NEVER DO THIS WITH NEARFIELD MONITORS ! 

Dark green isolation stuff is inarguably the best kind of isolation stuff! Avoid bright colours! Especially Red and Blue isolation stuff, which is too warm and too cool respectively. Green isolation stuff is pleasantly neutral. If there are more than two people in the studio during recording or playback, dark green should be worn... most studios keep a sack of ex-military ponchos for this purpose, but you can use whatever you have available. Furniture arrangement is important. The room should be laid out according to strict Feng Shui principles. Dark sounding rooms may require exorcising. Bright sounding rooms may indicate the presence of pixies. Prior to using the room it is usually common practice to ritually sacrifice a Sgt. Peppers album _(A bic lighter is sufficient)_ - this will appease any remaining studio pixies and satisfy the Gods as to your righteousness. Happy recording

I've used folded beach towels for years.

Watching your video Streaky, inspired me to get my head around what I could do for the near field monitors I just bought to isolate them. Being disabled with limited funds, I either have to save for ages to get good equipment or like in this instance, get my grey matter working on an alternative. Sometimes the idea's work out be no good & I have no option but to buy market products. So I got myself down to a local Poundstore & bought 8 high-density foam balls for £2, & at my local hardware shop, I bought 16 large coasters, for sofa's & the like, for £8. Couldn't wait to get home & try this idea out!..... I 1st off put 4 coasters down the right way up & placed a foam ball in each, I then turned the top 4 coasters upside down & balanced them on top of the balls. The speakers were put on top of them. The result was AMAZING!! The speakers are completely isolated from my desk, I can feel the vibrations with my fingers when I touch the top coaster but when I touch the bottom coaster, there is no vibration at all, so the ball is removing it all & the difference this has made is HUGE!! You can see in the screen shot, exactly what I have done & if anyone doesn't believe the result.... try if for ya self! You will be amazed too & not just at the saving you will make but the quality of sound..... All that's left to do now is make a raised shelve to stand my PC monitors on & place the speakers each side of them, to get my triangle right with the tweeters at ear level. It's all good!! prntscr.com/fxnodd

Now i understand why a lot of music is poorly recorded. The speaker sound is going over the engineers head.

Vibration from near field monitors is super helpful in my case. Ethan mentioned his measurements that show little difference when the sound is measured over the air. What needs to be taken under consideration is that our ears are not the only way the sound reaches our brains. It's also the vibration of the floor, it's the vibration of the console palm rest which we can feel rather than hear. This is an important factor which might actually be helpful rather than harmful. One of the reasons cars are so good for assessing our recordings is the vibration that we feel with our hands resting on car doors, vibrating car floor that we feel with our feet, etc. In this case it doesn't cost much to try different options. Try it yourself what's better for you! Don't listen to "you should never do that" advice.

Streaky, their is no such thing as "these ones". It is either these, those or this one. We apparently.have a culture that has learned improper english. I've been using these (plural) or this one (singular) or those (plural across the room). By the way I don't teach mastering. I will leave that up to the pros like yourself...

Now I know where the term snake oil came from.

I thought this might be a satire video of high end isolation products. But no, you're serious. Have you tried chakra aligning crystals?

Hey, I know a Nigerian prince who has a great offer for you.

the more layers of materials with different density you put under it the better the isolation

I'm running Auralex acoustics angled wedges under my adam audio on floor stands. I have the pucks and the difference is so incredibly small it can only be measure by specialized sound mics. Diminishing returns bro.

keeping them ON or NEAR a desk is a fantastic way to EFF up your sound quality right there!!

Thank you for these iso tips. I worked in Nashville at major a recording studio that used very good isolation for near field speakers. I am retired now and own my own budget friendly studio. The ones I made are 2"X12" rectangles of mineral wool wrapped in material. I had left over. The great monitors I invested heavily in have very, if any that I can detect, No low end loss. Low cost but quiet effective. I haven't had one client tell me they were dissatisfied cause they could hear sound emanating from my mixer desk. You sir, I admit you have much better ears than the average listener. I appreciate your videos and education about such matters.

Speaker dudes from Auralex are doing the trick, not cheap but very efficient. I used them for a long time, now my Yamaha monitors are on the wall, just to uncouple them from the desk. I have not a lot of space here, so this solution works for me, btw I used the original brackets from Yamaha, these are isolated as well. But you are right placing them right on the console isn't' a good idea. Great video.

Is there any way to see some kind of test showing frequency or waveforms of how these different acoustic dampers really work in a treated Room??

You can buy small rubber feet that can be glued onto the speaker base ... that works the same and costs 2 quid for a set of four ...

What if the speakers are hanging from fishing line tied to the ceiling?

Another tip, if you have those bogus acoustic tiles that you typically see youtubers of all types using, put 2 of them together and you basically then have isolation pads. I did this when i realised rockwool panels are better for general room treatment and had all these acoustic foam tiles left over.

To be fair the guy is a mastering engineer where any improvement to sound, no matter how small is critical in that environment. I guess 600 quid is not a lot for him to spend considering the cost of all the other gear. ( I agree it's a ridiculous amount of money for such items).. but for those of us who are first and foremost music producers who have home studio setups in less than perfect acoustic settings, then cheap or homemade isolation pads of some sort are good enough. I use ESI Unik 08+ monitors which are not only great monitors , they actually have built in height adjustable rubber feet to decouple them from surfaces..… oh and both monitors cost around the same as his puck things. ;)

I'm not a fan of the iso acoustic stands. I do currently use them but they feel so cheap and the rubber really sticks to the metal adjusters, very frustrating to set up or adjust. Definitely gonna try the daddy pucks !

You are really pushing the snake oil dude. "takes away smearing in the mids" too funny dude.

For front ported monitors you can build "portable soffits" by building a box much larget than the monitors and a second opened front box to put your monitors in with a quarter inch of neoprene between them and your monitors. Fill the remainder with sand. If you use beach sand, cook it at 400 or so for at least 30 min. to kill critters. Soffits are sand filled for decoupling, I figured why not build the same thing that isn't part of a wall you don't own? Just position them and then fill with sand! They ain't going to be light and ease to move. They will extend your lower range by around 5 db though!

This floating construction eats lows, but distorts highs. Taking in mind amplitude of the high frequency driver much less than 1mm, every micromovement of the monitor will cause macro effects.

I've used rubber, cca 2cm thick. It is sold for "soundproofing" your washing machine :). I've put it under monitor and under legs of stands I've made for them.

I see that the black pucks cost £50-60 for two, so £100-£120 for a pair desktop monitors. I think I could make the very same things for peanuts. As for the £600 stuff - more money than sense. Buy 4 plain circular camera lens hoods. They come in a variety of diameters. I've just seen a 50mm dia lens hood for £1.04, post free [from H.K.]. on eBay. Cut some closed cell foam [loads on eBay] to fit - a reasonably tight fit - into the lens hood with enough foam protruding top and bottom to provide the isolation. Or perhaps use those foam balls from Poundland that Gary Hinde used. I would like Streaky to A-B-C a set of my design [about £10's-worth] and Gary's against his £200 pucks.

I use the foam the speakers came in. It's a dense styrofoam. Works great.

would be cheaper to just use some door stoppers its just a bit of plastic at the end of day

600！fuck that！

600 Pounds for something you can make yourself, sounds like its made from magic material like angel hair and batwings that bathed in moonlight at a mercurius eclips. I think the effects you hear are not from the quality of these stands but all have to do with the baffle effect you create under your speaker. And most of all the resonance you hear from your desk, depending on how mutch these stands transmit into it. You can also try those stands with sharp points for minimal contact and place them on a heavy stone plate, i think that will do mutch better than a 600 pound solution.

At: 03:41 I was looking at the Iso Accoustics website and you were saying, "These ones are the daddy... I've been using these, so these are very close to these, but these are better than these. These are really good. These are better. These are quite expensive." These, these, these, these, these, these, these. If you're only listening to the video, it really doesn't work.

1:45 You almost smashed your tweeter! :O

Don't listen to the sceptics. If you seek great sound you do whatever it takes. This lot wouldn't know sound quality if it bit them in the arse.

Post some actual measurements Streaky, don't just sell.

"Not these but these. These sound good , however these are better than these. Not these but these. If you think these are good then you need to check out these. These are far better than these. These are more expensive than these but far better than these, these and these. Great review man!

$600 for some neoprene sandwiched in between some aluminum? I guess there's a sucker born every minute. The black ones are just technics 1200 foot design from 50 years ago, rubber pad on bottom with spring in the middle. For that price i can buy a technics 1200 mk7 turntable, and they throw the feet in for free.

What I found works really great is simple big bubble wrap :) Aircushioned, cus u know, spent all my money on speakers, gonna tinker with my 3d printer and come up with something.

I just got a set of True-mix AR5s Studio Monitors very recently and right out of the gate I used some specially-designed Foam Pads between them (that came with in the Studio Monitor Package and the stands, and they really DO make a difference. Before when the only pair of Speakers I had to rely upon where Samson BT3s, I simply used some Styrofoam packaging with them in my Desk to try to provide a level of isolation to try to make the best of what I had! It really does pay off de-coupling your monitors with something!!

We can't have any bloody smearing in the mids. No that won't do at all. What if you use all three at the same time one on top of another? How about a cement brick or slab? How about a pillow?

I had mine mounted on wall brackets in the studio I was using. Unfortunately I've not got access to the building now as it closed down, however I'm thinking of doing the same thing where I live. Right now however they are just sat on a glass shelving stand which is itself mounted on top of a worktop. A bit closer together than they used to be due to space but don't sound too bad. I think being glass and not wood helps a bit.

People can use nearfield speakers with a massive stands on the floor and not on desk. In ideal - remove desk from your control room 😆 Only chair, laptop in your hands and acoustic system.

Breeze blocks on desk, blobs of blue tack on top, then wooden boards, finally metal spikes under monitors. Whole set up cost me less than £30 and they are as tight as you like

Got the pucks under my Kali In-5's and they work really well even though they are on my desk. 😎

I use 1 foot metal post supports from the hardware store to get my monitors head height and isolated :)

Instead of buying four for each speaker, couldn't you buy three for each speaker? Triangle formation? Two under the front or back, and the single one centered under the opposite side? Would at least save some money?

I use my set of DMSD since 2018 and I totally agree!

For me, a studio monitor should be free-standing This is not necessary with a stand box. But with a 2-way or 3-way nearfield or midfield a must-use stand! It just sounds better and absorb good ones. I take a stone slab as a base where it is decoupled, then the stand on it and the monitor speaker decouple again to the stand! Yes reflection from the table or screen in front of the monitor. You should avoid it as much as possible! Place the best screen behind the monitor! Reflections from the table are not easy to avoid. It depends on the monitor how the tweeters are directed in the vertical plane! And how far the monitor is received from the table. Must say that the Adam S2v excels because it has very directed high-tone removal in the vertical plane. 😉 I use stands with a height of 92 cm. The stand height depends on the monitor size and the distance, seat to the monitor! I see that the center between the treble and bass are aimed at the level of the ears. So you get a balanced sound

Sounds a bit like you're hearing the price there. All solutions except the foam pad all do exactly the same, from a physical standpoint. They use rubber for decoupling. The only possible difference is maybe the tuning of the rubbers stiffness, length and area. And then the speakers weight would influence this tuning heavily. I'm fairly certain you can get the same results using Squash balls (or anything rubber with a small contact surface) if you experiment with stiffness, contact area (amount of cut when speaking about squash balls) the count (3 vs. 4 vs. more) and placement under the speaker. The fun fact is: even the folks with expensive products only got physics to work with. If you like the convenience, that's a different story. But there is no way 600 bucks will improve physics by that much...

Iso Pucks? Haven't they already made these since the 70's? Yeah! on any record player. Their feet are "Iso Pucks"

LOL this guy is hilarious... "These are good, but these are better" LMFAO

Why stop at structure-borne noise? Might as well construct an anechoic room while you're at it.

I agree that isolation is hugely important, but instead of going for these stupid desk fixtures you should simply get some tall stands that sit on the ground on either side/behind of the desk, ensure that ear height is in between the tweeters and main cone. I also passionately recommend the Yamaha HS8's, truly incredible speakers.

These are about 600 pounds for two speakers “Ding ding” 💰the phone said. Keep up the good work, love the content! Hope to own an pair of A25 M’s in the future.

Hi Streaky, in your opinion, the iso pucks can improve performance even with monitors on stands like Zaor product ?

I use layers of these rubber sheets "loadsecure" that are used to hold skids in place when shipping in a semi trailer.. about 3" thick currently... Free for me. And I was able to layer under anything I've stacked between.

Have you tried the Triton Audio NeoLev?

But do they go to 11?

Really? So? Let me get this straight...600pounds for isolation feet add 500pounds of quality?....I did not know that was possible...and if you do the math...you are paying 600pounds for 500pounds of quality....It doesn't take a Rocket Surgeon to figure out that you are being ripped off....

I've heard of using concrete blocks. Never tried it. My monitors would sit too high. Currently I'm using 2 layers of shipping foam wrapped up in some nice fabric. It's not ideal. The foam is too soft and my monitors started tipping. Time to try something else that's free 😆

Thank you! Great video. I ordered the IsoAcoustics. The DMSD were out of my comfort zone for home audio. Experts like you do a great service. My hearing after 40 years of flying commercial jets isn’t so good. Your review really help me. Ty Steve

LOVE Streaky Mastering! In my project studio, I'm currently in the lower class of foam decoupling for my studio monitors. Foam provided by Thomann (no affiliation). Cheers from Taichung btw! Thank you 'Streaky Mastering' for following me on Instagram as well and thanks for the educational and thoughtful product review, I really liked it. It was helpful because I will skip the isopad entry level in favor of the state of the art solution down the line. However, at this time, the foam is decoupling very well ( in terms of recording budget). ;)

You forgot the pads. Why don't near field monitors have threads at the bottom for screwing in spikes?

sorbathane ,,,, job done ,, tenth of the price , vinyl djs have been using it for years

That's why you buy a monitor stand and put some foam on it like every professional studio has, and put them behind the desk and behind the mixing panel. There, you're done with less than 40 dollars. You're never gonna convince me a bunch of 600 dollar hockey pucks are gonna get rid of smearing in the mid-range.

The packing foam that came with my old Rokit 6s has worked for me. I do most of my work by headphones anyway then go around the place checking other speakers.

lmao Ethan is out here takin ERRBODY on. Love your stuff on GS btw Ethan, I've trusted in your opinion for years and have benefitted a great deal from your findings. It's all good and well to believe in the spirit of music and the power of hitting your stride with tone. There is also a benefit to the science of it all, the reason why a pro session player doesn't design the studio they play in (usually). Know your specialty, know your knowledge base and trust those who've spent their 10,000 hours doing something different from you. To put it simply, Ethan's findings are valid and any intuitions you have a as a player or producer are also valid. He uses numbers, you use feeling.

Foam can point the speakers upwards or downwards. These solutions are just level?

Fill some tennis balls with Slime? Just a thought. Or some large packing bubbles.

Isn't it a flaw that speakers built for studio use don't have quality isolated feet built onto them?

Streaky thank you for the cool and informative videos! Curious what your thoughts are on the Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers?

Hmmm......two approaches to speaker mounting, decoupling as per this clip, or solid mounting. IMO solid mounting is much, much better. If you haven't experienced this then please try - you will be amazed of 'trueness' of the bass response though-out the range. Concrete blocks, steel tube filled with sand whatever. It's impractical but worth it. £600 for floaty pads, hmmm.....? BTW, my current nmf are decoupled, like I say impractical!

Mind I just use sponge with cut out part of rubber sleepers and pasted together using the rugby soluble/gums. Vibrations solve in 5 minutes job. Cut Size (2.5”x2.5“ inches )

I never saw Bob Clearmountain or CLA using those and they seem to mix OK 😂

Hi how does one decide what the distance should be between the ears and the monitors. No one seems to,be addressing this issue. Is there some kind of system, based on power output, woofer size etc.

Just being broke, not facetious, but what if I just stuck a few pieces of rubber under the speaker. Would that work. Also, what about books. Thanks for the video.

Thanks a lot for that info! I will test that when i fnished my speaker's. How about just some rubber? Not on such small speaker's but on big and heavy one's like the ATC's that you had.

mine are on juggling balls - actually works. disadvantage: their filling will condense over time so there may be a slight angle forming 😉

... 15 dollar (12 pack) isolation foam, use two for your speakers and place the rest where the sound waves will first reflect. I personally think room treatment is way more important than isolation pads for your monitors but to each their own.

Funny because that's just I ordered some Sound Addicted - Studio Monitor Isolation Pads for 3-4.5 inches Small Speakers for my 4" M-Audio desktop speakers.

I use the heads of two groupies whom are constantly hanging about. They ARE NOT allowed to move. If I need a bit more or less of low mids I have them open or close their mouths.

Everyone can try a simple test: put ur ear on top of ur monitor and knock on ur desk and see how u hear the knock going all the way through the speacker to ur ear, if u isolating them properly u should hear very little or nothing at all, it is just obvious that will affect the sound in the same way ur room acoustic does.

A cheep fix is mouse pads use 2 and hear the major difference.

Thick foam pads with rubber feet, really good.

If you want 2 inches or so up , the cheapest useful buy would be stacked rubber furniture feet/pads .

Save your money have a welder make you some stands out of rectangle tubing that cantilever your monitors over your desk. The tubing is hollow. Fill it with shotgun shot.

i used those yoga brick with a plus 3 slices of foam, in the middle a kind of photographic material that i have, and it works fine for my jbl lr305

600 pounds worth of pucks adds 500 pouds worth of speaker. Hmmm. What about the extra two inches that the speaker moves upwards when combining them with the 'better pucks' , resulting in a different (off-axis) sound arriving at the listerners position? You should review the cheapish pucks again at the same heigher.

hey that was great, didn't know about the pucks, gonna check them out!

Hello Streaky, been watching your videos for a while, Great content keep em coming! I have a question on this isolation topic though, What do you think about Sorbothane isolation? I have never seen any of the pros talk about it and I think its way better than foam which the pros always mention

ISO Acoustics stands for my desktop speakers was the best $100 I've ever spent on audio gear. Immediate improvement. Decoupling from the desk surface is definitely worth it. Designed at the National Research Council, these have some science behind the design.

I use a pair of ISO Acoustic stands they do the job a bit on the expensive side.

what do you think about isoacoustic's "Aperta" series, which is an aluminum version of the plastic stand you have? Or are the isolation pucks still a better way to go instead of the stands?

I have been using NBA Official Ice Hockey Pucks under My Technics SL1210mk2's for Years and these look like the Next step up. Might give them a try.

This is off topic but It might be a big deal so it is interesting. Why would you put some of those hard monitor pads on the surface of the expensive outboard gears? It feels like you don’t own that all stuff....

Need have a set that’s on the console to simulate what people do at home putting their speakers on bookshelves and such?

I bet more than these isolators cost that neither he nor anybody else can hear the difference between foam pads and these expensive isolators in a blind test.

Or suspend the speakers from the ceiling. I can't be the only one that wants to hear him say, "the sound quality goes to 11".

Or simply buy yoga blocks! They are cheap and comes in foam, cork, bamboo, etc

I bought some pucks but they were no better than the £8 yoga blocks I already had. So sent them back.

Dear Streaky!Thanks for your great video!!! I want to ask: are the DSMD 50 much worse than 60 for use with the 11 kg monitor?

I've hung them on chains from the ceiling. Works nice.