Randie, have you been watching reruns of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader again?
Lifters ForGetting Cables Off The Floor, Worth It Or Snake Oil
- I'm looking at some porcelain cable lifters to get some power and speaker cable up off the floor. Does raising the cables off the floor really make a difference? It's going to be about 200 bucks for 10 of them. Thanks.
Showing 50 responses by geoffkait
roxy54 "geoffkait, I never said they didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. But I’m sure Tom appreciates the support. He certainly can use it. What do you mean it’s neither here nor there? That’s is what the discussion is about." >>> I’m afraid you haven’t been following the discussion very closely. I never argued that coupling or grounding is not effective or not important. Nor did I ever suggest Audio Points products don't work. In fact, I just got through explaining my position a few posts ago. Put on your listening ears. My position, for the umpteenth time, is that both grounding techniques AND vibration isolation techniques are required for the best results. I also propose damping in certain situations. The damping I’m referring to is not rubber or similar materials but effective damping. Why do things halfway when you can go all the way? Doesn’t make sense. Don’t be an isolation denier. 😱 |
Tom, it’s actually you who can’t keep the argument straight. I am not (rpt not) lumping everything together. Far from it. Did you conveniently forget? I have always argued that both isolation and some combination of damping and draining of energy away from the system are important. It’s you who is lumping everything together by dismissing or ignoring isolation and putting all your ducks in the grounding/coupling bucket. If LIGO had blinders on like you do they couldn’t have been able to observe gravity waves. Come on over to the good guys. You bought into the whole Michael Green "Let the vibrations free to roam around the room" silliness long enough. Enough is enough. You’ve been a good soldier. You can come out now. The war is over. 🎉 |
Tom, don’t be such a big isolation denier. Not only is vibration isolation enjoying its 25 year anniversary for audiophiles, the whole isolation phenomenon has resulted in the introduction of spectacularly effective devices, what with active isolation, two stage isolation, magnetic levitation and so forth. How many audiophiles do you think employ some isolation device or another, 50,000? Come on, don't be such a fuddy duddy. Join the isolation revolution! 🍾 If you think a deprogrammer might be helpful I’ll see if I can arrange for one.🤖 |
Tom, the cones under furniture isolate the furniture, reducing the ability of very low I.e., seismic structureborne frequencies to excite the resonant frequencies of the furniture, which are very low. It’s an excellent example, though a very indirect one, of the importance of isolation. The speakers are actually a separate isolation issue but they should also be isolated from the rest of the room and system. |
This might be a good place to mention that all furniture in the room should be isolated from the floor, especially heavy couches, bookcases, tables, etc. For this purpose employ the best cones you can muster. For cost reasons I recommend Small size DH Cones, Diamond Hardness ceramics. Any cones you have lying around waiting for their next mission will do. 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 |
gbmcleod Geoffkait, do you have to have your spring vertical for the best sonics? You sure do with the Townshend, although it will sound great - even fantastic- with them at the angle. But the "air" will disappear a bit as the bottom part of the springs moves out of vertical alignment (completely my error, of course), and so the field of depth is like an accordion when you push the sides together. Just sayin’. >>>>>Of course springs should be vertical. If they aren’t their spring rates won't be linear, under the force of gravity, which is vertical, they won’t be as "springy." Consequently isolation effective will suffer. If the springs are angled enough away from vertical you can probably visualize in your mind’s eye they won’t behave properly. The easy way to check for proper operation of whatever is isolated on springs is to manually get the system in motion up and down and observe whether the action is smooth and unrestrained by non verticality of springs or by external forces like power cords or cables or by non uniform distribution of mass on the springs. Sometimes careful adjustment of spring locations can be very helpful in that regard. Of course for heavy masses springs must be placed wider apart than for lower masses. |
bdp24 Local heavy industry and/or construction is one source of seismic vibration, the earth itself another. The presence of the latter does not make the absence of the former any less welcome. Duh, or should I say HELLOOO? Apparently some people just love to argue. I would rather spend my remaining time listening to music. You’ll pardon me for saying so but apparently you’d rather argue than listen to music. How much time do you have left, short timer? |
theaudiotweak Our seismologist does.. she has another home in Oregon..She also knows about man made swarms as she has been a consultant in the oil and gas industry as well as a construction soil consultant in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma.. >>>>>My question regarding seismic swarms was strictly rhetorical. Not to mention it was not (rpt not) directed at you, anyway. Don't take everything so personally. There was no reason to get your panties in a twist. Can I suggest you guys take some Valium and try to settle down? If a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump it’s butt so much. - old audiophile axiom |
Bdp24 folkfreak is in one of the most extreme construction-active cities in the U.S.A. right now---Portland Oregon! There is active construction on just about every street in the city. I go into town a few times a week, and am relived when I get back to the Salmon Creek area of Vancouver Washington, about a 20 minute car ride away. Peace and quiet! Plus, my electrical power station is only a 1/4 mile from my house, in a neighborhood with residential housing only---no industry, even light. More quiet. Makes my tinnitus even more audible! >>> But it’s the vibrations you can’t (rpt can’t) feel that are the real problem, the ones below 10 Hz, the ones produced by the Earth crust motion and subways and traffic. That’s why the iso stands audiophiles drool over these days are the Minus K and the Herzon active ones, or the active Vibraplane, because they go LOW ENOUGH and are stiff enough to address the vibrations that are waaaay down there below 10 Hz, even below 3 Hz. You can run but you can’t hide. Who wants twenty year old technology? |
Someone would have to be living in a cave to suggest that real isolation and effective isolation - such as exemplified by the LIGO project - is not applicable to audio and to suggest that all you need is mechanical grounding. I’m afraid this is just a sad case of being almost entirely ignorant of what’s been going on in the industry outside the confines of one’s own narrow little developments. A perfect example of what I call Stove Piping, which is working in one’s own narrow little chimney, or stove pipe, and frequently arriving at some bizarre conclusion, not (rpt not) having the benefit of all the other developments that have been occuring outside that narrow chimney. It’s a crisis of Intelligence, information. Real and effective vibration isolation has fortunately been available to audiophiles for more than 20 years, starting with Townshend’s Sesimic Sink, Bright Star air bladder and sand boxes and Vibraplane air bladder stands. My own single air spring Nimbus more than twenty years ago set the standard for number of degrees of motion and resonant frequency. The guys from Audio Point can save a little face as I’ve always maintained that good mechanical grounding techniques are important, too, especially in terms of grounding the component to the isolation device and grounding the iso device to the floors or support structure. The reason why isolation is used in the construction of tall buildings is to make the buildings less vulnerable to the effects of Sesimic vibration, especially earthquakes obviously, but also the effects of wind. I’m afraid a program of mechanical grounding as theaudiotweak suggests would turn out quite badly for tall structures, just as it would if applied across the board for audio. "Let the vibrations run free." - the wild chant of anti isolation Stove Pipers. Stove, piper, stove piper, stove piper, stove! Yes, you are, yes you are! Geoff Kait machina dynamica |
theaudiotweak Butt Geoff in your state of the art 900 sq ft.condo in the heart of suburbia how could you implement stage 4 LIGO into the regular audio crib with real speakers or in your case headphones? Build us a bridge over your own sheep do do. >>>>Remind me to re-post the paragraph on pathological skepticism for your benefit, Shouldn’t you be standing out on a ledge somewhere? Every organ grinder has a monkey. - old audiophile expression Good monkeys should never throw their feces. - another audiophile expression 🙉 |
And yet active isolation devices are more than an order of magnitude more effective than passive devices. Imagine that. Gosh, maybe they can see the future. That's why big boys like LIGO use active isolation. Not to mention passive devices are considerably better than nothing at all. Don’t follow the wrong sheep. If you don’t want to step in sheep do do. 🐑 🐑 🐑 🚶 |
Addendum: there are many reason why isolation is effective for audio systems. The reasons that are perhaps the most obvious are, in no particular order, (1) mechanical feedback from speakers transmitted via the floor, the resonant frequency of tonearm, cartridge and platter is around 10-12 Hz, well below the lowest frequency of speakers but not (rpt not) below that of seismic low frequency vibration, therefore vulnerable to it, (3) the tiny lateral spring system that is part of the elaborate servo system that allows the laser to track the data spiral has a resonate frequency around 8 Hz that is subject to being excited by low frequency seismic vibration. |
One need look no further than the LIGO project to detect gravity waves to see what the big boys do (and don’t do) to acheive very high isolation effectiveness. The reason LIGO was forced to develop the world’s best isolation systems is because the gravity waves in question, the ones produced by collisions of black holes and even by the Big Bang are very minuscule, their amplitudes are on the order of the diameter of an atomic nucleus. In fact, the first LIGO detection occurred last year and the gravity waves detected were produced by the ancient collision and merging of two giant black holes. But I digress. When one examines what LIGO developed in the way of isolation system to get the sensitivity of the experiment sufficietly high for the gravity waves to be detected it’s based on springs and other advanced techniques, including active isolation, but not (rpt not) on spikes or cones any such thing. Now I’m not (rpt not) saying spikes won’t do anything or that cones won’t do anything. What I am saying is that spring based systems are the most common, the most effective and the easiest methodology to implement. Having said that there are many ways to skin a cat: air springs, steel springs, damped springs, air bladders, bicycle inner tubes, bungee cords, what have you, both passive and active types. There is really no (rpt no) other way to obtain resonant frequencies well below 2 Hz or even below 1 Hz. Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that since spring based systems behave like mechanical low pass filters and Earth crust motion (microseisms) have peak energy circa 0-3 Hz, one must obtain sub Hertz performance if one is to have a snowball’s chance of significantly isolating against Earth crust motion and other generators of extremely low frequency vibration. Sure, spikes may have their place. But isolation is not one of them. Geoff Kait machina dynamica give me a stiff enough spring and I’ll isolate the world |
https://youtu.be/dW9-r83IvhI Springs! Obviously the springs need to be on outriggers (and elegant looking ones they are) for things that are top heavy, you know, like the speakers in the video. geoff kait give me a stiff enough spring and I’ll isolate the world |
No offence but the Townsend pods appear to be simply a variation of my steel springs which have been around almost as long as dirt. In fact my undamped Super Stiff Springs for heavy TT, amps and subwoofers most likely outperform since damping the springs spoils the sound a smidgen. Everything is relative. |
gbmcleod I have Stillpoints SS and Ultra Mini Risers as well as Nordost’s Sort Kones, but suspect the Townshend will be magical, based on isolation down to 3hZ. >>>>>>The capability to acheive 3 Hz isolation has been around like forever, since Townshend’s Seismic Sink and Vibraplane and Bright Star more than 20 years ago. It’s not that difficult to achieve 3 Hz in the vertical, all you need is three air bladders. Even a simple steel spring isolation system can provide 3 Hz performance. It’s a better trick to acheive 3 Hz in other directions such as those in the horizontal plane. But three air bladders are too stiff laterally to offer much if any horizontal isolation. And they don’t offer any rotational isolation either. So, it was a big challenge to not only break the 3 Hz barrier and to acheive more than one or two directions of isolation. The reason sub 3 Hz performance is important is because the peak energy of Earth crust motion and some other seismic type vibration producers is between 0 Hz and 3 Hz. An isolation device with 3 Hz resonant frequency won’t actually begin to isolate until the frequency of vibration is around 5 or 6 Hz, and even then isolation effectiveness is rather poor, not becoming robust until around 20 Hz and above. So, the lower resonant frequency the better the isolation will be for all frequencies. There have been several sub Hertz isolation platforms over the years including some active designs. My Nimbus sub Hertz Platform was the first audiophile isolation device to isolate in all 6 directions AND to provide resonant frequencies as low as 0.5 Hz. Minus K is a negative stiffness design with all manner of columns and springs inside that gets down below 1 Hz. There are others, too. As for the Townshend Pods, I hate to judge before all the facts are in but they appear to be essentially mechanical springs. You know, like the ones I’ve have for isolation applications for more than 16 years. Like the ones that debuted at CES in 2001. And the Townshend pods appear eerily similar to the Super Stiff Springs I sell for heavy loads like subwoofers and really big turntables, etc. (I also opine that damping springs is probably not a very good idea. That’s the problem with a lot of air springs and air bladders - the rubber material overdamps and constrains ease of motion, hurting the isolation effectiveness.) No matter how much you have in the end you would have had even more if you had started out with more in the beginning. |
I tend to resist generalizations or conclusions since the effectiveness of cables raisers *in a given system* depends on a number of variables: (1) local weather/humidity and amount of static electricity present; (2) amount of local seismic and structural vibration; and (3) which particular cable raisers are employed, e.g, suspended by fishing line from the ceiling, etc. You can also throw in (4) the listening skill and ability of the listener while you’re at it as well as (5) how well integrated the test system is, including whether it’s in absolute polarity, in phase and (6) whether the software used in the test is in Correct or Reverse polarity and (7) if it has been overly compressed. |
pops Don’t cables vibrate when hooked up to a vibrating speaker? Am I missing something :>) You're not missing something, Pops. But the vibrations of the speaker cabinet are not good for the sound, either, any more than airborne or seismic/structureborne vibrations. The only good vibration is a dead vibration. It's too bad Tekna Sonic dampers for speaker cabinets aren't still available. Hey, wait a second!! I just realized I sell a damper for speaker cabinets, transformers, CD transports, etc. Maybe the SR HFTs would be just the ticket for those stubborn little speaker cable connectors....hmmmmm. |
Nobody said do the cable lifters before room treatments or isolation or anything else. The devils in the details. A lot of seemingly preposterous or insignificant tweaks add up to a big deal. It all comes down to where youngest off and what you’re trying to accomplish. I realize a lot of folks here are satisfied with where they are and have taken a break from the action. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Obviously cable lifter, like fuses and such are for audiophiles who wish to go behind the usual ho hum. By as far as cable lifters being controversial, I beg to differ. They're not. If anyone things cable lifters are controversial just wait till something that's really controversial comes along. (Oh, it's coming!) Then you'll be begging for mercy. |
roxy54 I think it’s a good idea, and I have been using my own homemade ones for years. Take some PVC pipe, any gauge that fits your cables, and cut it into 4 inch sections. Now, slice those sections in half, and use PVC brush on cement to cement the top of each half circle back to back. They set instantly, and they look good, and are so stable on the floor. Nice, similar to Enid Lumley’s (The Absolute Sound) cable tunnels, made using pine 2x4’s of appropriate lengths, two for the sides and one for the top. The cable or power cord is suspended from the top 2x4 via thread and eye hooks so it's hidden from view. The pine can be treated with anti static spray. I built Enid’s cable tunnels for my Quad 57 cables around 25 years ago. Time flies when you're having fun. |
pokey77 randy-11 Your statement is quite strong. It presupposes that somehow all of us understand how to determine what "math" is required for this problem and then even more for us to successfully do the "math" that would provide the correct answer. I assume there are some who frequent this forum that have that ability including engineers, scientists, audio designers, etc. But, as a guess, I’d assume most of us in here don’t have that skill set. For me, I know I’m not one of those who can do the math. I’m afraid there’s nothing more to his post than a last ditch effort by a lugubrious naysayer to throw everything he can think of on the wall to see if it sticks. You know the routine. "It’s scientifically impossible." "Even a high school graduate knows that." "It disobeys the laws of electricity and physics." "Do the math" is just than another silly attempt to disparage audiophiles by a obvious tweakaphobe who has just run out of ammo. So sad, really. |
csmgolf Great posts Teo. As on the money as it gets. Waiting to hear the counterpoint from the pseudo-scientist skeptics, but guessing the same old arguments will be put forward. I use lifters in my system. The original thought was to use them to properly dress the cables (i.e. make sure there are appropriate distances between cables, and to ensure power cables cross speaker and signal cables at 90 degrees where possible, etc.). Apparently some of the deep thinkers here find no value in that. Plus, it makes everything look more organized and that is a consideration for some. To each their own. I never bothered to compare the sound before and after. They were inexpensive, and they more than accomplish the cable dressing as I wanted. Any sonic improvements above achieving appropriate spacing and routing would be icing on the cake, and their is no evidence that it hurts the sound. Their are certainly cheaper options to experiment with than what you are looking at as others above have suggested. Give it a try for yourself. >>>>>Well, that’s not really the issue here. Props on all the drama anyway. That reminds me, nobody’s mentioned Lizzie’s toilet paper rolls. What’s up with that? |
czarivey you can get pack of balloons $1..2, fill them with air partially using hand held pump and knot them around cable in several spots so you can place them on top of balloons. if you’re creative enough with balloons, you can make 4 legs out of one balloon instead of 2. Total isolation - lighter than air: get a bunch of helium filled birthday balloons. Float the cables! Yeah, baby! |