork tile to the bottom (won’t make any difference to the sound, but kinder to your floor) Fill it up with sand, and put on the top panel, after ensuring it’s level. Spike your speakers to it, and Bob’s your mother’s new ‘Gentleman friend’. Larger versions work under normal hifi racks too, if you want to try it out.
Supports. Most hifi racks cost a bomb, but they aren’t that great anyway, so if you can’t afford one, don’t panic. Most cheerfully allow vibrations to pass through their structure –the very thing they are supposed to prevent; and the majority of decoupling systems on them don’t work either. Harsh but true.
A solid shelf, on the other hand, rigidly attached to a supporting wall, does nothing of the kind and is worth trying out. I built five, again out of ply, attached to standard wall-brackets. Total cost: £37, including the brackets and some wax for the ply. Next bit: get some more of those cork floor-tiles, and glue them to the upper surface of each shelf. This will have far fewer vibrations than most hifi racks. If you want to go another stage try this: in the plumbing section of your DIY store, get hold of the largest soft rubber washers you can, and use these to support a sub-table (built the same way as the shelf, minus brackets) then plonk the electronics on that. Three washers per shelf should do it, and you’ve got an almost ideal platform for your electronics, especially turntables.
Finally, cables. I’m a renowned sceptic, but there are still some useful cheap tweaks here. Shielded or no, make sure they all have a nice ferrite clamp on to minimise RFI, and if your interconnects aren’t of a sensible design (shielded, with decent conductor area), get some that are. £20 will do it, if you look around; or £12 if you fancy building your own with cable and phono-plugs from a store like Maplin. By all means pay more if it’d make you feel better, (though poorer) but you won’t get any real improvement. Clean all the contacts in the system too, so you’re not suddenly going to loose your signal. Worth doing every few months.
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