Any thoughts on a solid hickory platform under my tt

"Tuning" an LP player by using a resonant wood support structure strikes me as wrong-headed as adding a tube buffer or pre-amp (or whatever) to add "warmth" to a system, as is often done to offset a "cold" CD player. The value of tube circuitry is it’s liquid transparency and high resolution---in contrast to the dry, bleached, colorless, and sterile sound of all but the best solid state---not in the "warmth" some attributed to tubes. Warmth is a coloration, just as is coldness. The best tube products don’t sound warm, and the best solid state doesn’t sound cold. If you have a system which produces a universally cold sound to everything played on it, adding a tube will not correct the situation---tit-for-tat doesn’t work in this case. Tubes should be used to prevent that kind of sound from being produced in the first place. Once it has, it’s too late for a tube to "correct" the situation. +1 and -1 sum to zero, but for a tube inserted in a system to exactly offset the cause of the coldness of that system is highly improbable.

But back to the topic. Surely I’m not alone in thinking a shelf/platform/rack should have no signature sound of it’s own. The "musical" sound I’m after is not that produced by the wood shelf under my table adding it’s own sound to that of the recording (or to the player, if that is the thought), but of the sound of the wooden instruments in the recording itself. Maple-shelled drums sound great because maple possesses a lot of resonance and sustain---good characteristics in a music producing instrument. Are ya’ll saying you want your table’s support to have a musical sound of it’s own? And that you think a resonant, ringing material makes for a "musical" sounding turntable support?

The anti-high mass proponents will tell you that those designs don't "block vibrations", they just move them to a different frequency (lower) and transmit them longer---in other words, ring longer at a lower frequency for a longer length of time. That's why that crowd in England (all through the 80's and 90's) advanced the notion of very low mass, very stiff supports for turntables, such as Torlyte.

Max Townshend (and Audiogon's own Geoffkait---see above) will tell you that what's needed is a high-pass mechanical filter with as low a resonant frequency as possible. Do yourself a favor and watch the couple of videos on You Tube of Max demonstrating the effects of his Seismic Pod. It's an eye opener!

Right you are Geoff. Is 180 degrees off close ;-) ? To state it again, what is needed under a turntable (or CD player, or tube electronics) is not a piece of wood (or whatever) with which to "tune" the entire LP player (what a "primitive" idea!), but a low-pass mechanical filter with as low a resonant frequency as possible (3Hz, tops). That’s what the Minus K platforms are, what the tables made for medical microscopes are, and what the Townshend Pod is.

Oleschool---The Townshend Pods are available singly. You can get the Townshend Seismic Platform with it’s four corner Pods if you want, but it’s cheaper to get just the Pods. With a solid-plinth table such as the Classic, the Platform is not required, and three or four Pods is substantially cheaper than the Platform.

If the wallmount is like the Target and Solid Steel with which I’m familiar, use the shelf that comes with it, using three or four Pods in place of the Classic’s four feet. The Pods are available rated for different loads, the internal springs being optimized for varying weights. Three will do, Max says four are better. They seem overpriced to me, but whatta ya gonna do?! One thing you can do is first try Geoffkait’s springs---they too look good, though not as sophisticated as the Townshend. Check them out on Geoff’s site.

Another option is the replacement part for the Classic’s foot offered by Symposium Acoustics. VPI owners who have tried it seem very satisfied with the improvement it provides.

oleschool---theaudiotweak’s argument promoting the notion of transferring energy from one object into another of higher mass via hard cones or spikes---the "mechanical diode" theory, wherein energy coming from a source component is transferred through a "one-way" energy path (the cones or spikes) into the higher mass of a stand, or floor, or whatever---can be, and has been, shown to be a myth. As Max Townshend explains and demonstrates in his You Tube videos, any object that can transmit energy in one direction can, and does, transmit it in the other direction just as easily. The idea of cones or spikes being isolators is an incorrect one; they transmit energy up through them as well as down out of them---up from your turntable’s support, through the cones or spikes, and into your tables plinth. They are couplers, the exact opposite of what you want in a turntable support.

You want isolation---from the Earth’s seismic activity, from street traffic, from nearby construction, from your home’s heating and cooling system, from the transformers in your amps, from the vibrations created in your room from music playing, and from what is right under your table---it's shelf. You want a very low frequency low-pass mechanical filter under your table---springs, air bearing, ball bearing, etc. For a while people were using lossy rubber isolators---Sorbothane, Neoprene, Navcom. Their failing is in having too high an effective filter frequency---in the audible range, creating "spongy" bass and soft transients, and in being non-linear---they treat different frequencies differently, making their sound unpredictable.

Astro, I see things differently than you in this way: I chose to discuss the subject of this posting from a theoretical point of view, addressing the "why" of isolation. You prefer a statement of how a certain approach or product had what kind of affect on a commenters own system. What lead me to try roller bearings was Barry Diament’s discussion of isolation on his website, not a statement by him about how bearings affected his system.

When I read about the theory behind an approach or product, I decide to either give it a try, or not, based on my own personal "sniff" test. Reading someone else say how a product did this or that to their system in florid audiophile terms doesn’t necessarily mean much to me.

I mentioned air bearings because I have Townshend Audio Seismic Sink platforms (the original "air" version, not the current "spring" version) under my turntable, CD/SACD player, tube phono pre-amp, tube line-stage pre-amp, and tube power amp. I mentioned roller bearings because I have both Symposium Acoustics and Ingress Engineering bearings under same. Yes, I recommend anyone looking for good isolation consider looking into these products. I wouldn’t dream of describing how they affected the sound of my system, but by discussing isolation itself I attempted to say why they might be of benefit in someone else’s.