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Can anyone please tell me approx how much hieght the spikes add to the 802Ds. I am currently planning on turning the garage into a music room and since the floor inside the garage is level with the outside I was thinking of slightly elevating my 802s (just in case). Spikes would be ideal for this.
Hi
the bottom plates of my 802d are currently 1.5" off the carpet with the spikes ( screwed all the way in = min hight possible). I assume it added about 0.75" or so .
Eliav
I will sound weird, but for me the spikes not only make the 802D's look ugly, but they are also useless.
I have removed the rollers off my 802D (because they also made them look ugly imo). The right place for the bottom of the plinth of the 802D is... the floor.
I will sound weird, but for me the spikes not only make the 802D's look ugly, but they are also useless.
I have removed the rollers off my 802D (because they also made them look ugly imo). The right place for the bottom of the plinth of the 802D is... the floor.
Incroyable !! Stephane, Wow I never thought of that. I put the spikes on and have regretted it from day one. I too think they look ugly, and there is no perceived difference in sound IMHO.
I have been contemplating going back to rollers because:
a. you can move the speakers around which I need to do in my setup, because to access behind the system
b. Lowers the look
c. If you screw up with spikes, which its hard not to over the years, you are bound to dig a huge hole in the wood floor that will last 100 years
d. Its hard work unhooking them up and laying them down to take them off again
For me, its like everyone says its the thing to do so you do it not wanting to miss the boat, but the thought of them on the floor is appealing except there would be nothing to support the speaker in the way of feet.
If you want your speakers to look like they should (ie bottom of plinth on the ground), while still retaining the ability to move them around, put them on a small patch of fitted carpet, which you will nicely cut with the shape of the 802 plinth + a small oversize.
Have you EVER seen any picture of 80x (or any other speakers, that is), used in a professional context, standing on spikes ?
Me, never. I've seen tons of photos of 80x and other speakers at work in studios (like Passavant, Abbey etc), always laying either flat on the ground, or on solid spacers to leverage them so that the medium raises above the mixing console.
Money spent on spikes, and other esoteric stuff like expensive cables, would better be spent on adequate room treatment... As if cables had a preferred direction of electron flows in AC, or as if audio frequencies would travel at different speed in a cable, or as if spending more than $5 in an AC cable would help turning the miles of ordinary AC cables in the wall or in the streets into anything better than they are (and need be)...
Money spent on spikes, and other esoteric stuff like expensive cables, would better be spent on adequate room treatment... As if cables had a preferred direction of electron flows in AC, or as if audio frequencies would travel at different speed in a cable, or as if spending more than $5 in an AC cable would help turning the miles of ordinary AC cables in the wall or in the streets into anything better than they are (and need be)...
In the US the spikes are free for the 802D, 801D, and 800D to the original owner and all of the other floor standers come with them. I think those speakers are heavy enough that spikes might not make a huge difference, but for smaller speakers they do. They keep the speaker from vibrating and wasting the drivers energy. It varies from speaker to speaker on how well it works.
Cables do make a difference IMO and so do room treatments. Sometimes room treatments might not work in a living space do to aesthetic reasons so cables may be the option available.
Well I took the spikes off my 802D's and they look so much better. I am sorry to have ever put them on. I never heard a difference.
Stephane, I 'have' heard a difference between cheap interconnects and expensive interconnects. Clearly. I was disturbed by the sound so much that I was going to return a component until I switched the interconnect and then it sounded fine.
But the speakers are lower and look much cooler. You can't put them directly on the floor without something, because it would damage the unprotected bottoms.
Sorry to flip flop. I felt I heard a difference with my subwoofer on spikes, but after changing back to rollers, I actually prefer the 802D speakers lower to the center of my listening area and lower looking.
I've heard people say, wow it sounds more precise, or the base really kicks, but probably the perceptions we tend to make after adding something new, might have a lot to do with these perceptions.
As for putting the 802D on the floor, you have to remove the roller screws and the thin wooden bottom.
Then, the periphery of the plinth and the roller cage bases (which coincide as the 80x CAD drawing shows), will be laying flat on whatever you put them.
As for cables, I as a scientist (I'm PhD in physics), have always been putting the "cable matters" on the "idiophile" side of things.
Still, I heard every so often that "interconnects make a difference", "speaker cables make a difference", assorted with scientoid arguments like "skin effect", "group delay" etc. all of which had "some ground" to my eyes, that I've been attending ABX tests for interconnect & speaker cables more than once.
As I expected (silently, I was just a spectator), all the people who pretendedly were "immediately able to tell a right power phase connection from a reversed", or "able to discernate a more open scene with air around the instruments with this incredibly well made interconnect", scored exactly what statistical theory predicts when you cannot discernate.
Now, I leave to each and everyone the right to have its own mind, the above is how I made up mine.
That said, MrD, given that we're only 45 minutes apart from each other, I'd be delighted to run an ABX cable test at your premises
I had a really cheap Fnac interconnect from a DAC to a Preamp and the sound made me want to send the DAC back. I switched to Nordost Heimdall and the improvement was noticeable. Was the cheap cable "coloring" the sound ? This I cannot say, but the difference was not slight.
However, My belief is that between 2 excellently made brands there will be little or no difference.
I must put in my $.02 for spikes. They do improve the performance of the N802 (note that I don't have the "D" model, but let's assume my observations would be similar). The upper register performance (tweeter) does not change much and neither really did the midrange, but the midbass and deeper bass were much improved by adding spikes. The improvement was more obvious the louder I adjusted the volume.
It should be said that the goal for any serious listener is to decouple his/her components from their substrate and any vibrations associated with that substrate. Audiophiles have been using spikes and other isolation devices for decades now, and with good reason. The effects are important and, in my system and to my ears, clearly audible. Simply put: you will not get the performance you paid for without optimizing your gear using isolation devices. In the case of speakers, that means using spikes.
As for cosmetics, I can't tell you what looks better with your system, but no one even notices that my speakers are on spikes. The N802D is stunning. Anyone looking at it will notice the eliptical wood work/finish, the piano gloss black teardrop midrange unit, the tweeter (this always gets the most comments) and the leather. Perhaps people will notice the cool plinth. They'll never pay attention to what's under it.
Integrated 7.1 HT and Two-Channel System Pioneer KRP-600M | VAC Phi Beta 110i | to be determined front end
B&W 802D | B&W HTM1D | B&W ASW-825 | B&W N805 | B&W SCM1
VPI Scout | Oppo BDP-95 | Tivo Series 3 | Integra DTC-9.8
Audio Refinement Multi-5 | PS Audio Premier | Goertz and Electra Glide cables
My understanding is that spikes are mainly for those who use carpeted floors!!! For your speakers to stand firm on a carpeted floor you need spikes that go through the pile. And spikes give you a chance to level your spkrs a bit... tilt them... and that is just finetuning...
My understanding is that spikes are mainly for those who use carpeted floors!!! For your speakers to stand firm on a carpeted floor you need spikes that go through the pile. And spikes give you a chance to level your spkrs a bit... tilt them... and that is just finetuning...
I have read elsewhere that spikes can also help improve the bass not sure how.
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