Medical Isolation Platforms


Decided to open a discussion on Vibraplane, Halcyonics, Minus-K type tables. What are the merits of active vs passive and industrial vs medical? Is the fuss of setting up compressors and tubing worth the benefits of active and is the only difference with industrial vs medical the mass load? Would a cheap passive platform be an upgrade over say a Symposium or BDR Shelf?
ducatirider

Showing 2 responses by ejlif

I've tried plenty of shelves, feet, ect... For me the Vibraplane was the best of the bunch followed by the Grand Prix Audio stuff. I think if you are just looking for one platform for say a turntable or CD player the Vibraplane is great. You do have to mess with it every say 2 weeks as they do slowly leak air, but man o man does it ever improve a turntable or CD player immensely. It probably requires about 1 minute of your time every 2 weeks to keep it level and pumped up the right amount. Grand Prix stuff is almost as good and it is totally no fuss. After having a Grand Prix rack and not having one and then having one again, I consider it a pretty important piece of the system if you have a good one.
Sorry for the delay in responding. All you need for the passive version, which is what I have is a bicycle type pump. You attach it, open the valves and give it a few pumps, then let air out of each valve until the table is where you want it. I have never really noticed a huge difference between getting it perfect and it being slightly off. I just tend to it every few weeks and it seems good enough for me. I wouldn't want to have 5 of these though, but for one turntable or digital source it's pretty easy to deal with. One thing to consider, is that it is really heavy and awkward. It probably weighs around 150 lbs, so getting it on the top shelf of a stand can be a 2+ man job.