No, depending on......

function for BL8000: stability at high-pile carpets

The spikes are intended for carpet placement of the Beolab 8000's. The spikes gently "dig into" the pile of the carpet to aid in stability. On non carpted floors, spikes are not needed.

Spikes are always good for speakers on carpeted floors*, however the B&O original ones for the Beolab 8000s are too short and not pointed enough to successfully break through the pile to the floor below. In addition, they seem to have a different screw thread to all other speaker spikes I have encountered, so you can't use them either.

* except Beolab 90s. They seem pretty stable without spikes... 😕

I bought some spikes from Amazon and they definitely improved the sound of my M100s on a carpeted floor - I mounted them on each corner of the metal stand. Having had the 8000's in the past I wish I had also put the spikes on them on a carpeted floor.

These are the ones I bought for about £15 (although they seem not to sell them anymore)

Andrew wrote:

What sort of floor are using them on? - my floor is wooden floorboards on joists with the ground below it. The acoustics were terrible before it was carpeted as the space below the floor boards acted as a boom box. I did try concrete slabs under the speakers but the spikes look more elegant and you can hardly see them as the carpet is thick.

Hi  everyone and thankyou for the kind answers.

My floor is just a tile one (covered with epoxy resin), no rugs underneath the speakers.

My wonder is about my neighbor, living in the floor below of mine. She reports to just be annoyed by my music, no voices or other noise. My guess is that the floor/slab works as a resonance chamber and spikes somehow could minimize the effect. Alternatively I could trim some 1cm thick felt stick to the speaker support.

any wisdom?

G. 

There are two defendable reasons for using spikes under a loudspeaker:

• to go through the carpet to the hard substrate to make them more stable
• to reduce the coupling between the loudspeaker cabinet vibration and the floor vibration by making a big difference in the mechanical impedance of the two surfaces

Since this specific question is about the 8000, there is little-to-no mechanical vibration in the baseplate caused by a mechanical coupling to the woofers or a panel vibration caused by internal pressure changes. therefore, the only reason to put spikes under your 8000s would be because of thick carpet on the floor, as has already been pointed out.

If, however, your floor is vibrating when you play bass-heavy music at high levels, then this is probably because the air is pushing/pulling your floor - not because the loudspeaker is causing a mechanical vibration. (I have an identical case in the big listening room in Struer, which is a 26-ton airtight steel box sitting on springs inside a 17-ton airtight steel box. When I play BL90 at high levels, the floor vibrates - but it's because the air in the room is moving it, not because the BL90s are bouncing.)

So, if you have a downstairs neighbour who is complaining about the bass, and you are using BL8000s, spikes will PROBABLY change nothing. You either need to:

• stiffen your floor
• turn down the music
• move

Cheers
-geoff