They do what they are meant to do, beautifully made, and only $18-20 (1 lb) with four choices of interface material - cork, sorbathane, E-A-R rubber, and felt. He has 1 lb, 2 lb, and 5 lb versions. Simply made, no BS. |
The equipment rack is on a suspended wood floor with industrial vibration isolation pads, the kind used for vibrating equipment. I have used BDR, Herbies IsoPods, etc in the past. The EMM labs footers seem to be made with aluminum and some type of viscous material which I imagine is tuned for the chassis. Frankly, I have found isolation devices in the past to make very little noticeable difference, could be the maple rack does a pretty good job of isolation from ground vibrations. I would assume that if the maple rack is relatively inert, that the idea would be to couple (and drain equipment vibration) the player to the rack rather than isolate it from the rack - true? |
Tpreaves, the answer I have answered for myself is that the footers I have used have not been very effective at changing anything notable, but perhaps they were not effective, or my player simply is not subject to much improvement through the use of footers. Buconero117, it is both that acoustic vibration and self induce motor vibration that I wonder about and why I think the type of footer that would help is one that couples the player to the surface and acts in some way to drain vibration from the player to the supporting surface. Now that is theory and I just don't know whether any kind of footer would actually work that way and result in better sound. I would think the Mapleshade is designed for that very purpose, to act as sink to direct vibration from the player to the supporting surface - I do believe my stand is fairly free from vibration given the thick 3", heavy wood and the isolation from the suspended wood floor which am sure vibrates like mad when music is playing. I suspect nobody can tell me if any type of footer will have a postive effect with my particular player as it is well built and does have some kind of "engineered" footer, but I'm interested in significant improvements that others may have has with the use of footers and a player or transport, got to believe that less vibration would help the laser reader... |
Jhardy, that sounds very interesting. So these are just weights placed on top of the unit to mass load the casing? I don't if I'm hearing what you are hearing as the unit does sound good to me, but I did read thay PF reviews as well and took note of it and thinking there might be something I could try that would make the performance even better than what I am already getting. If you could e-mail the photos, that would be much appreciated. |
Any experience with the effectiveness of the Ginko 10 or 11s as platforms, or similar type of devices. The Ginko seems to be relatively inexpensive. The other similarly priced approach is the BrightStar AirMass/BigRock/Little Rock system. |
Chazzbo, got the room treatment taken care of. Now mass loading, that just means putting weight on the unit? Like Jhardy's approach? I do wonder why brass would be better than anyother material of the same weight or density, but that is the approach you are recommending? Sort of like putting your hand on top of the chassis which would obviously dampen vibration within the casing, or at least alter the frequency of vibration. |
Not like consensus is ever possible in this hobby, but does mass loading seem to be the best approach for my situation? I also repeat the question, why does the material matter as opposed to simply weight? I dod assume that if the weight is relatively inert, the better, but brass more inert than a brick? |
Hi Anhtony, I think I might try that Mapleshade stuff, even if the kitty litter works.... |
I spoke with the folks at EMM and they said that their footers are designed and engineered for isolation, and they certainly don't look like after thoughts. To keep myself from going crazy, I'm going to go in the direction of some chassis dampening with the likes of Edensound Damping Disc, Walker Discs, Mapleshade Highpoints, or Herbies Stablizers -- I think they are all designed to do basically the same thing. Which of these is best and dealing with chassie vibrations, who knows but I'm going to look into these and choose one. The Edensounds certainly looks the least expensive route, but.... |
I notice that these chassis "damping" devices appear to take two approaches, some which use small contact points, sometimes small spikes like Mapleshade, or the Walker stuff little rubberized pads, while others seem to go flush with the surface. I'm no engineer and have no idea what the thinking is between one approach and the other. I will not be using anything beneath the transport as it has well engineered aluminum and elasto someting or other material resting on a rack made from 3" thick maple with industrial isolation pads between the pillars and the floor. Thoughts? And, can you have too much weight? Tvad, the Edensound certainly sounds like a bargain, a lot of brass for the $$$.
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I'm going to try two of the Edensound discs and two of the Herbies's discs. I have two Walker Audio discs for my preamp and Merlin BAM. Thanks for all the input:) |
The BDR are beneath the Ginko, or between the top plate of the Ginko and the bottom of the equipment? |
Thanks. I use BDR and Pits below Mapleblocks for my amps sitting on the floor, with Herbie Isopods[?] between the maple and the amp - that seems to work well. The Ginko design does seem to make a lot of sense - it sure does invite DIY at the price though - but it looks good. |
Those EdenSound brass weights with the EAR padding work very nicely - and a bargain to boot. |
I chose the E-A-R. The fella there was a bit suspect about hearing differences between the different interfaces and he felt the Cork could go brittle over time, and the Sorbathane tended to capture grit and grain - so I went with the E-A-R. I think what you obtain sonically will depend on the gear as I suspect the "tuning" effect is dependent on the particular gear you are using. For me in my set up, I think what you get is improved resolution, by which I mean the ability to notice more differences between instruments, singers, etc. - more information about the musical performance. They are cheap enough, and the idea that some weight on casing will reduce vibration to some extent is proabably uncontroversial - whether that will provide noticeable difference will depend on the overall resolution of your system so it something you have to experiment with since I think blanket statements are just that. |
