HELP-woofer moves alot when playing lps


Hi-
When I play a record on my TT, I get an excessive amount of woofer movement, even when no music is playing. When I lift the arm off the record with the finger lever, the movement stops, and the phono stage is dead quiet. Its only when I drop the needle and turn it up a bit, the woofer starts to move in and out. I dont get this when playing cds, only lps. I have my system on a shelves, with the table onto and my integrated amp directly under my TT. Might this be an isolation issue? Thanks in advance.
tbromgard

Showing 5 responses by dan_ed

Real cart/arm mismatches are rare these days and hard to accomplish unless one is intentionally doing so. Am I one of the few guys who has the usual number of slightly warped LPs in his collection. That is THE #1 cause of woofer pumping, IME. Generally speaker, because of the way in which ported speakers gather extraneous energy to be released at that tuned frequency does allow ported speakers move more easily and to a greater degree when a warped LP is played. IMO, IME.
It is NOT cartridge/arm mismatch. Ported speakers are a bit more susceptible to this. My old Aerial 10ts would do the woofer dance very well. Make sure your amp has enough headroom so you don't get clipping, put the covers back on the woofers. Stop watching them. The suggestions for a subsonic filter are good, but I have not heard one that didn't seem to damp things too much. It could work for you. You might have some success experimenting where the speakers are placed, but you probably can't eliminate it completely.

I have two, 18" drivers handling the duties down low. On a lead-in of a slightly warped record I can feel them pressurizing the room from side to side. :-)
Transaudio, let me explain. IME, when you put any filter in the stream you can hear the effects. Well, at least I can in my system. Woofer pumping, which we cannot hear, does cause issues in higher ranges that we can hear as distortion and or nulls. I guess the easiest way to say is that we don't hear the direct effects around 20Hz but we can hear the side effects. Stop that woofer from flapping in the breeze and the bass tightens, etc. Add some filters and you also crush dynamics. Get the right filter and you get the best of both but you still give up something. Pick the compromise that works best in the system.

In my case I use a Marchand crossover and the natural roll off of my bass horns. The Marchand keeps everything below 100Hz confined to the bass horn which rolls off very quickly below 25Hz. Kind of a built-in filter.
So when Atma-sphere amps show up not working one should assume they weren't built or serviced properly?