Just thought I'd chime in here and share a little of my knowledge about vibration dampening and conduction. The idea of placing your monitors on marbles is good in theory, but by no means the most effective way of achieving the results. A mousepad under your monitors will only degrade the sound, never do this!
You have to think about what you are trying to achieve here. Your speakers are little pistons moving back and forth very rapidly, and you don't want them to waste any of their energy in moving the cabinet back and forth with them. This is why is is absolutely essential that your speakers are as stable as possibly. If your cabinet is is allowed to move back and forth with the drivers, then the drivers can never return to a fixed and precise zero reference point, therefore resulting in distortion.
There is alot of energy moving being transmitted both through the materials of the cabinet and through the air from the sound. You don't want either of these energies to get back to the driver and effect its performance. That is why the commonly accepted method of dealing with vibrations these days is to conduct them and give them a short and easy path to earth. This is where spikes are so good. They perform both of the functions described above. When balanced and positioned properly they give the speaker an incredibly solid base to work from and the cone shape of the spike conducts any vibrations from the air and the cabinet away and into whatever the speaker is sitting on, which ideally should also have conical shaped poles and be on spikes as well so as to continue conducting those vibrations from the air and the speaker completely to earth where they cannot be looped back into the system in any way whatsoever.
For the reasons outlined above I urge everyone to abandon any attempts to use isolation or absorbtion feet or materials as the leading cause unwanted vibrations actually comes from the air in the room which you can never really isolate anything from. Just give the vibrations a clean and fast path to earth and never worry about them again.
A bit of a rant here I know, but understanding these theories will really help you to maximise the potential of your monitors.
|