Why Use Monitor Isolation Pads?

Often we get a question from clients building their first recording studio.   Some of those questions like,  “Where should I place my studio monitors? On the desk, on stands, or somewhere else?”  Or  “What are isolation pads, and why do I want to use them?”

What are Isolation Pads?

Hey folks it’s Jim from Slick Audio.  This is video number two for the day, go figure.  There’s a question that we had and the question concerns, “Why do some people put isolation pads or pads stands.  As they’re calling them on underneath their monitors and some put them right on their desk.?”
First, what are Isolation Pads?   They are just like shock absorbance for your car.  But used in your recording studio absorbing vibrations that would otherwise transfer into your desk or your floor.  So now you know the purpose of Isolation Pads.

What is Decoupling?

The whole purpose of using isolation pads are to “decouple the speaker from the hard surface“.  Or eliminating the transfer of sound on your desk. So these isolation pads here are made by Auralex called “MoPads” they’re soft foam as you know.   You probably can or cannot see me pushing down in there.   Obviously, I need mine angled down anyway so I have some extra foam in there.   But nonetheless, it is always always a good idea to decouple the speaker from the surface.  Yes, some people put them right on and not recommended in my opinion.  You know if you even saw my desk with my little Adam Audio A3X’s there, and I have pads under them too.
So so again it’s a decoupling of the sounds mostly the base.  You know you don’t want you to know when these speakers cranking start to
bring the volume up a little bit, and all of a sudden stuff on your desk starts rattling and carrying on and vibrating.  That can affects the entire sound.  Theirs a sound you don’t you don’t want to hear.  We spent a lot of money on monitors, and we don’t want to be hearing the desk you know.   Musicians they don’t spend a lot of money in the desk but it’s not meant to reproduce sound.  It’s meant to hold all the that “stuff”
reproduces themselves that is the one and only purpose of these things obviously.  For angle as well but its purpose is to decouple the sound from vibrating through to the desk in the desk making noise.   It’s that simple it’s an easy one that’s all I got oh there’s my to-do bobble-heads ooh and all the dust underneath it.
Cheers guys/gals be good.