Hard to explain, but true: I have Merlin Master VSM's. For two years they have been spiked to the concrete floor under wall-to-wall medium pile carpeting. I've always felt that there was some undesirable deadening of the low-to-mid bass going on. Tried various room treatments. 2' x 4' x 4" bass absorbers angled about a foot behind the speakers did help. But still something was not quite right.
The other day I decided to buck conventional wisdom. I had an intuition to place 1/2" maple shelves from an old Lovan rack I had under the speakers so that they are just sitting freely on the carpeting and the speakers are spiked directly into them. HUGE improvement in bass and no apparent disturbance in any of the other factors such as sound staging, or higher frequencies. In fact, I would say that everything just sounds better. I don't understand the science behind it, but I'd guess that coupling the speakers directly to the concrete floor had the same effect as over-damping a room or the inside of a speaker cabinet. Just goes to show that in this hobby it's good to experiment. And if you're lucky, the best solution is also the free solution.
