speaker stands - sanity check please

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tony359

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Hi all
I would like to build two floor speaker stands. The speakers will have to be very close to the wall and the stand must be able to be placed behind the desk which is very close to the wall.
Each speaker is 15Kg and I think a stand is a better solution than a shelf (drywall).

I am not an expert on the matter and my tools and skills are limited but I would appreciate any input you could offer. I am going to build the below. I will use plenty of glue, screws and dowel pins. The top should really be angled 10° downwards. Is this design going to work in your opinion?

Cheers!!
 

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IMHO They will be highly unstable and susceptible to being knocked over, especially with 15 kg on top. And they look really (too?) tall.
Ideally a speaker stand will have lots of mass and put the tweeter at around eye level when sitting in your chair. Make the centre section of your stand a hollow box and then fill it with dry sand. Put some spikes on the bottom to push through carpet etc and if you've got a wooden floor or similar just put some pennies under the spikes.
 
I am a sound engineer and I see where you are going but on this occasion I will have to compromise. The speakers will be about 130cm high to clear my monitor - hence the 10° rake.
I appreciate it won't be perfect sound-wise but this is what my home allows at the moment. I'll play with proper sound when working in proper cinemas ;)

What I am looking for at the moment is to make sure the structure will hold the weight. Nobody is going to move those speakers around and the stands will be BEHIND my desk, by the wall - so no risk to be unintentionally hit.
 
If they're effectively constrained between wall and desk then yes, a bit of 2x2 will be man enough to hold your 15kg and a simple half diamond on the rear and two triangles on sides from something rigid like ply or mdf support the top and bottom plates (if you don't have the brackets in your sketch already.
 
I would go for a wall shelf, stands that high will sway around a lot,
Unless you make them from 10mm steel plate with 50mm box section tube welded to it, you might get a local fabricator to knock some up with adjustable spikes on the bottom etc.

Pete
 
nev
what is a "half diamond"?

Pete
Yes, asking a local metalsmith to build them for me is an option. I'd like not to go with the shelf, it gets too bulky because of the weight involved.
 
How about making the base of the above drawing in slate of granite to aid stability. Made some speaker stands some years back and used slate for the base. It's surprisingly easy to work. Cut it with a jigsaw (used a few blades) and cleaned up the cuts with a belt sander. Drilled and countersunk as if metal without bother.
 
Any chance of putting the vertical directly under the centre of gravity of the speaker. This would aid stability somewhat.
xy
 
I'd be tempted to buy the thickest piece(s) of slate I could source, redesign to make wall brackets. The slate will dampen any vibration as speaker stands with the aid of blobs of techno blu-tac as a anti vibe enhancer. You cut out all the unnecessary design issues. Just a thought. :D
 
bm101
I don't want to put the speaker on a shelf. The stand will give me freedom to move/adjust the speaker if I wanted to move things on my desk.

xy
The whole reason why I am putting the vertical beam on a side is to be able to place the stand BEHIND my desk, which is just 10cm from a wall. I can move the desk a little away but not 35cm!

nev
Thanks.
I'm not sure if the lateral triangles are two triangles, one per side, or a larger single triangle attached at the back. See picture.
As said, I am not an expert but the longitudinal triangles (front to back) would be relying on the lateral triangles, which are not part of a main structure. Just out of curiosity, why not placing the longitudinal triangle so it rests on the vertical beam?
 

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As you have it in your sketch. The one on the back to stop the side to side tilt, the two (just for aesthetics you could use one central one) front to back to prevent tilting forward. you could also of course use a bit of the 2x2 at 45 degrees instead if that looks better.
As a thought you could maybe make the entire thing from say 19mm ply, making the leg from a triple layer glued/ screwed together, something along the lines of this, the curves, reinforcing ribs and shelves can of course be any shape you like.
I suppose it depends on what tools and materials you have to hand and of course your preferred look. Just an idea. :)

untitled2.jpg
 

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uhm... that's a very good idea. I'm not consider myself a creative person - I'm a technical one! - so thank you, that actually looks very nice!

Triple layer? so 60mm in total?
 
As another suggestion (for the base part only - the last sketch looks very good otherwise) would be to use a weight-lifter's weight, or even 2, if you can't get slate. A 5 Kg weight is a reasonable dimension (thickness and diameter) and (of course, sorry!) 2 placed on top of each other are only twice the height of one. Could even be "wrapped up" in some small wooden box if looks are important down there.

The weights I use in the hospital gym on each end of a bar (for Physio, I'm NOT a weight lifter!!!) are about 9 inches in diameter and about 1 and a bit inches thick. I bought one a while ago from a local sports shop (for an in door drying rack) and it cost under a tenner (equivalent).

HTH

AES
 
As you are a sound engineer, you're probably aware of this, but I'll chuck it into the mix now, before you get stuck in and decide you don't like the result:

If you are doing conventional Blumlein stereo, you really don't want the speakers pointing at right angles to the wall behind your desk. The theory says you want an equilateral triangle, with the speaker axes along two of the sides, and your head at the opposite corner. In reality, you can vastly improve the image stability and depth perception, by crossing the speaker axes slightly in front of your head. Working close, I assume for editing, that would probably be around the tip of your nose, but possibly further away. It works because as you move your head, you come on-axis to the speaker furthest from you, and it relies on the fact that most tweeters have quite a directional polar pattern.

Your drawing has symmetry, but you probably want either asymmetry in each stand (a mirrored pair), or probably more useful, a disc at the top so you can swivel the speakers to suit.

The above technique works so well it's like alchemy. I remeber struggling to get stereo edits tidy - I grew up in the days of tape editing, and edits would swing horribly. Simply by crossing the axes slightly in front of my head, the image became a lot sharper, and you could hear what you were doing much better!

The other thing that might be worth doing is laminating the support and/or tying the two stands together with a horizontal piece (or pieces). Laminating will dampen the resonances, especially if you use dissimilar woods, and tying them together (out of sight behind the desk, and possibly at floor level) will greatly improve physical stability, but it will make it harder to set up. But see my final ccomment about the stability of the whole thing...

Regarding spikes, etc., you might consider adjustable ones, as these things will need to be levelled very well, in order for them to be stable, and I'd design the bases as triangles rather than rectangles, so that they can't wobble. Ties between the two sides will work against this however. Adjustable spikes are easy to make if you have a pillar drill or a lathe: a bolt plus a pronged tee nut (for the underside of the base), plus locknut. Hacksaw the head off and point the cut off end with a file in the drill or properly in a lathe. If you don't want a spike, use a coachbolt with a mushroom head. Set them up straight with a thick pile of old books on top, instead of your precious speakers!

Finally do what we used to in OB vans: strap the speakers to the stands! You'll kick yourself if a cable gets pulled and something on your desk goes right through a drive unit as the speaker heads south! I'd even consider fixing the stands to the back corners of the desk. My LS3/5As are probably worth more than everything else on my desk, and the desk itself, added together!

Hope that helps,

E.

PS there are some real loudspeaker experts on here, so you are in the right place -- I'm only a user, not a designer/maker!
 
tony359":wier5vlj said:
uhm... that's a very good idea. I'm not consider myself a creative person - I'm a technical one! - so thank you, that actually looks very nice!

Triple layer? so 60mm in total?

Yep, thereabouts. It'll probably be 18 or 19mm but you get the idea.
 
Eric,
You are totally right but I never said this is going to be a professional setup! It's just my PC in my living room! The proper setup is in another room ;)
I will end up about 40cm from the speakers, so absolutely no point in getting fussy here. It's just for listening to some music! I was thinking of strapping the speakers indeed!

AES
Nice one. I'll keep that in mind even though the speakers are going to be totally out of the way.
 

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