How do you deal with vibration?

check this link http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ymisc&1002498109&read&keyw&zzbubble=wrap

if you want some real indepth stuff please look under my "threads" by simply hitting thr threads button next to my name. you'll find a large number of threads and posts that date back to the earliest years here at Audiogon. Alot of thoughts are expressed from peaople no longer here.

Pbb, what was your reason for your commenting on this thread? You show me no knowledge and/or first hand experience on this topic, yet your more than willing to ridicule those who are trying to constructively answer the question at hand. Because of your “need” to irritate and ridicule the original poster needed to ask the question again to get the thread on track. If you have no experiences to share, please move on.

As I recommended in my original post I have given you access to years of experiences and experiments. The biggest problem I have found is DIY projects fall short on a grand scale to some of the products I have found actually work.

I will explain a couple avenues that will work with great success, and try to outline how you might be able to apply that knowledge in a DIY project. First you will need to determine which direction you believe you want to go, the weight and mass approach or the light and ridged approach. I have tried both, again look over the threads I have started.

Light and rigid is far and away the most natural and musical in my system. If however you are weak in the bass area, weight and mass will originally sound like it is providing the most impact, but at a cost to tempo, pace and ultimately musicality.

Light and rigid: this is the theory that vibration should be drained as quickly away from the component being isolated and not stored within the shelf or rack but rather drained through the light ridged rake to earth. Any mass, sandbox, wood, stone, lead will store vibration and counteract the process you’re trying to achieve by releasing this stored energy back to the point of contact with the component.

So, what should you do? The first issue to address is the frame/ rack. A thin steel frame is best for light and rigid. Mana racks (extremely expensive) could be a model to follow. (Check them both online) Apollo is a second rack system that uses this philosophy Light weight steel angles welded to create a rigid lightweight frame. (If you can weld, or have a friend who can, this should be your first project) Many racks use sand or lead shot to mass load them, again I believe this is the wrong direction to pursue.

Once the rack is addressed you need to look at shelves. Mana and Apollo racks support the shelf with upturned spikes that are in effect a sharpened to a point threaded bolt without the bolt head. Tempered glass makes a decent rigid lightweight shelf but is limited to lighter components. MDF is still a very reliable product and has less storage potential than solid wood. The best shelf product is Neuance shelves. Again this is a name brand, and would be difficult to reproduce, but if you’re into manufacturing or attempting to manufacture I’ll outline what the Neuance is made of, and maybe you know how to duplicate it yourself. The shelf is made from an insulation board, I’m not sure if it’s open cell or extruded, but my guess is open cell. Assuming your going to make a shelf capable of supporting 50 lbs, the thickness of the end product is maybe 1½ “ thick. You would need to start with a 3” thick foam board. The foam needs to be squashed down to 1¼” thickness. Neuance uses a thin ceramic laminate product as the shell. They glue a number of plies together on all six sides to create a strong rigid lightweight shell around the foam core. I guess some other product could be the shell. Plastic laminate, wood veneers, ceramic veneers, glass or who knows, you could experiment until the cows come home. The result of this product is a super thin lightweight skin to allow vibration to quickly be either drained or absorbed in a multi-frequency core. Multi-frequency because the outside of the insulation would be denser than the center, due to the compression process.

The next product I have found to be very useful are metal cones. Different metals have different sonic characteristics. Titanium is my favorite but extremely expensive, brass is also very good and quite affordable. The reason cones are so successful is that they receive vibration on the wide side (component) and drain the vibration to the shelf. Vibration that may want to travel from the shelf to the component is restricted in its effects because the point is the only contact. I have found some success with steel balls. These tend to be like a two sided cone. Both the shelf contact and component contact is limited to the single contact point. This is more of an isolation product than a draining product, but assuming the majority of vibration is from the floor and airborne, then absorbed by the rack then this can be a very useful cheap isolation product. Different materials produce different sonic characteristics. I bought a number of balls made of a vast amount of materials. (Easy to find manufacturers on line) I liked ceramic, high carbon steel, titanium and brass the best. Rubber, steel, aluminum and glass were less successful. The problem with balls as you might have guessed is rolling, and potentially off the shelf. It then requires a way to keep it in place. Glue or some rubber product could be used, but of course this alters the entire concept. If you had a Dremel or a drill and shaped a metal plate into a dish that the ball could loosely sit in, that could be the bottom “tray” for the ball. This would prevent the majority of component movement. It would still be possible for the component to move over time due to the ball vibrating (rolling) in place. Another thought would be to have a washer on the component side if the dish was to hard to build. This would react more like a cone in that the washer would be the contact point on the component and the ball bottom on the shelf.

This brings us to the biggest improvement product in my entire system. Bearings. The Aurios products are amazing, but could be duplicated if you have access to a metal shop. These products effect components as listed in a sequential order of effectiveness; first speakers, rack, source (CD), pre-amp, amp, power conditioner. If you want to make a marked improvement to your system, try these under your speakers. WOW.

Two additional issues you should work on if you want the most from each dollar you invest into your system, are room acoustics and power. These issues are beyond the scope of this thread, but must be considered.

To those who doubt the above rambling, fine, simply move on. Your comments are not necessary here, we know you exist and respect your opinion. If you have experiences that are not matching mine, great, post away. This is a DIY thread, but I assure you from my DIY projects, the products referred to above are the leaders in each area, and can take your system to a new level. Do you need to do these things? Of course not, but in my system they have added percentage wise far more than their cost. If I take three thousand dollars and buy tweaks, or buy more expensive equipment, the tweaks will out perform the components ten fold. Now my system is relatively expensive and it would be crazy to buy a $200 set of bearings for a $500 pair of speakers, but if you are looking at a $1500 pair of speakers and they seem almost as good as the $2500 speakers you heard, see if they will audition them with Aurios. I’ll bet you’ll walk out with eight hundred extra dollars in your pocket.

J.D.

Tvad; the results were simple to describe and quite stunning, clarity in the imaging within the soundstage. Better pace and tempo. The bass had better definition, was punchier and had better focus and location. Trebles were highly defined; and maybe a bit more air and very clean Midrange was three dimensional and again more focused.
Physically was the greatest surprise. My speakers are six feet tall and tend to vibrate quite a bit. Meaning if I put my hand on the side, I can feel the speaker move. Once on the Aurios the speaker vibration went away, not 100% but 95% at least, the speaker is virtually still. Now think about what I just said, if the speaker went from noticeable movement to virtually still. How do you expect that to affect the music? The vibration within the speaker without the Aurios would be greater than the movement of the tweeter when producing a note. If the vibration of the box holding the tweeter is greater than the tweeters movement, it makes sense that the note would be smeared or blurred. At any rate deformed in some way. So not only do my ears hear the difference, it even makes sense.

Nickway, excellent question! I struggled with this very issue for years while trying different DIY and manufactured products. If you are lucky enough to be in a basement, the issue is solved, I am not. For years I set my equipment spiked to the hearth of our fireplace. In my house the hearth is part of the masonry mass, not placed on top of the floor system. This worked well until I changed systems and moved my system from the short wall to the long wall. I set the racks on the floor, and was very unhappy to find the sound was less defined and the tempo/ pace had slowed a great deal. My audio friend (bass freak) was unhappy because the definition and dynamics were gone. We began trying all kinds of things, eventually I discovered Aurios. They were a breakthrough, but my concern, just like yours remained. What about the floor vibration? Before I answer that, let me quickly point out how the mass loading camp is amplified by the floor issue in that the floor vibration ends up being stored in the rack and shelves. Anyway, I ended up creating “earth” by putting my racks on a 4” sandstone base. I tried other stones, but liked the sandstone best. The stone was free in that they were scrap at a local stone yard. The sandstone slabs, (I have two, one under the cd player’s rack and one under the amps, pre-amp and power conditioner racks) about 120 and 240 pounds respectively. The sandstone slabs rest on high carbon steel balls and then on Aurios Pros. This isolates the floor from my “man made earth.” Now I hear you all. BUT THAT IS MASS! Right, my experiences have proven that both camps have there places, I’ll elaborate in a bit. The point now is this large mass is significant enough that the airborne and rack borne vibration is not enough to maximize the stones capacity. I kind of skipped the detail in that I hoped to keep my first post as short as possible. At the end of this post I’ll summarize in detail my system; I just didn’t want to be so wordy. If I put it at the end, people can skip it if they wish. Again, great question Nick, and I should have addressed it earlier.

Barry, I feel I tread on thin ice here, but my experiences have not been as good with “sandbox” type products as with other products. To be completely fair however, I should say my time with your Bright Star Audio product was limited to two nights. Generally I test my tweaks for months, not days, and generally I only change one thing at a time. In the case where I tried a friends Bright Star, we were messing around with a number of things. In my experience even messing around with interconnects will require time to settle back in. I imagine your product does too. In effect, I guess my sandstone base theory is in fact a giant size sandbox, so maybe it’s best if I do not specifically discuss your type product without more knowledge. In a way I’m doing to Bright star what I preach people do not do on this and other threads. Do not talk about what you do not know. Sorry Barry, my bad! I’m sorry.

My System in detail (taken from my review of the Aesthetix Calypso line stage)
. My system starts with a Sony SCD-1 (heavily modified by Richard Kern and Audiocom-UK) fed through a Great Northern Sound “Passive Audio Signal Isolator” into a Aesthetix Calypso line stage using Mullard 10M gold pin 12AX7 gain stage tubes. I then have two Plinius SA-102 amplifiers bi-amped vertically. Meaning one amp drives the bass and the second amp the mid-range and tweeters. Both amps are played in true class A. The speakers remain Dunlavy IV-A. (No longer manufactured) All interconnects and speaker wires are Nordost Valhalla. Power cables include Nordost Valhalla (SCD-1), David Elrod ESP-2 Signature (Pre-amp) and NBS Statement (amplifiers). I use two dedicated circuits with 8 ga. wires, one for the amps and one to a Shunyata Research Hydra power conditioner fed by an Anaconda power cord. Both Circuits use Wattgate 381 outlets.
My racks sit on 4” sandstone slabs that rest on Aurios Pro isolators. Both my Mana (SCD-1) and Apollo racks are spiked to the slabs. Each component sits on a shelf “sandwich” comprised of 3/8” Aluminum shelves resting on upturned spikes from the rack. I then use a sheet of anti-static “Bubble Wrap” with a Neuance shelf sitting on the “Bubble Wrap.” The Hydra uses EAR feet between it and the Neuance shelf. The SCD-1 and both amps are supported by three Orchard Bay titanium cones (no longer available) and Aurios Pro isolators. The Placette sat on its factory footers, the Aesthetix sits on a “Tightrope” isolation system that in turn sits on a Neuance shelf “sandwich” The Dunlavy IV-A speakers sit on #3 Black Diamond Racing pucks and #4 BDR cones that then sit on Aurios Pros. Both the base and midrange/tweeter binding posts use Walker Audio High Definition Links II. All cables are raised off the floor using Cable Elevators
I use AudioPrism Quite-line system on the refrigerator, computer and T.V. outlets to cancel line noise at the source. I have home made acoustic panels in the vertical corners with triangle panels at the ceiling corners. I have one round home made acoustic column between me and an untreated window. Other windows are treated with Marigo window dots and wool curtains. The wood floors have thick wool rugs. I use an assortment of Walker Audio brass and lead pucks on much of the equipment and on two wood furniture pieces in the room. My SCD-1 has a ten pound ½” steel plate treated with s anti-vibration coating on its top and sides and a rubber sheet glued to the bottom. It then sits on four round rubber disks. (feet) The 14’-6” x 20’-0” room is used only for the stereo and is isolated from the house with French doors. The doors are covers by acoustic panels on the room side to reduce the glass surface. The house side of the glass appears as natural glass in that there is a dark surface behind the glass. The speakers are placed on the long wall approx. nine feet apart and 1/5 into the room. The listening chair is 1/3 into the room. Behind the listening chair is a teddy bear collection (acoustic bears) with book shelves on each side. There are a number of other “acoustic bears” that have been positioned in very specific locations to help focus the system. (REALLY!) Now you all have the evidence needed, I am certifiably nuts.
As you may have guest, I’m a bit anal when it comes to my stereo, but I must defend myself by saying this system is that sensitive. The tiniest change in footers or isolation can make a major difference in some tonal aspect of the presentation. A two pound weight on the top of a component might create focus that was not present before, or it might create a smear or pace change that is unacceptable. I tell you this not to show “how great my system is, or how crazy I am,” but rather to help demonstrate that when I’m talking about improving the existing qualities, I’m not discussing whole sale alterations. I’m only looking for the final couple percent. The minutiae of system synergy, the stuff I’d be willing to say most of the people even here at Audiogon would find overboard, not to mention the masses. My friends think I’m nuts to try to get more from my system, but they continue to drop their jaw when a new power cord is introduced, or when I went from MDF shelves to aluminum shelves as the bottom layer of my shelf “sandwich.”
So as you might have guessed, changing a major component is big doings, and the changes can be difficult to resolve without the proper audition method and enough time to understand what we are hearing.

J.D.

Eldartford, is the calibrated SPL mic the same one you refered to in your review of a $300 romm equalization system that is clean as clean can be?
I ask only to understand the author.

Theaudiotweak, I am very interested in hearing about what you can find. Without criticizing or confronting Eldarford I have been questioning to myself if his methods are the correct test in this case. I appreciate the fact that Eldarford is trying to apply science while at the same time not attacking those of us who will swear on our grandmother’s grave. Civility is one word for it. I conceder it maturity and an appreciation for each other as human souls, Kindness goes a lot longer way in communication than anger and irrational comments. I for one have thoroughly enjoyed this thread, maybe the best I've participated in. Good job all!

Tvad, another great question and one I would only be speculating to answer. There are three vibration issues (at least) regarding the speaker. First is that produced by the speaker and is retained within the speaker itself. For example within the MDF enclosure and absorbed by insulation products within the speaker casing. Second, the vibration created by the driver that has an ability to move the entire speaker cabinet in the room. If this was exaggerated we would physically see this movement. Third is the impact of the room and floor vibration, or call it the environmental elements. The bearing type products are designed to isolate or decouple the component from the environment. In the case of a speaker the floor and room vibration is isolated from the speaker. This is the area you said you understood. The second is the speaker physically moving from the vibration created by the driver itself. I’ll assume you can see how this happens, so the question is why does a bearing product stop this vibration? My speakers weigh 200 pounds each. They are being supported by a bearing. For the sake of discussion let’s simplify the bearing to a ball resting in a cupped base and a cupped top. In order for the speaker to move, it requires a sideways force large enough to move the ball “uphill” within the cup itself. If I walk up to the speaker and push it, I can easily move the speaker, and it will rock a couple times before it settles back into the cup. The question is, can the drives create enough sideways force to in effect push the speaker uphill. In my case, the drives appear to not have the force to move 200 pounds uphill. I assume if I had my first speakers from high school, (Jensen with 15” woofers, yet they weighed maybe 40 pounds) they would move “uphill” and thus I would feel the vibration. So my assumption is the movement associated with the drivers sideways forces are being dealt with within the ball in the cup. The only way I can see that happening is to assume the ball must move (vibrate) in place and release the energy as heat. I actually have no idea if this is true, just my speculation. At any rate, the cabinet movement created by the sideways force of the driver is no longer present. That leaves us with the internal vibrations created by all five speaker cones in my cabinets. I assume the bearing product has little effect on this vibration, and that this is being absorbed and or stored within the cabinets materials. I suppose some of the vibration could be transferred/ drained to the bearing, but I can not imagine it’s too much. My guess is the cabinet is significant enough in its storage capacity that when I put my hand on the cabinet side I feel very little vibration. That’s my best guess; I’m more than happy to hear other theories.

Nickway, you asked what I thought would work better; foam, bike tube, cork, bubble-wrap, other?? My personal observations and theories are derived from years of threads like this one. I believe the inner tube isolation is fundamentally flawed for two reasons. The platform that is being supported is allowed to “roll” or move sideways. This movement we have theorized smears the leading edge of the note and thus creates a tempo change and lack of clarity. The second issue is the inner tube material itself. It is a relatively thick rubber, used twice once under a shelf and once on the supporting surface. My personal experience is rubber has a negative effect in a number of areas, air, clarity, tempo, bass resolution and so on. (This is not scientific or provable. I understand that point, and I appreciate that there will always be those who will demand proof. I am not a scientist and am in no position to prove any of my finding. I’m simply sharing my personal experiences and those theories arrived at over many, many years here at A’gon.) Cork I have no real experience with, foam might have a positive effect, I never played with foam because of looks. Bubble Wrap as far as I know is my personal crusade. I ran across its effects and theorized it’s benefits on my own and reported the results over about a year and a half ago here at A’gon. I love Bubble Wrap and so any comment I make is highly slanted. First I love it because it’s cheap. Second it improved my system, when place as the center of a shelf sandwich. I recommend looking under my threads to research the actual effects if you’re interested. For now I’ll simply claim it improved my system My theory is that when Bubble Wrap is compressed and weighted between two flat surfaces each bubble (I use aprox. 5/8” bubbles) is in compression and the surfaces not in contact with the flat surfaces are in tension. When a horizontal force is applied to the top surface a single bubble would try to roll, much like a bike inner tube. In the case of Bubble Wrap, the bubble’s movement is oppose by the bubble next to it, in that it is under compression and is in effect pushing out in 360 degrees. My theory is each bubble is reacting with the neighboring bubble, this cancels the original horizontal force. The top layer is not allowed to move sideways. The second benefit of Bubble Wrap is the extremely thin wall material, thus having little ability to absorb or have a sonic signature. I think Bubble Wrap is one of the best DIY, super cheep isolation products. So my answer to your question, start with Bubble Wrap at the massive sum of maybe $1.00 and work from there.
Please keep us informed as your experiments move forward, I have found if a number of us work on a similar projects together and report in to a certain thread (this one) we all learn and grow. Thus my endless comments about trying to only have real shared experiences, not simple opinions without any experience. What your doing right now Nickway is in my opinion the best benefit of this site. Learning and sharing together, its fun and challenges our thinking plus we can enjoy our hobby with friends. Thanks for creating this post.

Mdp0430 I have tried marble and granite. With granite I tried two thicknesses, one was “tombstone” thickness, the other was ¾” countertop thickness. The marble was a bit thinner, just over ½’ bathroom vanity top thickness. I was not pleased with granite; it creates a bright, sharp, electronic, overly clear sound. For my system at the time that was the wrong direction. I might try it under a BAT product for example, because they tend to be a bit slow and dark compared to other products. That might be a perfect match. All of this “stuff” is so subjective in that I just gave a description to a very popular product that people might take offence to. Much like I might say Krell is bright and steely and would benefit from a maple shelf and soft rubber footers. These comments are where I get in trouble; I cast not judgment on these or any product, but opinion relative to my taste. That’s tough to justify. Anyway, I found sandstone to be a nice middle of the road, between the slower, darker wood shelf, verse the bright sharp granite. Reading the above paragraph I know why people feel the need to jump in and say…. I sound like a nut case.
J.D.

I choose to write a separate post for this comment. I was thinking last night about how to equate this thread to some other topic. I came up with fruit. Let’s say three of us are discussing the sonic qualities of our systems. Now let’s equate the sonic qualities to the physical properties of the inside of fruit. In both cases none of us ever explain what our system is (or in this case explain what fruit we are holding.) In my case I have an apple, Nickway has an orange and Eldartford has a banana. I explain that when I cut my fruit it’s crisp and juice. After tasting, it was sweet with a tinge of sour. Nickway doubts my findings and posts a nasty comment stating that I had no idea what I was talking about because the inside was juice like mine but clearly not crispy. He did however agree with my findings of taste. Now Eldartford writes in and slams both us because his is not crispy or juice, his was mushy and soft and very flavorful but neither sweet or sour.
You see the point; we all have completely different fruit. We all are right; but we discount the others comments because they do not have the same characteristics. Well, if we try to explain the effects of vibration control on our stereos, and not discuss the components, we will be arguing over nothing rational, and advising when it’s possible my findings will not match someone else’s. In the case of this thread, Eldartford has a nice entry level system. (Please do not take offence) and Nickway has a very strong middle level system. I have a low/middle high level system. I’m trying to share my many years of experiments in this area of vibration control, yet my system is extremely sensitive and thus my findings may not translate to Eldartford. Again no one is wrong, we all have had these experiences as we describe. It simply can not be assumed that each of us will have the same result. On top of this, each of us has strengths and weaknesses in our systems. What I consider a strength may not be what Nickway sees as a strength. This is why I feel strongly that we share real live experiences and trials of our tweaks, and not discount the findings. If we share experiences, and put it into context by looking into each others system as listed on the Audiogon system section, then we are able to draw our own conclusions. The only thing I know for sure is my apple is not mushy and soft.
J.D.

Sol322, i agree. it's all about the music, and for you and me these tweaks have improved the enjoyment. Those who posted above me do not find the same enjoyment, great so be it. As for having to prove I'm enjoying myself, look at my smile.

Tbg, A social scientist! You must find these forums mighty interesting. You could do a lifetime research project on us and still not figure us out.