Filling speaker stands: sand, lead, steel, rice. Full, half, etc?


With my proac tablettes, I am using 28 inch speaker stands which have two round steel tubes about two inches in diameter.  The stands have spikes into my wooden floor (through carpet) and rubber pads on top.  I have a rather small room 12x12, and I have played around with the speaker positions in the room, finding a pretty sweet spot optimizing the bass and soundstage.  I have done all this with the stands unfilled.

so I am looking for advice on filling the stands. What do I use: sand, steel shot, lead shot, rice?  Do I fill them half full, three quarters, or full? Do I fill all the tubes the same? Can overfill makes things worse?

like most things (i.e. speaker placement) I suspect there will be some trial and error, but as it will be a real pain in the rear to fill/empty/refill the various materials to really compare, I am hoping that there are some lessons learned that the rest of you can share with me to get me pretty close with my first trial.

Alos, what effect will the filling have- should I expect deeper bass, bigger soundstage, greater depth, more detail, or..... better yet what should I not expect to change? This will help me know what I should be listening for as I tweak things.

and finally, should I expect my current optimum speaker position to change with filled stands? Will I have to go through the whole positioning exercise again?

thanks, ( and happy new year)

Bill
meiatflask
No idea on how much or what you use would affect sound, but be aware that lead, if ingested, can have an adverse effect on cognitive development. If you have young children in the house and decide to use lead shot, you should fill and adjust in an area that the kids will not have access to.  Pouring lead shot will generate lead dust, and children will invariably get dust on their hands and clothes and from there, hard to prevent it from getting into their mouths.  In the future, disposing of the lead could be a problem, also.  Just my $0.02.  You may evaluate the risk differently. 
I've done sand and lead shots,  I prefer the lead by far,  One other method if you will never remove it is to take tiny Styrofoam balls and mix them 50/50 with concrete.  It dampens extremely well and cuts the weight of the concrete tremendously. 
You want to be absolutely certain the sand (if used) is completely dry.
I filled some stands with sand (also from Home Depot) but dried in an old frying pan in the stovetop.
I would say sand is the easiest filler. I also shake it a lot to get it to settle, and fill to the top.
Lead shot is a hazard both when filling and later on.Getting rid of the lead is twice as problematic as using it in the first place.
20/50 years on down the road no one is going to know there is lead in the stand.

the idea is to make the stands as heavy as possible so that speaker cabinet movement (caused by the bass reflecting off the cabinet walls) does not modulate the sound

sand will leave less of an air space than lead shot (so the stands will be heavier than you might think) and is not toxic

cones might help too

I bet Dick Vandersteen has a white paper on this...