Stands are finished! Big thanks to all! (1 Viewer)

[Justin Ward]

Me and dad finished the stands tonight. Well except for the little rubber feet but according me they are done. I am in awe as to how they look. They look exactly like I pictured them before we began building them. The stone like bases and tops and black textured riser just blend so well. They things are very stable too, even without the rubber feet.
Until now, I didn't think a stand helped the sound very much. I mostly built the stands for looks and a good way to the speakers off the floor. Well, I was proven very, very wrong. The stands really improved the bass, not in quantity, but in quality(tightness). I might just be crazy, but I think I am hearing better separation between instruments, espescially those in the lower midrange.

So to summarize:
I love my stands.
They look great.
I am happy


Thank you very much to all of you that offerered advice my project. I am sure that without your help the speakers would currently be sitting on stools rather than these beauties.

thanks,
Justin

 

[Geoff L]

Justin

Glad your pleased with your DIY speaker stands project!
Your not hearing things, proper speaker height& plaement makes a big difference.

Can you post a link to some pic's for us?

Geoff

 

[Justin Ward]

I hope to borrow a digital camera again to get some pictures of the finished stands.

 

[Justin Ward]

Tonight I actually totally finished. I installed some rubber bumpers on the bottom.

 

[Andrew S]

Congrats on the stands, they look great!
Now from what I gather you have Paradigm Atoms... if so, would you recommend them to a student like myself who already has a sub and wants new mains? I'm sorry for changing the subject, I just saw the opportunity to ask

And again, your stands look great, hopefully I can make something like that if I do decide to get the atoms

Andrew

 

[David_Moechnig]

I just got done building a set of speaker stands as well, I have access to a bunch of square steel tubing and a mig welder. You can see a picture of them at http://web.umr.edu/~moechnig/stands.JPG

 

[Allen Ross]

nice very industrail look to them, i don't know how they are acousictly? probably not to good but who cares, very nice

 

[David_Moechnig]

i don't know how they are acousictly? probably not to good but who cares, very nice

Acoustically they sound excellent, they are made from 2" steel tubing with .25" wall thickness and are filled with silica sandblasting sand. The unfilled stands weigh in at just under 19lbs each. With the sand they weigh a little over 40 lbs each. I also have carpet spikes under them which provides solid anchoring to the floor. I checked the vibration with a very precise vibration meter and the worst I got was .02 in/min with Megadeth turned up to 90 DbA in a 14'X16' room. I also have some vibration isolation pads between the speaker and the top of each stand. The way I figure all possible electrical energy is translated through the speaker to sound energy, almost none to distortion energy in the speaker stand. As soon as school lets out and I get back home for the summer I'm going to get them powdercoated so they look a little more asthetically appealing.

 

[Justin Ward]

Now from what I gather you have Paradigm Atoms... if so, would you recommend them to a student like myself who already has a sub and wants new mains? I'm sorry for changing the subject, I just saw the opportunity to ask

The Atoms are great. I have Atoms for surrounds and Titans for mains. It's worth the little more $ to go up to Titans.

 

[Allen Ross]

meah i like the bare metal look

 

[Mathew Shelby]

How do you decide how tall the stand need to be? I am interested in building some stands for my surrounds and also my center channel. For the surrounds I was going to go to a B&M and measure what they sell, but I was wondering about the center channel. I will be going front projection so isn't the center channel supposed to be angled upwards? What would you recommend for a height?

 

[Justin Ward]

If you go front projection I believe you can buy an acoustically transparent screen. But they can be pricey.

Generally you want the tweeters of the speakers to be at ear level. So say for example your ears are 45 inches of the ground(like me when sitting in my chair) and the tweeter in your speaker is 14 inches from the bottom of the speaker enclosure. You need an additional 31 inches to get the tweeter to ear level. Therefore, the height of the stand should be around 31 inches.

For your center channel if it is MTM I wouldn't worry about a specialized screen to get it to ear level. Apparently MTM speakers have excellent vertical dispersion. So just make a small stand to get it off the floor a little but not high enough to block the screen. If you have the space at the bottom of the screen for the nescessary stand space, go for a full stand if you wish.