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I want pictures of your DIY stands!! Haha. Because I lack both the tools and the materials to make any DIY stands, I went through thick and thins trying to find the best isolating feets for my speaker on my desk. Simple technique of placing blu-tack under the speakers alone made a hell of a difference so I can't imagine how much better my Aktimate would be given a proper speaker stand with decoupling feet. I am using Herbie Soft Dot right now.
I have not tried a stand before but commonly sighted negative feedbacks about the Aktimate is that it is very sensitive to positioning and that it needs a speaker stands to shine. This has been Aktimate's negative point more so than the A5 and since the Aktimate already sounds so good on a table top, I can only expect it to improve much more with a proper stand =)
@Arnotts - That is a very good price! If it sells at that price I will happily grab another one! It retails for USD700 here =(
I'll try to put up some photos of the stands soon, but for now I'll just describe them - They were stupidly easy to make and lucky for me almost for free. They're made of foam insulation for water plumbing! I found a few meters of the stuff just thrown out, so I picked it up cos it ain't cheap. I digress... so for each stand I cut twelve 15cm lengths and glued them together length-ways with hot glue in the form of a square based plinth. There is nothing particularly scientific going on here but I'll give you my reasoning.
1 - height - I wanted them
much higher, so 15cm brought the tweeters to about chin level, which isn't the perfect ear level I wanted, but any higher and I think the stands would be too unstable. Also, if they were too short, I think the foam would be too rigid and allow too many vibrations to reach the table.
2 - material - My first idea was to cast 2 solid or hollow lumps of concrete
but because they wouldn't be sitting on the floor, all the bass would travel through and straight to the desk = awful bass sound. So this foam was actually lying around the house for a few months before I had the idea. Also they're feather weight, so portability isn't an issue. The nature of foam is to absorb shocks and vibrations so the only way to find out how good my idea was, was to just go ahead and make them.
After that I cut 2 shorter lengths to stabilize the square form and inserted them inside the arrangement. After my first tests showed massive bass improvement I painted them black to match my speakers.
Actually for about a year I've wanted to try filling these stands with sand to see if that tightens up the bass further, but I guess I've been busy with my others hobbies.
