stevecham, I wanted to let yo know that I took your advice in January and ordered 4 of the EVH anti vibration pads from Supply house (they sent me 5), and they are a real bargain, and quite effective. I am saving for another Starsound rack for under my amp, but in the meantime, these have beat several other types of footers, and they are nearly free! Thanks for the tip!
Buckwheat pillows are no laugh. Some high enders use them as well. Just try one under tube gear and see how much better the equipment sounds than with the built-in footers. The worst sounding footers were Magico Qs, at $1400 for a set, they s l o w e d down the sound and robbed it of life under every piece of equipment I tried it with (about six). When critics said that it offers a blacker background, yes it does, at the expense of the music.
Y'all will laugh,but I did make some feet out of plastic butter containers packed tightly with sand.Yes they were very effective under tubed components:)From there I went with Bright Star sand platforms.Much more attractive.
If I remember correctly one member swears by full Del Monte Fruit cans. I don’t remember if orange slices were better than pineapple, but it seemed smart to start with four, in case you got hungry, you could still hold your equipment up with three.
BTW, I use some Steve Blinn footers, but it looks like Steve is out of business.
I've tried about a dozen different isolation/vibration devices, mostly high end types. I use mostly Stillpoints under my tube equipment and isolation transformer. Which Stillpoint model was dependent on the component and often the Ultra Minis were best. I also use Stillpoints under my TV cable box (what a difference), Bluray player (for the audio) and under my ADS speakers used for a video system (tightens the bass and imaging). I use a Townsend Sink under my VPI TNT VI. A MUST! (VPI TNT feet are wholly inadequate) I used a buckwheat pillow under my EAR 324 phono pre when I used it. Buckwheat pillows are also a CHEAP and EFFECTIVE alternative to all the mainstream isolation/vibration gear, even if it isn't 100% as good as some, it does a good job at low cost (but not aesthetically pleasing).
Instead, just add a Synchro-Mesh reclocker and you will get 7psec of jitter no matter what transport you use, no matter what treatment you do to the disks, no matter what feet you put under the transport. It will make any device a world-class digital source. SM is more than $400, but the improvement is drastically better.
If you believe feet are a better solution than a really good S/PDIF coax cable, then you have tried the wrong cables. Every cable should be 1.25m long at least and the coax terminated to BNC connectors, not RCA's. Use RCA adapters when needed.
You cannot do better than mass on springs. Or as good. If you could, it wouldn’t have taken LIGO 20 years to be able to detect gravity waves. Hel-loo! But there are tricks to mass on spring. If it was easy everybody could do it.
My experience with Herbie's Tenderfeet has been both good and bad. They worked well with my older gear but they tended to muddy up the sound with my Marantz integrated and SACD player. I even tried their footers for speakers (monitors on stands) and got the same results. Head scratching moment.
I found a slight improvement with some constrained layer damping pads from Les Davis Audio. They are very thin and easy to place under footings. https://www.lesdavisaudio.com.au/
Geoff has me thinking that I should replace my isoblocks with springs to vertically isolate my maple platforms while the roller blocks or Isoacoustic footers provide horizontal isolation to the components. Maybe separating them like that isn’t recommended?
>>>>You usualy have to separate them. That’ll work.
In my experience the Herbies tenderfeet provided sonic improvement but not nearly to the degree that the Symposium roller blocks or the Isoacoustic Orea isolators that I am now using. I’ve actually gone to using them both in conjunction with the Mapleshade 4” thick platforms and isoblocks since I already had them and I like their looks.....yeah, aesthetics while not the end all, do matter to me.
The roller blocks are open topped and I have no issues with components sliding off......and yes, I bump into them all the time while tinkering.
Geoff has me thinking that I should replace my isoblocks with springs to vertically isolate my maple platforms while the roller blocks or Isoacoustic footers provide horizontal isolation to the components. Maybe separating them like that isn’t recommended?
Component>Symposium roller block or Isoacoustic Orea>Mapleshade platform>Spring>Rack>spikes>floor. How does that look isolation experts?
This is where I am with my system, just doing a little fine tuning. It sounds terrific right now and if I did not get any vibration or isolation thingees I would live happily ever after. But I think it would be good to give it a go. I appreciate the personal experience from select hifi. Uberwaltz I would like to hear experiences from others that would like to share with us here. Those that have used them, and under what circumstances did they worked better and not so good. Thanks
There is a huge difference in price between Townsend and Herbies for sure and if the Herbies were a close call to the Townsend I may try out a couple of sets of the Herbies Tenderfoot at about $60 for set of 4 opposed to $600 for set of four Seismic pods.
I can see the pods have way more to them and can actually be used as leveling devices as well but still a huge chunk of change difference.
Symposium’s second Roller Block, named "Jr,", contains a top and bottom cup, circle-shaped with a diameter of just under 2". Symposium’s original Roller Block (still available) came as a single cup, rectangular in shape.
Ingress Engineering now makes three versions of their roller bearing (the company’s website pictures all models), the best two an improvement on the Symposium design (imo). The bowl is cut to a larger diameter, therefore being shallower will less steep walls, for a lower resonant frequency (I believe). The aluminum used is also the harder 7075, rather than the 6061 Symposium uses (as does Ingress in their original, bottom model). Their original model is still available, and like the Symposium Jr., consists of two cups.
Geoff is of course absolutely correct; roller bearings provide no low-frequency isolation in the vertical plane. Neither do spikes! Lots of people consider spikes and cones to be isolators, when they are in fact couplers (at very low---below 10Hz or so---frequencies). Don’t blame the messenger ;-) .
I have one set of the Townshend Audio Seismic Pods (under my Townshend Rock Elite table. Max Townshend, a very clever and creative designer and engineer, used the Pods as the suspension in the Mk.7 version of The Rock), and will be getting more; gotta sell one of my vintage drumsets : ( .
@uberwaltz I know what you mean.I tried an off brand similar to rollerbearings and the component did actually slide right off of the footers.It was a cheap "knock off" product though.The rollerbearings must be a much better design I'm assuming since so many people use and recommend them. I have my components on sand platforms.
Nope Not worried at all about the bearing rolling out of the cup, think you may be missing my point. With say all 3 bearings freely spinning in the bottom cup bases, anything placed on top WILL slide on those bearings very easily. At least that is my take on it from an engineering point of view.
Well, they are cup shaped. It could be that the photos don’t depict how deep the cups are. They are convex. And as I mentioned, the older site showed top halves that matched the bottom halves with the ball bearing in between. If you are concerned about it rolling up, over and out of the cup’s lip, then you could ask for a top halve to ease your worries.
Actually no, or at least I don't think so. What I envisage is say the CD player just gliding along on the bearings until it slides off. The bearings do not move anywhere, just rotate in the bottom housing allowing whatever is on top to move easily and readily!
It is now just a variation on what we use to move heavy equipment around in factories.
I am a more confused as to how they can work without a top piece?
@uberwaltz, The site has been updated since I last viewed it and it used to have a top half captive piece as well. I'm assuming it was found to be not necessary or that what you imagine wouldn't happen.
If you think about it, you'd have to push really hard to move the unit and the bearing up and over the lip of the bottom piece, with force many times more than necessary. Anyway, I think you can still order more base pieces to use for the other half.
Interesting alternatives but..... If only one half of the bearing is semi captive what is to stop whatever piece of equipment that is sitting on top of the bare bearings committing the audio equivalent of a Wal-Mart shopping trolley esque suicide?
I can just picture pushing a button on a CD player and the whole goes flying backwards skidding of the bearings!
The roller bearings are excellent for isolation in the horizontal PLANE 🔛 AND the rotational directions 🎡 around x, y, z axes but are rather timid in the vertical direction, which is a rigid connection, and which might actually be the most important direction. 🔝
But it is definitely not able to track accurately and there will be missing information.It’s been demonstrated,measured, and proven time and again.
I would love a link.
Then what do you say to the people that rip their CD’s (most using the ones in their computer) and use checking software to make sure it’s bit-perfect?
sk78... from my experiences some footers can be a hit or miss. I would not say that it’s better but different in sound quality. To me some system could benefit from it to others it will not. My system did not benefit from it.
@mzkmxcv the CD may not skip and it will be listenable when the player is subjected to vibration.But it is definitely not able to track accurately and there will be missing information.It's been demonstrated,measured, and proven time and again.We can all enjoy discmans,car stereos,and boomboxes.But to hear all of the information on a disc we try to eliminate all external interference we possibly can.It is measurable and easily heard when using decent well made cabling and steps are taken to eliminate vibration.It doesn't take $$$ to achieve it.
I did! It is in my main rig right now, sitting on three little rubber feet ( $0 from my stash). And tbh it sounds way better than it did in my second rig so some good synergy going on right now. Again thx GK!
Buffer with skip protection. Do you have an issue playing a CD on a modern-ish car (many current models don’t have them anymore) while driving? No? Then why would a CD player with minimal vibrations in a home environment be worse?
You can literally drill a hole in a CD and no data will be lost, lots of technology is in place to make sure a CD/DVD/Blu-ray is read correctly.
Oh, and before you suggest, a CD knows if it’s not reading correctly due to vibrations and whatnot (that’s how skip protection is able to work), so no vibration-altered data is present in the buffer.
As with the digital cables you mentioned, this is all BS. Any decent CD player/transport will not be effected by vibrations, they have skip protection for a reason, it will sound pristine even during an earthquake.
The fact that it states “enhances... video resolution”, so are they saying using these vibration damping balls somehow upscales video to 8K or increases bitrate? Such stereotypical audiophile marketing.
My idea was the roller spring combo. I supply the springs, you supply the rollers. I’ve only been doing this for twenty years. Most people still don’t know there’s six directions of isolation.
Roller bearings are excellent. Roller bearings in combination with springs is out of this world. What roller bearings lack, springs provide in spades - vertical isolation.
Each set added improves transparency, focus, depth with a very natural and organic sounding presentation. Tried other footers but they didn’t sound natural to me.
Each set added improves transparency, focus, depth with a very natural and organic sounding presentation. Tried other footers but they didn't sound natural to me.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
