Isolation for power line conditioner?

Passive or not, every component is near equally susceptible to capturing air-borne vibrations which are typically far more prevelant than floor-borne vibrations. However, if a component has a motor and/or power supply, that is simply additional vibrations and resonance generated from within (rather than without). Regardless of the source of the vibrations, they still need an exit path away from the component.

I'm aware of only one mfg'er who considers MDF the material of choise for any serious type of vibration control and I know of no mfg'er who considers aluminum the material of choice for a cone, spike, or point.

If your budget is tight, perhaps the best little DYI project might be to pick up a smaller 1" thick hard maple cutting board, perchase three appropriately sized Audio Points from StarSound.biz that are tapped for perhaps 3/8"-16 or 1/4" thread and then purchase the appropriate carriage bolts or set screws to secure the Audio Points to the bottom from above.

You're probably looking at about $60 or so in materials and I doubt that you'd find any better performance at this price.

But this methodology is not isolation. This is mechanical transfer.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as total isolation from unwanted air-borne vibrations. Often times you can dampen by placing your component in a sandbox but the sonic effects should be a bit more unpredictable.

-IMO

onhwy61, it's been my experience that in a well-assembled system, nearly every positive system improvement is significant and substantial and rather easily acheived.

I believe that would seem logical and I'll demonstrate by using the following analogy:

If I were racing an old jalopy that had an out-of-round wheel, I might not even know that the wheel is inferior even at top speed. But if I were racing a finely tuned Indy car and I had an out-of-round wheel, I'd probably recognize a problem before I reached 10 mph.

And if I'm racing that Indy car at 220 mph but corrected the deformed wheel, that car's performance improvement should be rather significant and substantial in comparison.

In other words, a well-assembled system as you put it, should have fewer and smaller bottlenecks/governors.

But properly addressing just one of those fewer and smaller bottlenecks can be akin to completely removing a govenor.

Whereas a poorly assembled system with so many governors, properly addressing just one usually makes little or no difference.

That is why I believe so many people try a new product or tweak, don't notice any improvements, and then make sport of those that do notice a difference as if they've bought into a snake oil (of course snake oil products can and do exist).

As for your issue with dangling cables being susceptable to air-borne vibrations? I'm not that familiar with the issue but I realize that it is a potential area of concern.

Nevertheless, by it's constructive nature and shape, a cable should be less susceptible to air-borne vibrations than a larger square boxed component that may have minimal internal bracing, as well as a cable not having a motor, spindle, transistors, capacitors, power supplies, etc..

Though a cable's reaction to vibration is still potentially valid, I don't think it's quite to the same degree.

And again, on that truly well-assembled system, properly addressing vibrations within the cables could make a rather significan and substantial difference.

-IMO

Onhwy61, you do err in the assumption that the quote from my earlier post included cables. It did not. Sorry for the confusion and perhaps the word 'component' should always imply everything. But until now whenever I mentioned the word 'component' I always meant in the context of the traditional source, pre, amp, turntable, etc.. Thanks for pointing that out.

Also, my stance in this post has been consistantly to address the original topic of line conditioners, not cables. Others brought up the cables topic and I simply offered my very speculative opinion on that.

But thanks for validating my analogy.

For most, the eletrical panel is not located in the same room as the speakers. Therefore, it would odd to try to include that in your argument. And I still stand by my statement that to the best of my guessing, an electrical cable, ic, or speaker cable in the same room as the speakers simply is not going to capture the same intensity of air-borne vibrations as the cdp, tt, pre, or amp. But I don't doubt that cables would capture a percentage of that intensity.

-IMO