The Article
Seismic Podiums From Townshend on YouTube
16th April 2021
Townshend Audio Seismic Isolation Podiums can hold floorstanders, stand-mounted designs and subs!
The basic idea of these products is to break the connection. The connection that sends and receives vibration to and from your speakers.
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To see the video, click:
Hi Paul,
I’ve been using a pair of these under my Martin Logan Montis for a couple of years now. My listening room has bare floorboards, which caused two problems with coupled speakers: first the floor “sings” in sympathy with the speakers, effectively causing bass bloom, which smothers the soundstage adding a veil to the music, and secondly a huge amount of vibration (which I measured) is transmitted onwards through the floor to the hifi rack and the gear on it, potentially causing problems for any gear susceptible to such vibration.
The Martin Logans have a shifted weight distribution, due to the panels, but are not a problem for the podiums – they balance perfectly.
Introducing the podiums was revelatory. Immediately the floor stopped singing and the bass bloom was gone – this was quite striking – initially it felt like all the bass had been sucked from the music, actually forcing me to increase volume on the speakers in order to recover it. But I quickly realised that the podiums were removing the artificial bass bloom/floor singing and leaving me just the bass that was present in the music itself, bringing with it all the significant benefits you describe in your video.
The other improvement was the transmission of vibration to the racks and other gear. I measured this using an accelerometer app on an android phone. Before and after were a revelation. Before, the vibrations were off the charts. After, the vibrations barely registered, and with some further treatment I couldn’t register them at all. Meaning that the racks were no longer “dancing” to the speakers tune and all the gear on the racks benefit from substantially less vibration. Which can only be good for sound quality.
No going back after you “hear” these…
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks for your report, Mark. Much appreciated.