Incredible.
This is from their website. Note the word, "spring" in the text as well as in the diagrams. Their "pendulum based" design is a spring. How can it be any clearer than that?
Like I said, their compact design does not have room for the springs to move up and down, so they designed it to rock side to side. No matter which way it moves it is still a spring/mass isolation system. First rule of design engineering: If you can't fix it, feature it.
View attachment 135018
From the website:
Note in #3 that using "rubber or a spring" is listed as one of the roads not taken. At the end their approach is summarized as identical in function to suspending the speakers from the ceiling.
2. Fundamental mechanism 1 – Isolation between device and floor
Putting the speakers directly on the floor or stands with no concern. Is that correct?
The energy of vibration is lost loss little by little as it travels through feet, stands, insulators or spikes, and the energy finally becomes zero when arrives at the ground. With each step different vibration and sub-harmonics will be added based on type of materials, weight, etc. and this will generate distortion at every point. Due to these accumulated distortions, the total output will be heavily distorted and coloured. You may feel some “strongness” or a “pushy sound” from the speakers standing directly on the floor, but this is based on the distortion not on the speakers’ true performance. Some people may like it for a short period of listening, but not for longer term enjoyment.
In order to resolve the issue, it is required to completely isolate the vibration generated by the speaker and vibration generated by the floor.
There are several ways to achieve this. Let’s think about how best we can do it.
1. Hang the speaker on the ceiling: Technically a good idea, but not realistic in the majority of listening environments as the mechanism is too big. Also, there may be side effects due to the size with so many factors such as material of wire, length, divided vibration, etc. that need to be carefully considered.
2. Float the speakers with a magnet; The magnetic force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. As the distance from the magnet increases, the repulsive force of the magnetic force decreases, and as the distance approaches, the repulsive force increases. It is a bit confusing and very important to note that the strength of the force that weakens the repulsive force when the distance of 1 mm increases and the strength of the force that increases the repulsive force when the distance of 1mm approaches are not the same. This is because the distances from the magnet are different so it will never be symmetric or linear. The device floating on the magnet doesn’t have centre position so there’s no guarantee that it would return to the same position. Therefore, moving up and down (push-pull) behaves differently and not symmetrical, which would generate micro distortion. Also, the speaker itself is driven by magnet force and so it is difficult to place another magnet in the same field without negatively affecting each other.
3. Put rubber or a spring underneath the speaker; Elastic materials such as rubber absorb vibration by deforming. However, it requires a certain amount of force to start deforming, and no absorption happens until then, which means that micro vibration cannot be absorbed. Also, elastic materials have 3-dimensional distortion by their nature. For springs, resonance generated by itself needs to be considered.
As such, it is very challenging to practically isolate the vibrations between speakers and the floor.
WELLFLOAT has succeeded by installing a very small mechanism inside of the board and has effectively achieved “1. Hang the speaker on the ceiling” with minimum side effect.
