Price: From £550
Website: www.townshendaudio.com
Size (review sample): 37x37cm, added height 5cm
Plus points:
Adds substantially to the bass definition of any good loudspeaker, improves general sonic clarity.
Minus points:
Expensive; increases 'footprint'; increased clarity is not to all tastes!
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Challenging received wisdom is always fun, both for the challenger and for onlookers who are likely either to discover something new or to see someone getting egg on their face. Max Townshend is an audio designer who has, over the last two decades and more, made something of a habit of challenging received wisdom and to date has ended up largely egg-free. But to many audiophiles his latest assault may look a challenge too far. Received wisdom states quite firmly that loudspeakers should be very solidly mounted on the floor, via stands if necessary but if so via strong, rigid and preferably heavy ones. Townshend meets that with a wobbly speaker stand. Is this plain wobbly thinking?
Let's fill in a little background. Townshend Audio is best known for two product ranges: the 'Rock' turntables and the 'Seismic Sink' equipment supports and racks. In both of these, isolation from vibrations is the name of the game. LP players are notoriously sensitive to external vibration and it's often found that amplifiers, CD players and other components benefit from being mounted on isolation platforms of some sort. Where does the vibration come from? Partly from the outside world - vehicles driving past, people next door walking around, heavy machinery in the neighbourhood - and partly of course from the loudspeakers, which (being mounted on the floor) tend to send vibrations down, into the floorboards and thence into the walls and the rest of the house. Not very big vibrations, perhaps, but detectable.
So, reasons Townshend, isolate the speakers from the floor and you cut that down immensely. At the same time, you cut down another problem, which is that the floor acts as a huge sounding board, repeating a version of the audio that's out of time with the speakers and very highly distorted - this was pointed out in print some years ago by the late, great Peter Walker, founder of one of the great names in audio, Quad.
That sounds good, but surely the whole point of rigid speakers supports, spiked to the floor and Blutak-ed to the speakers, is that they remove vibrations from the speaker cabinet and generally stop the cabinet from resonating? Trouble is, they don't really. They have a very small effect in that direction but in the process they unavoidably cause the problems mentioned above.
The Seismic Sink Speaker Platform is a simple enough affair, made of stainless steel, with two strong platforms. The lower one stands on the floor on adjustable feet, while the upper is suspended by four springs, pretensioned so that when a loudspeaker is placed on the platform it hangs freely and effectively 'decouples' the speaker from the floor. Inevitably the stand adds a little width to the speaker but it's quite smart and generally no less domestically acceptable than most high quality stands. Supports of slightly different dimensions and loading weights are available to suit various speakers.
Results
The review samples were used with various speakers, mostly standmount models on stands which in turn were stood on a Platform, an arrangement which is a lot more stable than you might imagine. A large floorstanding speaker was also used. In each case there was a characteristic change in the sound. Most noticeably, the bass seemed clearer and better defined. It was especially evident with strong bass instruments like jazz double bass, which became easier to follow and more 'present', though certainly no louder and with no sacrifice in integration with the rest of the band - quite the opposite in fact. Piano benefitted in much the same way, and orchestras also enjoyed a more realistic and solid underpinning.
With rock the results were interesting. It's a bit harder to be dogmatic here, of course, since the recording and reproducing chain is much more a part of the musical process than with music that is played and heard via completely acoustic instruments, but the same kind of cleaning up took place. Whether you actually like that is another matter, and we suspect that some listeners won't. Depending on what bugs you more, you'll either love the way that you can hear more detail in your favourite records, or hate the way that a little of the bite has gone out of the sound. So maybe the bite was technically caused by an imperfection which the Support has fixed, but if you liked it, fair enough! All the same, the added precision and insight that something as simple (conceptually) as a speaker support can contribute, across a vast range of musical styles and with practically any speaker, are quite remarkable.
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As accessories go this is pretty expensive and it probably won't get used with any budget speakers, but if you are lucky enough to have, or are considering, seriously high end loudspeakers you should definitely try to hear them supported on a Seismic Sink Support. |
