Speaker rollers???
What the heck am I talking about? There is this idea that if you bolt speakers down to the floor, or put speaker spikes in the floor, or something like that somehow it is better. The idea that the firmer the speaker cabinet is, then there will be less interference with the speaker cone itself. On the surface that seems correct but I think it is completely wrong.
Refer to Newton’s third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, for every motion that a speaker cone makes along its axis of motion, the speaker frame wants to move in the opposite direction along the same axis, proportional to the mass of the moving cone, vs the frame and the cabinet. So, if the speaker frame and cabinet is kept artificially still, then this will actually hinder the movement of the cone and will result in a dulling of the sound.
What needs to happen is that the cabinet needs to be able to move in the opposite direction of the cone along the axis of the movement of the cone, even just a tiny bit, proportional in distance to the mass of the cabinet in the speaker frame versus the mass of the cone. For example, if the cone moves 10 mm outward and the mass of the cabinet and speaker frame is 1000 times that of the cone, then the cabinet wants to move at the same time inward .01 mm, and vice versa when the cone is moving the other direction. In real life terms, the cabinet moving like this allows the speaker cone to move more freely and this really helps the sound, especially the bass.
But it is very important to make sure that the cabinet is only allowed to move along one directional axis, and not all three, and that direction is the back-and-forth direction of the speaker cone.
There is a company that sells speaker stands that they say uses this principle, and I actually purchased the stands, and I did notice an improvement in my sound. But it occurred to me that they way they are designed, not only did they allow the speaker to move in a front and backward motion, but it also slightly made the speaker move up and down in an arc, which is not desirable for this purpose. I believe this up and down motion could make the cone movement be slightly unstable and move not in a direction favorable to good sound. I wanted an even better sound.
I thought about it and the solution I came up with was rollers. Simple, elegant, and perfectly serves the purpose, allowing speaker cabinets to move along only one axis. I went to a hardware store, found a 1 inch diameter poplar dowel, cut it into 12 inch lengths, put the lengths underneath my speakers so that it would allow the speaker cabinet to move away from and toward me just a little bit, put some clay under there to limit the movement of the speaker so they couldn’t roll off of the rollers, and fired up my system. There was a very noticeable difference that I really liked. I heard a clearer sound and a firmer more solid bass; more zing to the sound. Generally, more musical. And for just a few dollars and a little elbow grease. Try it and let me know what you think. Don’t think about theory and cabinet design and all that stuff, just try it.
The undersides of the speakers need to be flat and the surface the rollers set on needs to be flat. And the axis of the cone movement needs to be parallel with the floor - it won’t work well with speakers that have drivers that face slightly upward, for example. Also, rollers on carpet won’t work so well. there will need to be some sort of platform underneath. I have hardwood floor so that works fine. And this won’t work with downward firing drivers.
With that being said, have fun!
— Gary