Isolation of my chair, am I crazy???


Many of you know I am a tweaker, and often over the top. Well, I discovered something last night that was worthy of sharing, and I hope others might try this to help verify my sanity. Actually there are two issues at hand, first is isolation of the listening chair from the floor, and the second is brass weights on the shoulders.

Let me back up. I received a variety of Mapleshade brass footer and weight products for Christmas. I asked for them in that they were one of a small list of products I have not tried. As I was listening, I began touching furniture with and with out the weights to see vibration differences. I noticed my chair and therefore my shoulders were vibrating. I tried placing the 2 ½ pound weights on each shoulder. The sound clarified subtly…

OK, I looked a bit goofy sitting with weights on my shoulders, and yes my wife and son got a good chuckle, but…

Then I decided the chair was a far bigger issue than my shoulders, so I took four Aurios 1.2 isolation bearings and put them under the Lazy Boy. There was a marked improvement in clarity. I then tried with and without a number of times, the results were quite quantifiable. I discovered there was a small smear in the higher frequencies that was not previously perceptible.

A couple examples, the violin on Greencards “Weather and Water” and Natalie Merchant “The House Carpenter’s Daughter” (Both assume folk/ rock) had far greater definition. The separation of strings and thus notes was much better. It was much easier to feel the emotion of the interment and sense the resonance of the violins body. Vocals were clearer in the same fashion as the violin. The most profound sonic change was on Natalie’s fourth track. Near the end there are four or five tones that sound like a deep/rich church bell. Here the clarity and naturalness was far more significant. Before the tone was simply part of the presentation. With the chair on Aurios the tone was isolated, rich and dimensional. The rest is subtle stuff, but in one word I would say “natural” was the effect.

I’m writing this in hope of other people might experiment and share what they find. I assume this is more for those who have already addressed the major issues in isolation and have a very high degree of resolution, but it would be interesting to see what people find.

jd
128x128jadem6

Showing 2 responses by honest1

I agree with RcPrince - you are crazy ;)
Well, I don't know, not having tried it, but I am more surprised by your comment that reclining your LazyBoy has no audible effect, whereas putting isolation under the chair does. I would think this would have a much more dramatic affect than ocnes under the chair.
The effect of the weights on your shoulders may have been due to the acoustic effect of hard reflective surfaces just under your ears (maybe - just a guess - just throwing it out there!)

The effect of cones under the chair is a bit more puzzling. I would guess it has little to do with stabilizing your ears, since your body (nothing personal - anybody's body, even Arnold's)is quite flexible, as are the chair cushions. I don't think clamping the bottom of the chair to the floor with cones will prevent high frequencies from rattling your noggin.

My guesses are:
1. The real sonic effect is happening at the low frequencies, and by clamping yourself to the floor, you aern't getting shaken up by the low frequencies as much, which unmuddies the whole sound spectrum. I would expect this to be the case if your chair is on a rug.
2. Maybe the chair was vibrating against the floor, introducing extraneous sounds only when certain notews were hit. This would tend to be masked by the music as a distinct sound, but would still muddy things up as it blends with the signal.
Interesting post. If you have access to a tone generator, you could do some experiments to see if there aer effects at specific frequencies. It's much easier to hear resonances against a pure sine wave than a music signal.
Ball bearings under the house is no joke. These are available. There is a very stately Victorian stone courthouse in San Francisco that was retrofitted with them. They cut all the columns in the basement and inserted the bearings to protect it from earthquakes. I think you also need to have a trench around the building so when the big quake hits, it can roll around before settling back into its original position (or, really, so the earth can move around the building while the building stays still).