Spikes and added weight for subwoofer performance?

Rives, at the frequencies involved with sub woofers, how much lateral movement do you think it would take to disturb (distort) the soundwave? I'd tend to agree with your implied conclusion that lack of coupling would cause deterioration if we were talking about a tweeter or mid-range speaker, but a woofer?

Newbee: It doesn't distort the sound wave, not in any meaningful way anyway. It's really a matter of efficiency. Imagine a cannon shooting a cannonball. If you can make the cannon really firm (say couple it to the ground) rather than have a lot of backwards kick, the cannonball will go further. It's the same when the voice coil is moving the cone, if what it's attached to does not move (by adding mass or spikes or whatever), then it will be more efficient at moving the cone.

Interesting