speaker spikes and the placebo effect.

[motorstereo]

^^^^^^ Fwiw those tiny spike indentations are impossible to find from any of my spiked speakers. It's not like you're dragging a running chainsaw across the floor. But if you don't have speaker placement figured out then perhaps spiking isn't for you. If that's the case then you should sacrifice the benefits and stick with those felt pads.

 

[F1nut]

"Oh honey, those gouges from the razor sharp spikes will blend right out of your beautiful Swedish treated oak floors, honest....." If I suspected a problem with the bass due to the little felt pads on the bottom of my speakers, I'd veer towards a nice DE-coupler system rather than sacrifice my hardwood to 10% theory/90% desired perception.

I guess if you stomp on your floor while listening to music that product would be of benefit, but otherwise they've got it all wrong as do you.

 

[Porkloin]

I guess if you stomp on your floor while listening to music that product would be of benefit, but otherwise they've got it all wrong as do you.

I've seen here at AK the presentation of a maker of a similar product where he actually demonstrated the effects of the speakers themselves on one another coupled and de-coupled. It was definitely more compelling than the long-held beliefs of old audiophiles with way too many GoodWill treasures that they hoard to to cover up their damaged floors.

 

[Adam N.]

Um, I have not actually damaged my floors. I was just joking. My speakers are on stands and the spikes have ball ends and sit in little cups, on the stand, not the floor.

Anyhow, I still think it sounds better, on day 2.

 

[Porkloin]

Um, I have not actually damaged my floors. I was just joking. My speakers are on stands and the spikes have ball ends and sit in little cups, on the stand, not the floor.

Anyhow, I still think it sounds better, on day 2.

You are dead on with the placebo effect. I would swear on a stack of pancakes (buckwheat, not blueberry) that the speakers in my collection sound variably better than original in direct proportion to the amount of sweat and ingenuity that I put into them. They sound better in the dark as well. What kind of mood am I in today? Did those bastards at the Chinese restaurant get my tinnitus flaring up with too much MSG again?
Part of the beauty of the hobby is our human variances and the subjective nature of it. Couple that with the sciency bits and it pretty much provides a man with most of his daily psychological requirements.

 

[imral3]

 

[F1nut]

I've seen here at AK the presentation of a maker of a similar product where he actually demonstrated the effects of the speakers themselves on one another coupled and de-coupled. It was definitely more compelling than the long-held beliefs of old audiophiles with way too many GoodWill treasures that they hoard to to cover up their damaged floors.

Unlike you I have tried spikes verses no spikes. Spikes win and it's got nothing to do with the money spent, the way they look or anything of that nature. If I try something and it doesn't improve what I'm hearing, it goes out the door.

No Goodwill speakers, gear or hoarding in this house.

 

[Porkloin]

Unlike you I have tried spikes verses no spikes. Spikes win and it's got nothing to do with the money spent, the way they look or anything of that nature. If I try something and it doesn't improve what I'm hearing, it goes out the door.

No Goodwill speakers, gear or hoarding in this house.

C'mon. Admit it for all the good folks at Audio Karma to see: You have a pair of AR-3's , every bit as ugly as the day they were born, that you haggled the Salvation Army store clerk down to half the asking price, modified with some milled monstrous spikes on the bottom. You had to sneak them on to the new bamboo floor, with the grills off, while Mrs. F1 was on a jewelry junkett in Seoul, for which she's been giving you weekly nurples ever since (for the holes in the bamboo, not the jewelry).
Let it out. You're amongst friends here.

 

[Adam N.]

C'mon. Admit it for all the good folks at Audio Karma to see: You have a pair of AR-3's , every bit as ugly as the day they were born, that you haggled the Salvation Army store clerk down to half the asking price, modified with some milled monstrous spikes on the bottom. You had to sneak them on to the new bamboo floor, with the grills off, while Mrs. F1 was on a jewelry junkett in Seoul, for which she's been giving you weekly nurples ever since (for the holes in the bamboo, not the jewelry).
Let it out. You're amongst friends here.

Am I wrong or is this mean? If it is that's not cool.

 

[thilaseen]

I strongly suspect he's joking.




Edit....
Oops

 

[Porkloin]

Am I wrong or is this mean? If it is that's not cool.

I jest not. The footage of the nurpling was there for all to see on an old thread,"Show of Videos of Your Wife Wigging Out and Abusing the Hell Out of You for Tearing Up Her Floor."
Although I think it was prior to the major AK upgrade of awhile back, so the link would be gone.

 

[motorstereo]

Speaker spikes couple. Rubber feet, plastic pads, etc. decouple.

There's nothing placebo about spiking your speakers.

I must give you credit for putting the bug in my ear about spiking and yes they sure do work much better than the bass brace and certainly better than rubber feet or pads. I had to move my spiked 190lb speakers a while back and wanted to put those spiked speakers back in the same exact pinpoint they were at previously. I'll be damned if I could find those indentations and they were on a gloss black surface where those pinpoints should've shown up quite easily.

 

[Putterman]

Speaker spikes couple. Rubber feet, plastic pads, etc. decouple.

There's nothing placebo about spiking your speakers.

An observation from when I lived below a Doctor's office that had a 55 gallon aquarium. I could hear the rumble of the the aquarium filter in my apartment. While I'm not sure what 'couple' means in this context, spikes or a metal surface with a very small contact area transmits low frequency sounds very efficiently away from their source, i.e. the speakers.

 

[F1nut]

C'mon. Admit it for all the good folks at Audio Karma to see: You have a pair of AR-3's , every bit as ugly as the day they were born, that you haggled the Salvation Army store clerk down to half the asking price, modified with some milled monstrous spikes on the bottom. You had to sneak them on to the new bamboo floor, with the grills off, while Mrs. F1 was on a jewelry junkett in Seoul, for which she's been giving you weekly nurples ever since (for the holes in the bamboo, not the jewelry).
Let it out. You're amongst friends here.

Do you enjoy looking foolish?

 

[Adam N.]

You are dead on with the placebo effect. I would swear on a stack of pancakes (buckwheat, not blueberry) that the speakers in my collection sound variably better than original in direct proportion to the amount of sweat and ingenuity that I put into them. They sound better in the dark as well. What kind of mood am I in today? Did those bastards at the Chinese restaurant get my tinnitus flaring up with too much MSG again?
Part of the beauty of the hobby is our human variances and the subjective nature of it. Couple that with the sciency bits and it pretty much provides a man with most of his daily psychological requirements.

When I moved to tube amps they sounded better to me. How much of this comes from the beautiful glow they emit with the lights down I cannot say. They have a weird mad science aura that I cannot separate from actual performance. At some point stuff sounds different and it's up to us if it sounds better or not. It's impossible for me to disambiguate what I know about how a system looks and the "backstory" of the equipment.

We once operated a small commercial apiary and sold honey in the local market as a kind of pet project holdover from my marketing days. When the local coop asked how much we wanted per jar I said it didn't matter but we needed to be the most expensive by a wide margin. Out packaging with beautiful and our honey sold out in hours when it showed up, being the top PLU code every month they stocked it, often selling out in hours. My reasoning was that people use price as a strong indicator of quality. We also had hilarious marketing with Miss Trans Northampton marketing it as "honey fit for a queen". Other better beekeepers than me sold retail for less than our wholesale and we were doubling their take with half the product at market. Once, when I worked at a wine store we mismarked a $9.99 bottle of wine as $39.99 and it sold right out, having been nearly dead stock. People came back and bought 2nd and 3rd bottles. We had to not carry it after that. I haven't forgotten this less. DId the people that bought it at $39.99 enjoy it more? Yes, I think they did.

I like a kind of cool understated elegance to my system, e.g.less buttons are better and fewer gauges and displays are preferable. When it looks right there's a satisfaction. I am perfectly capable of marketing a system to myself. It doesn't hurt that the finish on the Celestions closely matches the credenza or that the hardwood stands for the amps closely match the finish as well. Yes, I like the little brass feet and cups on the speakers.

So, to the consumers of our honey who insisted it tasted better it tasted better. To me the spiked speakers do indeed sound better. I am not kidding, they sound better. There is no conceivable way for me to know if they do objectively and it utterly doesn't matter because there is no objective in that.

 

[WillVT]

When I moved to tube amps they sounded better to me. How much of this comes from the beautiful glow they emit with the lights down I cannot say. They have a weird mad science aura that I cannot separate from actual performance. At some point stuff sounds different and it's up to us if it sounds better or not. It's impossible for me to disambiguate what I know about how a system looks and the "backstory" of the equipment.

We once operated a small commercial apiary and sold honey in the local market as a kind of pet project holdover from my marketing days. When the local coop asked how much we wanted per jar I said it didn't matter but we needed to be the most expensive by a wide margin. Out packaging with beautiful and our honey sold out in hours when it showed up, being the top PLU code every month they stocked it, often selling out in hours. My reasoning was that people use price as a strong indicator of quality. We also had hilarious marketing with Miss Trans Northampton marketing it as "honey fit for a queen". Other better beekeepers than me sold retail for less than our wholesale and we were doubling their take with half the product at market. Once, when I worked at a wine store we mismarked a $9.99 bottle of wine as $39.99 and it sold right out, having been nearly dead stock. People came back and bought 2nd and 3rd bottles. We had to not carry it after that. I haven't forgotten this less. DId the people that bought it at $39.99 enjoy it more? Yes, I think they did.

I like a kind of cool understated elegance to my system, e.g.less buttons are better and fewer gauges and displays are preferable. When it looks right there's a satisfaction. I am perfectly capable of marketing a system to myself. It doesn't hurt that the finish on the Celestions closely matches the credenza or that the hardwood stands for the amps closely match the finish as well. Yes, I like the little brass feet and cups on the speakers.

So, to the consumers of our honey who insisted it tasted better it tasted better. To me the spiked speakers do indeed sound better. I am not kidding, they sound better. There is no conceivable way for me to know if they do objectively and it utterly doesn't matter because there is no objective in that.

Good story. As far as wine goes, there is actually some scientific prescedent for this phenomenon. This article goes into it a little.

I'm a little sceptical of applying this to speaker spikes. I mean, where do you draw the line? For example, most of us would agree that putting speakers in the corner adds noticable bass response, or that going from a super low quality mp3 to a flac file sounds different. That's not a placebo, it's a difference in sound.
There is a difference between subtle perceptual changes that some can hear and some can't, and the placebo effect. I think of a placebo as something where sensory input is the same, or similar, like a sugar pill and an actual drug.

 

[Adam N.]

You're right about the classic placebo effect but I think there is a lot of grey around around it. We don't only have to attribute some effect to something which had no effect. There's a moment where the placebo effect blends over to confirmation bias, escalation of commitment and or sunken cost theory. There's a whole host of problems when trying to be objective but most of them to some extent rely on the placebo effect which I broadly define as an emotional state influencing perception of an outside phenom. The observe effect could even be roped in here.

I don't think that the emotional response influencing objective phenom is a bad thing if it leads to more enjoyment. I slightly moved my speakers after spiking them (not into the hardwood floors but on their little discs and which sit on their stands) and they sounded yet better having been pulled away from the walls. To me the mid bass sounded sharper with spikes but then was maybe a little overbearing and moving them toward the center of the room by less than a foot tamed the base and made the separation sharper even though the speakers were closer together. Go figure if it's true.

The problem side if all this is needless upgrading and expense due to buyers remorse and use endless cyclical dissatisfaction.

I'll be curious to see what what my wife thinks when she gets home.

 

[WillVT]

Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I think everything is perception. Our perception is in itself the act of creation.
A great author once said:

“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” – Douglas Adams

 

[donprice]

“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” – Douglas Adams

Or more succinctly... Perception is Reality. Just a little something to keep in mind before arguing with someone over just about anything

 

[Adam N.]

And the thread on speaker spikes veers into solipsism.