Monitor Mounting options

#1

Hi there!

This is my first post here and bit out of order, so, to get some context, I will briefly say where I am at:

I have built a recording studio in the past with the help of Stuart. Now, this recording studio is going to be used exclusively for recording and also some music lessons. I moved into a larger place and can finally have a composition studio with windows and sunlight that is a bit more spacious and will hopefully rise the mood to once again do more work. I had found out over the year that working to much in a basement was not inspirational for me. So, this new place will not become a proper studio build. I will not do any insulation to protect neighbours, but I have already found out that I can work with little restrictions. I can not pull up high levels at night time, but that is fine to me. I also get some noise in, but it is only louder when there are construction sites nearby (which currently is the case!) and even that is ok.

In a nutshell, this meany all I want to do is setting up a surround monitoring system and I am playing with the thought of may doing a 7.1.4 atmos setup. Currently, I only got the monitors for a (compromised) 5.1 surround setup, though (3x Neumann KH 150, 2x Neumann KH 80 for the surrounds and an Adam Sub 10 which may in the future be changed with a Neumann Sub offering bass management for the satellites. The final system is probably going to be 7 Neumann KH 150s for the floor speakers and 4 KH80 for the ceiling speakers.

This brings me to my question: Having the 5.1 system setup on cheap monitor stands that I got used for tryout (I got the for a very low price), I already notice how challenging it is to set up the speakers on stands without tripping over the all of the time. For the ceiling speakers I will need some sort of ceiling mount or a truss to mount the to. This got me thinking: couldn't the floor speakers be mounted to metal poles as well? There are systems from companies like global truss and these are compatible to the Neumann mounting system. The Neumann mounts are terribly expensive for what they offer. It is preferable to only buy as few of their dedicated mounting hardware as possible.

But there might be a problem with coupling the monitors to a metal frame - especially a light aluminum frame which is what you get with a truss system. So, the alternative would be stands with a base as slim as possible but enough weight (filled by sand?) to make them stand solid. I would still see the danger of people (or me) bumping against the monitors and them dropping. My monitors are simply not heavy enough to stay exactly still! And even if nobody would drop them, they would slightly move position which is not something you want with a carefully tuned monitoring system.

All I know is I don't want to soffit mount this time around, as that is to complicated to build for a surround system and would also compromise the flair of the room to much. But I am looking for the best option to free-mount the monitors in a way that is flexible (easy to change from 5.1 to 5.2.1 to 7.4.1 or just to change the distances and be able to experiment with how it sounds). It should be save to walk by those monitors, which are not spaced terribly far from each other (I aim for a listening distance of somewhere between 1.5 and 1.9 meters). And I want to avoid any resonances. Could anyone share some ideas how to achieve that the best way?

My ideas so far:
a) Mount to a metal pole, but instead of the aluminum poles which are usually used for lighting and stage monitors, to use heavy steel bars like they are used for scaffolding on construction sites (I looked it up on the internet and they are not even much more expensive, although they are pretty ugly, I guess ...). This will not eliminate any transmission, but it might decrease it. Also, there could be mounting options with built in decoupling. So far, I have only found options for ceiling mounts (IsoAcoustics V120), but I suppose there could be more products similar to this for the main speakers.

b) Build DIY monitor stand from MDF with a small base but fill them with sand so that they will become impossible to more or throw to the ground. To fix the monitors tight I could simply use a tension belt to tie the monitor the the stand. That would of course make any decoupling impossible, but I hope the stand being pretty heavy will be good enough.

c) While I don't want to do a room in room build, I do plan to build a wooden frame of the front of the listening area to create a perfectly symmetrical studio front (which is currently not the case), to offer some absorption, deflection of early reflection and to mount an angled ceiling cloud above. Integrated into that design I could also used wooden beams between the floor and this ceiling construction to mount all the main monitory. The ceiling monitors could be fixed to wooden parts of the cloud itself. But I suppose coupling all monitors to wood is not the best idea, is it?

#2

you could use the heavy stands, then decouple the speakers from the stand, or decouple the stange + speaker from the floor. ultimately the speaker decoupled will depend on the weight of each unit, or the ability to "press" down on the speaker to get the right compression.

i suggest all ear level speakers are on stands, and the ceiling ones mounted and placed per ATMOS etc spec.

the front "shaper" wall - if you have space behind it, feel free to leave a foot or so top and bottom and leverage the additional absorption there.

#3

Thanks for chiming in, Glenn! So, the decoupling the monitors from those stands would be something like placing 4 sorbothane rubber bumpers under them with the correct size calculated for the Mac of each speaker, right? The speakers even have rubber bumpers under them (edit: they do not, but I could buy them). Not sure wich material they are made of, but I can ask Neumann. So, that would still leave them vulnerable to them dropping to the ground by someone bumping not them. I will have to see according to where the speakers will end up standing whether that is a concern or ok. In case I want to secure them, I suppose the only viable option would be to put them into a box slightly larger then the speakers and decouple the sides (similarly how it is often done behind a wall for soffit mounting).

How would you decouple the stand itself? Would that also be some decoupling material like sorbothane or silomer placed under the stand?

By placing the the ceiling speakers according to atmos specs, I suppose you mean the positioning that is specified in their documents. But what about decoupling those? On the one hand, I intend to use smaller speakers (KH 80) for the ceiling (I only have 2.5m ceiling height and larger speakers will be problematic. This should make it a little easier. On the other hand, mounting the to the ceiling will make decoupling bit more of a challenge. The IsoAcoustics V120 is the only commercial product I could find that can do that. Is it any good? Are there alternatives? Ideally, I want to use the Neumann LH 32 in some way, because I already have two of them from their previous use.

https://www.neumann.com/de-de/produkte/ ... ries/lh-32

Yes, the shaper wall is absolutely intended for placing absorption and bass trapping there! I just have to do some measurements before determining how much I need. More on that later in another thread ...

#4

decoupling the stands is the same as decoupling the speakers from the stands.

ceiling mounts may not need to be complex. look into some ceiling isolation braces to mount the speaker bracket onto. e.g. some isolation mounts for equipment etc - adding a small increase in depth from the ceiling but sufficient to decouple. e.g. https://kineticsnoise.com/isomax/sound-isolation-clips using a short section of hat channel to attach to

#5

Thanks again, Glenn! Those decoupling clips are good advice to stay on budget. I hope I can find this product or something similar in Germany.

One factor I consider in my thought process I forgot to mention: the cabling. I really don't want any cable channels on the floor and to rip out the floor for making channels underground is out of the question, as there already is a very good floor with heating installed. So, I will have to come from above with the cables anyway. And that is basically the reason why I even began thinking about using poles to mount the speakers. The poles would both serve for the reason to tightly mount the monitors and make it impossible to drop them and they would also make the cables coming from above look less messy. And the footprint on the floor from poles would be the smallest possible, as they only need a small base. The only thing I do not know, is how well it would work to decouple the monitors form the poles. The clips you just mentioned might work!

Neumanns own truss mounting options do not use any decoupling whatsoever:
https://www.neumann.com/de-de/produkte/ ... riz.-truss

What also seems to make poles like a good idea to me, is the fact that it would be pretty easy to change positions of every speaker until everything works out perfectly. The speaker stand would offer the same ease, of course.

Do you know any example of that to have been done on the past? Speakers mounted on poles with some sort of decoupling?

The other idea I had is to do soffit mounting again. But this time I would refrain from building something large. I would just do very small columns which are just a little bigger compared to the speaker size. The speakers would be decoupled form that construction by being placed on stone on the floor with some decoupling material between that. But what I have I mind is not really in line with the specs that Stuart describes for successful soffit mounting here in this forum. It also wouldn't offer any flexibility. After it is built, the positions of the speakers would be fixed. I guess that option is looking less promising in my case, as building large soffits to the specs would eat to much of the space which is what I do not want.

#6

pretty sure many live shows use trusses and/or poles to mount speakers, and large events are surprisingly very sophisticated in their response for listening - including things liked beamed subwoofer arrays etc. so it's definitely an option, and might even have a really cool look.

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