Sound is nothing but vibration within the bandwidth of the ear. So, you want materials that don't resonate at those frequencies.
Showing 19 responses by jburidan
Isolating components from vibrations is an audio fetish IMHO that is exploited by charlatans marketing to the worst of the nervosa syndrome. Each object has a resonant frequency, and it's going to resonate in the presence of that frequency, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can change the resonant frequency, such as by putting sand or lead shot in a speaker stand, putting a bag of sand on top of a component, etc. Buildings vibrate at frequencies that are inaudible. Carnegie Hall vibrates, but it affects neither the performance nor recording of the performance. |
geoffkait: If tonearms and cartridges are engineered to have resonant frequencies circa 10-12 Hz, then it's absolutely illogical to conclude that isolating the turntable from seismic frequencies will reduce vibration of the tonearm and cartridge. Whatever hocus-pocus you apply to your turntable, you won't alter the resonant frequency of the tonearm and cartridge. Good rule of thumb: Don't listen to your vinyl during an earthquake. |
There’s a lot of equivocation or sloppy use of language in audio marketing. For instance, look at Mapleshade’s loose description of its Tonearm Resonance Control Kit: "The physics are simple: bonding our 28g brass "mini Heavyhat" to the top of the headshell kills the resonances in the cartridge/headshell structure..." This language is misleading. The brass weight changes the resonant frequency, it doesn’t kill the resonances. To be fair, a few paragraphs later Mapleshade says that the device is used to "reduce higher frequency resonances in the headshell..." which is more correct. It would be even more correct to say that it lowers the resonant frequency, i.e., where "lower" means not the amplitude but the Hz. Likewise, our friend geoffkait often misuses words and commits fallacies of equivocation. It’s no big deal, except that his posts serve to benight rather than to enlighten the reader. I'm not a physicist, but nevertheless even I know these simple things. |
Sorry, I was in a hurry to leave home so I misspelled ’an’ as ’and’ -- the post should read: According to Wikipedia, an ’audio signal’ is an analog or digital representation of sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_signal Loudspeakers take an electrical audio signal as the input, create a vibration, and produce the sounds you hear. Microphones do the opposite. So there are three things, sound, vibration, and signal, and two forms of signal, analog and digital. Oscilloscopes take an electrical audio signal as the input and produce the moving visual image that you see. |
According to Wikipedia, and 'audio signal' is an analog or digital representation of sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_signal Loudspeakers take an electrical audio signal as the input, create a vibration, and produce the sounds you hear. Microphones do the opposite. So there are three things, sound, vibration, and signal, and two forms of signal, analog and digital. Oscilloscopes take an electrical audio signal as the input and produce the moving visual image that you see. |
Dear geoffkait: If you are the same Geoff Kait who is the genius behind the Teleportation Tweak, I humbly apologize for any aspersions I cast upon your character. Long live quantum approaches to solving common hi-fi problems. Keep up the good work... Sincerely, Jay P.S. Also, I hereby apologize in advance for any cheap shots that I may take at you in the future. |
I read a great little book about Marconi by Erik Larson who is just a great writer IMHO. http://eriklarsonbooks.com/the-books/thunderstruck/ |