In the UK many of us live in older houses which have suspended wooden floors. In these houses bass vibration is a real problem.
The solution is:
1. Put your speakers onto cheap granite/stone slabs. I use two cheap kitchen counter top chopping boards.
2. Remove the spikes from the speakers and replace them with feet that absorb vibration. Isoacoustic Gaia feet are excellent as are Townshend Seismic bars or feet or platforms.
Maybe this also works on solid floors, I have not tested it. Isoacoustic do demos of their feet on solid floors so I suspect it works here too.
Other tweaks that worked for me:
- For the rack sit the spiked rack feet into Townshend Seismic corners. These fully suspend the whole rack so that it ‘floats’. By doing this then I have found that individual component isolation on the rack is no longer necessary.
- separate AC power circuit for the Hi-Fi, and do not plug any components powered by switch-mode power supplies into these sockets.
- use a network switch between your router and your streamer. Cheap second hand Cisco switches are good, maybe due to good shielded mains power supplies? Although Hi-Fi companies have started manufacturing expensive equivalents Cisco seem as good. Do avoid ‘noisy’ cheap low voltage network switches.
- without wanting to open up a cable debate I will say that if you use usb cable to connect a streamer to a DAC then use as short as possible. It makes a difference.
- and finally, whilst I have not tried expensive Hi-Fi Ethernet cable I can say that Cat 7E is better than Cat 5E. There is good reason as it has better shielding. However I really did not want this to be true as I have Cat 5E cable under the floorboards to my streamer, installed years ago when we renovated the house. But unfortunately the Cat 7E is so much better that I have to have above-floor cables again. Not ideal.
The solution is:
1. Put your speakers onto cheap granite/stone slabs. I use two cheap kitchen counter top chopping boards.
2. Remove the spikes from the speakers and replace them with feet that absorb vibration. Isoacoustic Gaia feet are excellent as are Townshend Seismic bars or feet or platforms.
Maybe this also works on solid floors, I have not tested it. Isoacoustic do demos of their feet on solid floors so I suspect it works here too.
Other tweaks that worked for me:
- For the rack sit the spiked rack feet into Townshend Seismic corners. These fully suspend the whole rack so that it ‘floats’. By doing this then I have found that individual component isolation on the rack is no longer necessary.
- separate AC power circuit for the Hi-Fi, and do not plug any components powered by switch-mode power supplies into these sockets.
- use a network switch between your router and your streamer. Cheap second hand Cisco switches are good, maybe due to good shielded mains power supplies? Although Hi-Fi companies have started manufacturing expensive equivalents Cisco seem as good. Do avoid ‘noisy’ cheap low voltage network switches.
- without wanting to open up a cable debate I will say that if you use usb cable to connect a streamer to a DAC then use as short as possible. It makes a difference.
- and finally, whilst I have not tried expensive Hi-Fi Ethernet cable I can say that Cat 7E is better than Cat 5E. There is good reason as it has better shielding. However I really did not want this to be true as I have Cat 5E cable under the floorboards to my streamer, installed years ago when we renovated the house. But unfortunately the Cat 7E is so much better that I have to have above-floor cables again. Not ideal.