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SOFT FEET
Extracts
from First review of Ringmat concept of ‘soft feet’ under
speakers. Although no mention was made of Statfeet, each set of
Ringmat Feet incorporates a Statfoot, and these therefore formed
part of the evaluation
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AUDIO
SMORGASBORD
Using
The Ringmat Feet and Domes As Speaker Supports
Back
in the mists of time the earth was flat – truth.
Why was it true? Because
everybody knew it, and something that everyone knows has to be
true....
And
the purpose of this preamble? To
discuss another one of those ‘truths’,
i.e. that the only way to make speakers sound good is to
spike them to the floor (via a stand in the case of smaller
speakers). Before
you dismiss this as the ramblings of a demented idiot, it’s worth
noting that not only is there a groundswell of designers out in
Europe who are eschewing the now traditional spiked approach, but
also here in the UK....
In
order to understand this thinking it is necessary to wind the clock
back to those flat earth days of yore ...
In those days floorstanding speakers would have plastic feet
which would rest directly on your carpet or floor.
You would rarely even find any adjustment for levelling.
Bookshelf speakers were just that, and speaker stands were
viewed, in the main, as a method of raising the tweeter to ear
height. Speakers atop
such stands would often wobble about frighteningly at the merest
touch....
Spiking
speakers and speaker stands is a very predictable way of controlling
the interface between the speaker and its environment...
Now
it is an immutable fact in our physical world that energy cannot be
lost. It can be
transmitted and it can be converted from one form into another, but
not lost. So these are
your two options when trying to deal with unwanted energy.
In the case of spiking, the theory is that it will allow
energy transmission into the physical structure of the floor,
removing it from the cabinet and out of harms way, but energy
transmission is easier said than done, especially at interface
points such as the contact point between the spike and the floor.
In fact you are just as likely to get the energy reflected
back into the system as transmitted out of it if you are not
careful. Try hitting a
concrete block with a small metal hammer to see what I mean, not
only does it bounce off, but the resulting feedback will vibrate up
the handle into your hand and up your arm.
Apply this to a speaker and you can easily see that the
results are certainly going to be unfortunate....
The
alternative method is to try and convert the energy into a less
harmful form, typically heat....
So
to sum up, spiking speakers may stop gross cabinet movement, but the
solution is not without problems of its own, and it’s these
problems that the dissenters are trying to solve.
In the case of the Ringmat Feet and Domes, the solution is to
couple the speakers to the stand or floor using a lossy mechanism,
one that will not allow energy to be reflected back into the system,
effectively providing the speaker with a suspension of its own....
First
up on the system, a bit of Skunk Anansie and ‘Charlie Big
Potato’. ...I
wasn’t too sure what to expect when I settled back to listen.
... What I
hadn’t bargained for is that the Feet and Domes need to be run in,
which in the case of this application seems to mean that they need
to settle under the weight of the speaker cabinets.
Left alone for a couple of days, and after checking the
speakers were still level, I tried again.
Now the bass drum had impact aplenty, but the presentation
had changed. Instead of
being all skin and thud, it now had weight, timbre, and decay.
In fact it was like the difference between using a kick drum
with and without a sandbag inside (sandbags are often used to deaden
kick drums for live performances).
In fact the separation between bass drum and bass guitar was
much more marked, each floating free, making the rhythm much less
mechanical, and far more like real musicians playing together.
... Elsewhere in
the spectrum a layer of aural grit had been removed, adding
sweetness to Skin’s voice plus a layer of acoustic that had gone
previously unnoticed. Also
some of the edginess to the rhythm guitar had been removed, which
could be perceived by some as robbing the track of a little
excitement, but I felt that the presentation was truer to the
original, and this kind of false excitement generated by having a
few rough and ready leading edges to a system can be very wearing on
a long listening session.
Moving
across to vinyl, ‘Backstreet Slide’ from the Richard and Linda
Thompson Album Shoot Out The
Lights was an even
better illustration of the benefits of the de-coupling.
On this track the kick drum is very weighty, and fairly
prominent in the mix and it can be overpowering on an unbalanced
system. Add to that
Thompson’s fierce guitar and Linda’s vocal, and you have a
recipe for a serious headache.
Up til now my system always felt on the edge with this song,
the guitar always a little shrill and course, Linda’s vocal thin
and recessed, the kick drum thudding out slightly removed from the
rest of the action. With
the Ringmat products in place, suddenly there was coherence.
The kick drum given more depth whilst being reigned back,
letting it rejoin the rest of the instruments, Richard’s guitar
was given more depth, losing its sting without losing the attack.
Linda stepped forward to take her place as lead vocalist.
The
Ringmat Domes and Feet come in at around £115 per complete set (4),
and you will need two sets for a pair of speakers.
Once they have settled in, no further adjustment is required.
But bear in mind that the Feet will only support a maximum of
22kg*. (* For ideal
results). There is an
extra heavy duty version on the way though.
In the context of my system, this is an absolute bargain.
Since using them I have harboured no desire to go back to the
prior arrangement, so score another one for the de-coupling brigade.
To read the full review, click
here.
Dave
Ayers, hi-fi+, Issue 16, Mar/Apr 2002
“Ringmat
recently supplied me with some cork domes to try in conjunction with
their feet that I’ve been using for a while.
It was an instructive experience. ...
Using
the track ‘Back Street Slide’ from Richard and Linda
Thompson’s superb Shoot Out
The Lights LP I started off by using just the feet under Tom
Evan’s Groove phono stage.
The most obvious effect was in the bass, where the kick drum
had much more slam and impact.
The overall separation of the instruments was improved with
better timing leading to a greater understanding of the interplay
between the musicians. ...
Adding
the domes first to the Groove and then to the Argo [HR Pre-amp] was
a big leap forward, or rather it was when I realised that the
foot/dome combination should always be used in sets of three under
electronic components, and not four.
Now there was a greatly increased sense of a band of real
people playing together and off each other.
Thompson’s voice had much more body, and more importantly
was much more expressive.
Those micro dynamics where a singer very slightly stresses a
particular word were much clearer.
Finally
I tried the feet with and without the domes under the Pulsar DAC.
Oddly here the feet alone were much more satisfactory than
the foot/dome combination.
With the feet used on their own, the results were very
similar to the feet used with the domes under the Groove and the
Argo.
For example, playing another Richard Thompson track
‘Uninhabited Man’ from the CD Mock
Tudor showed a staggering amount of extra bass depth, the kind
of extra depth that adds hugely to the overall recorded ambience.
The whole soundstage was bigger and had more acoustic.
When you manage to achieve this sort of effect in your
system, you suddenly find yourself able to hear more easily into the
recording, separating the musical strands and giving greater insight
into the interaction of the musicians. ...”
Dave
Ayers, Hi-Fi+, Nov/Dec 2001
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