Townshend Audio Seismic Podium review
Townshend Audio Seismic Podium review...
I have followed Townshend Audio for many years as an enthusiast and a Hi-Fi reviewer. They have been developing Isolation platforms of various types for speakers and electronic equipment for as long as I can remember. But they don’t just make isolation products; they also make electronics and speakers. The most famous is the Super Tweeter, which I have seen and heard a few times, and can be implemented into any system.
All rooms suffer from some kind of acoustic problems,
whether that be low frequency propagation, the type of rattling floor
boards, or some kind of anomaly which is difficult to isolate, and all these
issues can ruin the sound quality of your system. Townshend Audio deals with
some of these issues by isolating your equipment from the room itself, and in
this case, my room has wooden flooring, and when bass starts to drop low, it
resonates through the floor, causing some undesirable effects, which have always bothered
me. Getting the speakers and system set up properly takes time, and to have it
ruined by room-induced influences is annoying, to say the least.
Build Quality and
Features
The Townshend Audio Seismic Podiums are extremely well built, with the podiums being made up of tough black steel, which is very heavy-duty and designed and built purposely to hold the weight of some of the
biggest speakers available. They are available in five sizes but can also be
custom-made if none of the 1-5 sizes fit your exact speaker. Each podium uses
Townshend Audio Innovative's “Captive Load Cell technology” that provides a
stable four-square footprint well beyond that of the speaker’s cabinet. It’s
not just speakers that can make use of the Podium, but also subwoofers, which can
benefit from being isolated. They are suitable to be use on most types of
flooring, wood, carpeted, or even tiled floors, and add an additional 20mm to
the overall height of speakers being used.
Performance and
Sound Quality benefits
In my system, I use the brilliant Wilson Audio Sophia 2
speakers, which sound amazing, and I use them for all my equipment reviews as
they are a reference speaker for their amazing sound quality that they offer. I
ordered a size 3, which is the perfect size for them to sit evenly on the
podium's surface. I have spent a lot of time and effort in setting them up, and
for me, the sound was great, but I would get some terrible resonances through the
floor when any kind of deep bass was playing, and this had a ripple effect in
deteriorating the sound quality overall. So, my obvious solution was the
Townshend Audio Seismic Podiums.
How much of an effect the Podiums have on the sound quality
for my Wilson Audio Sophias was quite staggering? I was expecting an
improvement, but not on the scale that they actually provided. Immediately, the
sound was more focused, and the resonances that I used to get were gone; now all
that was left was just pure sound, and the bass had tightened up massively. The
sound stage was more defined by the instruments playing, and everything seemed
to flow out of the speakers with greater clarity. Playing DubXanne’s album, which is very bass-heavy on some tracks, produced prodigious bass that resonated through my chest rather than the floorboards. It was immediately
noticeable how much of an improvement the Podiums were having on the sound.
They are a costly investment, but not if you're looking at extracting the very best
performance from your speakers, as they do exactly what Townshend Audio says, and
that is improve your audio quality with vastly improved sound. It is as if each
driver on your speakers has been dialled in to extract the best performance
possible from them.
Conclusions and
final Thoughts
If you are looking at improving the sound quality from your
system, then I would seriously consider Townshend Audio’s Seismic Podiums as
they seem to extract the very best from your speakers. And if you are like me, very picky when it comes to any kind of distractions like room-induced resonances, then these will certainly solve that problem.
Townshend Audio has been at the forefront of isolation
technology, and the Seismic Podiums are a sure testament to this, as they are simply brilliant in what they achieve.
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