After eventually acquiring the best Hi-Fi speakers for your home theater system, you want to ensure they are properly set up for the best sound performance.
The first thing you need to do to maximize their sound is to embellish them with the best HiFi speaker Isolation Pads you can get your hands on.
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What Are Speaker Isolation Pads?
Speaker Isolation pads are devices designed to cause a sonic gap between your Hi-Fi speakers and the base they stand or rest on.
Getting complete isolation and recoil stabilization improves your speaker’s accuracy and brings the acoustic of your surroundings closer to alignment with what the manufacturers of your speakers intended.
Although this enhancement takes place over the total frequency range, you will notice the most obvious enhancements in the mid-range and bass areas of the frequency spectrum because of their wavelengths’ size and how this influences how vibrations travel.
The Types Of Isolation Pads
There are three types of isolation pads:
- Foam Isolation: Foam pads are one of the most famous forms of decoupling for speakers because they are easy to produce making them cheap to purchase.
With foam pads, the two major ways of decoupling are mixed by utilizing more absorption than less surface region, although both of them are greatly executed. Foam has a lot of space filled with air and seems like a stiffer spider web material.
Being constructed with puffed plastic makes the area of the surface that contacts your surround system and your speaker stand little.
From a distance, the foam may appear flat, but if you take a closer look it really is just a space between connected fibers.
- Decoupling Cones: Secondly, we have what some refer to as decoupling cones because of the lack of a better term.
Some individuals refer to them wrongly as spikes. The core of the decoupling cones is produced with thick metal or plastic and surrounded by rubber that assimilates most of the vibrations that go up the core.
The “oomph” to their power is that they delineate the surface area of the contact points to next to nothing.
The way this is achieved is by placing a ball bearing at the core’s tip where they come in contact with your speakers, although some of them keep a sharp point.
- Isolation Stands: Unlike foam pads that rely heavily on the assimilation direction, isolation stands are the middle ground.
The first thing to do is to delineate the contact points into four smaller squares or circles from a flat plane. This reduces the surface area drastically.
This does not only reduce the size of the surface that vibrations go through but it also reduces the paths made by them.
The Best HiFi Speaker Isolation Pads
The Auralex Acoustic Mopad
These are foam pads that have a flat surface or an 8 or 4-degree slant by utilizing the foam wedges that come with them.
The two levels of slant or tilt can be achieved by turning the wedges around or over. If the entire pad is turned around, it can be aimed up towards you.
Most of the foam in the market today was inspired by the auralex acoustic mopad. They can carry about 100 pounds of speaker weight, although if you have heavier speakers you can opt for the bigger AuralexMopad XL.
One thing you should note is that one pair of these isolation pads come with four pads.
The Vibrapod Isolators And Cones
The cones of these pads seat themselves on top of the isolators to fully maximize the functions of the two decoupling types.
The vibrations are dampened through the rubber causing them to delineate in strength. Whatever is left will not make it through the sphere’s tip.
These isolators do not provide any tips to adjust the heights of speakers. They function best when combined with shelves or speaker stands that already elevate the height of your monitor.
If you have one of those, there’s barely a more visually appealing means of isolation. If you eventually chose these isolators, note that it comes with two sets of 4 of the cones and two sets of 4 of the isolators.
The IsoAcoustics ISO-PUCK isolators
These Isolators like the aforementioned Vibrapods attempt to decouple after assimilation while being low profile.
But unlike the aforementioned isolators and other pucks, these isolators are designed for a different purpose.
Wherever these isolators face does matter because their interior design includes methods for vibration reductions from the woofer’s directional firing.
When air is pushed forward by the woofer, your speaker is rocked backward. This is one thing that foam pads are unable to properly tackle.
The ISOAcoustics are the most expensive isolators on this list, but if the height of your speakers is perfect or you dislike how any other foam pad on this review looks, then the ISO is the perfect fit for you. These isolators are utilized by professionals like mixers and producers in the game.
The Ultimate Support MS-80 Stands
The Ultimate Support MS-80 is a fusion between decoupling cones and isolation stands. The benefits of the MS-80 are numerous, with just one demerit which is the absence of height adjustment, but let us focus on the positives.
Firstly, the MS-80 comes with a fine-tune adjustment knob behind it that you turn to change the tilt’s angle.
So instead of having just 2 or 3 tilt choices, you can tilt it however you please. This can be a downward tilt or an upwards angle depending on the direction the stand faces.
The MS-80’s top plate is manufactured with non-slip harder plastic with an assimilative foam layer while the base plate of the bottom is a hard metal.
There are four rubberized spikes under the base plates that provide an extra decoupling layer.
A hard-surfaced stand like this reduces the ability of the speaker to rock back and forth with the woofer’s recoil at higher volumes. It can carry up to 75 pounds of speaker weight.
The Adam Hall Spadeco2 Pads
The Adam Hall Spadeco2 is an all-business, no-frills option that cuts cost by omitting a plethora of features compared to other isolators.
The tilting capability was omitted, but what you get compensated with is a much wider base.
This wider base means that you get a larger surface area of contact and a lot more foam to dispel sympathetic vibrations.
Although these may be little gains, they still count as gains. These pads measure 13 inches long, 10.4 inches wide, and 1.57 inches in thickness each.
You get them as a pair and they perform as well as any other foam you may choose over them.
Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer
What makes Primacoustic stand out is the denser, non-slip assimilation layer. The non-slip surface gives you a sense of security that your monitor won’t fall off the foam after some time if you opt for a tilted one.
While the steel plate functions as a coupling surface to keep your speakers from rocking from the recoil, while also enhancing weight and vibration distribution across the foam base equally.
The entire contraption is brought to three inches thick by the foam base, which is around 50% thicker than more underlying foam pads.
This will offer top-class isolation at a cost if the foam is what you desire. The Primacoustic is purchased in singles; this means that you have to buy two separately to make up a pair.
If you are on a tight budget, you will have to opt for a cheaper one, but if you are a big spender and do not mind what it may cost you to get the best isolator, then the cost of the Primacoustic Recoil stabilizer will pose no issue to you. It will be worth every dime to ensure you get the most out of your speakers.
Final Thoughts
Several individuals discover that you are never able to really couple your speakers to the floor or stand well enough to delineate or eliminate rogue vibrations.
And your monitors are supposed to experience vibrations for their creation and are tuned for that purpose.
Cost-wise, to get the perfect coupling became increasingly ineffective, but a simple bit of adequately and painstakingly designed absorption can get the same job done for less through decoupling instead. This is the reason the best HiFi isolation pads exist.
This review has certainly given you a better understanding of what Isolation pads are, their purpose, the best, and how they can help to fully maximize the full sound performance of your Hi-Fi speakers.