Cheap Speaker Isolation

In the audio world, everything also affect the sound quality either by a large or small margin. So after getting a budget DAC and kernel streaming, this time I tried some cheap speaker isolation. By googling "speaker isolation", I get so many results of spike and feet in different materials, sizes and shapes:

So what is speaker isolation? To make it short, speaker isolation is to isolate your speaker from touching unwanted surface. This is to reduce the chances of the sound produce by the speaker getting influence by unwanted external element. This is being done by putting some isolation product in between your speaker and the surface such as table or floor. Isolation product come in many different materials, sizes and shapes. It can be spikes as shown in the pictures above, it can also be a block of wood or marble plates. You can also setup few types of isolation products together as long as it suit your listening taste. So, it's up to your personal preferences and availability of isolation product in your area. 

Testing

So with a limited budget (RM10), I tried 2 different types of speaker isolation (i will refer as isolation A and B) on the following setup:

Speaker: Edifier C3

DAC: Stoner Acoustics UD100

Music Player: Foobar2000 with Kernel Streaming

The isolation is being carried out on the 2 satellites and the subwoofer.

Result

I heard significant differences between the 3 setup (without any isolation, isolation A, isolation B). Both speaker isolation setups have significant improvement on the overall sound quality as the bass, treble and vocal became more solid and have more power. Sound separation also seem to be better with speaker isolation. 

As to choose between the speaker isolation setup, all I can say is different material and size do give different sound. For shapes, I am not really sure as the 2 types of isolation I tested are of the same shape. You will also need to consider your speaker size and weight when choosing the speaker isolation setup. And it's all up to personal preferences and I can't really recommend which is better. You have to test it yourself.

I decided to record the same song with and without speaker isolation. It is recorded using my handphone. The song is played at 70% volume (i turn the volume up as the recording seem a little too soft) with bass -3 (i turn down the bass as i seem to be a little too heavy).

Without speaker isolation:

With speaker isolation:

The recordings just serve as references as speaker isolation do improve sound quality and may not fully represent live condition.

Conclusion

- Cheap speaker isolation (budget less than RM10) do improve sound quality.

- Different size and material of speaker isolation product have different improvement.

- Speaker size and weight also need to be consider when choosing speaker isolation product.

- Make sure the speaker is stable after isolation and won't be easy to knock over.