As mentioned on the HI FI BASICS page, positioning speakers correctly is an important factor in getting good sound, and stands are necessary for many smaller speakers.

There are quite a lot of speaker stands available, and we have several in our STANDS sub-category.

But if you use a little bit of ingenuity you can make effective stands inexpensively.

Probably the simplest of all is to use a besser block. These are cheap, solid and at 390mm about the right size for many speakers. Now they don't look brilliant, although you could paint or cover them - but they do the job, even if only temporarily.

Here's a simple design you can build out of scrap pieces of chipboard, MDF or solid timber. Simply join two pieces to make a T-section, then add a top and bottom. As an example of dimensions I made up a pair of these to hold up my mid-sized front speakers. The rear pieces were 690mm x 230mm, the front pieces 600mm x 230mm. I set the front piece 20mm up from the bottom of the rear piece to allow the base (300mm x 280mm) to be able to fixed with screws through the back piece. The back is then 70mm longer than the front piece allowing a top plate to be fitted and still be able to screw through the top of the back piece into the back panel of the speaker to make it all stable. Cones or spikes could be used on the underside of the bottom plate to help it sit firmly on the carpet.

There's lots of other materials you can consider for stands - large PVC stormwater piping (filled with dry sand), timber (3 legged stool), concrete or earthenware pipe.

For rear channel speakers (usually small) you might be able to utilise tent poles, or brackets on side or rear walls or the ceiling.