HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote:No they are not the same. I seriously couldn't give a feck what they are made of, I bought them and they work - full stop. At the very least they do nothing but stop my speaker from sliding around on the top of the stand, and maybe just maybe (I will leave that up to you) they make things a bit better.

The pucks arrived today. I placed three under each Cube 2 and played one of the songs that causes the hideous distortion (Larua Marling: What he wrote) and funnily enough the distortion was still there and very pronounced. Placed an additional puck under each Cube 2 and the distortion is still there but slightly less pronounced.

Regardless, I have to turn it off - can't listen the song with the pucks or the Vibrapods under the Cubes without it hurting my ears. I have volume on P90SA set to 12 o'clock. Why is this distortion happening? Any other suggestions for decoupling?

Have you tried without decoupling?

Of course. That's how I've used them since purchase. There's a hint of resonance with them flat on top of the stands (oak with cavity filled with 10KG Atacama Attabytes and sat on spikes on top of an inch of slate), but otherwise they are fine. I am trying to understand why it's happening; I don't understand why some people can decouple the Cubes successfully (the Doc for example), but I can't.

If it is just that piece of music then that is where to look.

For me the pucks made little difference music wise, what they did is stop the speaker sliding on my stands.

It's not just that song, once of the Norah Jones songs does it as well. I had never experienced it until Antonio and his brother visited a day or so after I first got the Vibrapods. Any idea why it's happening? Surely I should be able to play the song without experiencing that level of distortion?

Is it only since the the Cubes went in. You need to substitute bits of the system for other bits you have.

I have only started listening to those tracks recently (within last month or so). I'll try playing the track from my old CDP and see if I have the same issue.

George Hincapie wrote:Of course. That's how I've used them since purchase. There's a hint of resonance with them flat on top of the stands (oak with cavity filled with 10KG Atacama Attabytes and sat on spikes on top of an inch of slate), but otherwise they are fine. I am trying to understand why it's happening; I don't understand why some people can decouple the Cubes successfully (the Doc for example), but I can't.

Hi George,

I've had a pair of Cube1 for a few days. In my initial setting up and 'snapping into position', I thought one of the Cubes had a distortion problem. I then levelled everything much more precisely, made sure that the top plate of the stand is completely centred beneath the Cubes, used 3 upward pointing oak cones to sit the Cubes on (I also used rubber 'dots' but found they deadened the sound a little)...and I could not replicate the distortion at any volume. My stands are Russ Andrews (triangular torlyte base and top plate, 3 oak legs) - very lightweight, spiked through carpet into concrete floor. Your set up, stands-wise, sounds quite different but I mention my experience just in case there's anything in it that gives you any ideas.

My experience is that heavy mass stores energy - I would be removing the atabites (which I reckon, having once heard a system at a dealers with stands filled with them, to be ringing / distortion generators). I do recommend the oak cones. There are much cheaper ones than RA. You just superglue them to the top plate (use 3 not 4). Do the base spikes sit straight onto the granite plinths or do you have spike shoes on top of the granite? Have you tried fitting crosshead screws through the carpet into the floorboards then sitting the spikes directly into the screw heads?

Hope this helps.

There is a lot of bass energy going downward from Cubes, obviously because the driver is in phase with its earth. Any looseness or miss balance in that path will cause a rattle.

Possibly a daft question, but here I go:

As the cube design sends a lot of bass frequencies downwards, should the stand be open frame/no top plate for speaker to sit on; that way the bass would have an unimpeded path to the floor/room boundary?