The Stillpoints Giveth and the Stillpoints Taketh Away

[JemHadar]

It all started with a simple plan. Push back the acoustic gremlins a bit further out.

Without acoustic treatment they will never truly disappear in my main system, but keeping them at bay at boundaries where they are less harmful to musical enjoyment is a win in my book.

Oh my, I should have known there is no such thing as “simple” with audiophile endeavours. Once again I was in for a dive down the rabbit hole.

This is the stage where the scene unfolds. Proac Response D100 loudspeakers, corner placed, spiked to floor protectors on a tiled concrete floor suspended over a 4 to 5 foot deep crawlspace. The right hand side speaker adjacent to a ceiling to floor window and a cavity below that window that used to house a central heating convector, now covered with a wooden board. Starring gremlins; slightly out of balance stereo image and droning/booming in the high bass and lower midrange at elevated volume levels.

Switching from an all McIntosh to an all Analog Domain Audio system had fundamentally improved performance. But I reckon we all know how it goes...you get accustomed to it and then some other itch finds its way to surface.

One area I have not yet fully explored is better speaker placement. I intend to explore 5/8 corner positioning. However the speakers, 131 kg / 289 lbs each, are hard to move on spikes and just moving them on the plinth would surely result in damage. On a side note, the floor tiles are very uneven, so using the plinth made it impossible to neither level the speakers nor secure a stable stance. To cut a long story short, two contenders came up that offered a solution; IsoAcoustics Gaia Titan Theis and Townshend Isolation Podiums. Luckily a Dealer, that counts me as a customer, carries both brands. The wheels were set in motion to secure demo sets. Unfortunately M6 threads for the IsoAcoustics were not available on short notice. The Townshend’s are inbound.

I never really considered Stillpoints. By their own admission (Bruce Jacobs), Stillpoints are primarily designed to tackle microphonics in electronic components. I’m not saying applying them to speakers was an afterthought, but it would seem this application was not part of the original design brief. Considering that energy levels in speakers are vastly higher than with microphonics, in my mind it just did not compute. Stillpoints are very expensive and constraints on budget initially ruled them out anyhow.

The engineering principles of the IsoAcoustics (constrained layer damping) and Townshend (damped spring) are actually rather simple. Given the properties of the materials used it is not that hard to calculate and predict their behaviour.

With the Stillpoints, IMHO the underlying science is shrouded in "smoke and mirrors" marketing speak. The bottom line is that Stillpoints, in their words, convert vibrational energy into heat. The only scientific principle that supports this is called absorption; actually the heat can only be a result of friction. Granted, it doesn’t sound as sexy as the whole “no vertical path” spiel. However, anyone who has followed a course in structural mechanics will confirm that there is no such thing as a mechanical diode. Forces in load bearing structures act in rather basic and predictable ways, and you can thank Isaac Newton for that.

Why not say “Hey, we found this really cool application of ceramic bearings that converts vibrational energy into heat through friction”. It would have worked for me. But then, this is all assumption on my part.

I will concede that Stillpoints marketing is rather benign compared to the way other brands misappropriate and exploit engineering or scientific principles out of context or relevance. However for me, it was a put-off.

I will give it to Ivan aka Masterlu, henceforth known as the gentle tenacious one, to at least consider them. Conveniently, the distributor of Analog Domain Audio and Marten in the Benelux happens to be the distributor for Stillpoints as well. During a chat, discussing the release of the new Marten Parker Quintet (another story for another day), they volunteered to send a set of 8 Ultra 5’s. There is only one way to be sure... “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”.

One thread that runs through many posts I read highlights a common observation; Stillpoints applied to speakers do not result in consistent outcomes. Given that we are talking about the coupling of speakers with a room and that no two rooms are alike, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. To be more specific; in some rooms, that are plagued by many acoustic artefacts, one would expect the benefits to be more pronounced than in other rooms with lesser acoustic gremlins. That being said, the mechanics by which the Stillpoints operate remains the same of course.

Installing the Ultra 5’s was pretty straightforward and they look rather cool underneath the Proac’s. (sorry, no pictures for now, as they are resting unceremoniously on old towels to protect the Ultra’s from scratches)

The overall height of the tweeters changed only by millimetres but I did measure immediately to verify as the tonal balance of the whole system had definitely changed.

And there I said it; changed tonal balance. There is a lot happening for sure. The change was subtle and not so subtle in equal measure. Different enough to notice right off the bat, but not so much as to cry foul. More like a rearrangement in the weighting of the frequency bands. It is up to each individual listener to decide whether these changes are beneficial or detrimental to the overall presentation.

One thing I did unwittingly was turn up the volume. Most of the time, this is a good thing. It demonstrates that some layer of grime / distortion has been removed. I did not see that one coming.

I play a lot of music that is densely layered, with subtle interplays of harmonics, tonality and timbre sometimes clawing their way through walls of unrelenting noise or distortion. Without exception, at some higher volume level or other these sound sculptures collapse. Not so with the Stillpoints. I could push the volume up and up staring down those ugly gremlins trapped beyond reach. In earnest, some remnants remain. I anticipate it will take bass traps and diffusers to get rid of those.

However, there are sacrifices, be it minor ones, to be made...you can’t have your pudding and eat it too.
Please do take into consideration that these observations apply to my room and my speakers. YMMV.

I have lost a tiny bit in low-end extension. However the timbre of the bass comes through at all volume levels and the droning / booming has been reduced significantly. The Proac will never match subwoofers for slam and impact but the bass is clean and articulate at higher volume levels. It is such a joy to hear the timbre of low notes. Timbres that otherwise get lost in unwanted resonances. The D100’s come into their own at high volume levels; they were designed to play loud. So, ultimately, this change in tonal balance is a big win for bass performance.

Some body in the midrange is lost as well; not much, but noticeable and more so than with the low-end extension. Honestly the jury is still out on that one whether this is desirable or not. I absolutely am a big fan of the ATC soft dome midrange units but now some of their magic went astray. I can only assume that that perceived meat on the bones when it comes to the midrange was an artefact of the way the speaker coupled with the room. Also, it is a fair assumption that Stewart Tyler’s tuning of the Response D100 did not take into account the application of (de)coupling devices.

The good news is that a lot has been gained.

Time for some completely inadequate analogies, but I’m confident you will catch my drift.

Applying the Ultra 5’s is like upgrading from standard Blu Ray to 4K, given that your screen allows you to see the difference. It feels like driving a high performance car on a pool table smooth asphalt road instead of a bumpy one marred by potholes and the like.

The stereo image gained slightly more resolution and a lot more accuracy. Unexpectedly, the detrimental impact of the right hand side window had become less outspoken somehow. Playing “Future Jazz” tracks from the Arjunamusic Label, abundant with unconventional percussion and esoteric electronica, was a real eye opener and prompted me to pick up the phone and cancel the Townshend demo.

However, the supplier of the Townshend Podiums was not going to forfeit the game or give up without a fight. If the platforms arrive in time, and it seems that they will, we will have a shoot out. Gentlemen and gentlewomen, place your bets.

Whichever party prevails, the spikes and coasters will be retired. I cannot imagine going back to how it was before. In that sense Stillpoints Ultra 5’s applied to speakers are the audiophile equivalent of Heisenbergs candy, you try it once and you are hooked...you have been warned.

...to be continued