Ok, what just happened? My turntable journey...thus far.

I decided to throw these underneath the stock feet of the Technics.

You can try ISONOE instead of stock feet (without any extra pads or whatever).  

Now try the springs!
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/springs-under-turntable

Great story - finding a good tweak like that is priceless, especially if it doesn't cost a whole lot.  IME, isolation is key in high-end audio.

Nice throw.

Can anyone explain what is happening here?

Yeah, sure. You got lucky. 

Ticks aren't really any different than the music signal, in the sense they make the stylus move, other than the way they are transients that come and go all at about the same speed and duration. Where music is chock full of transients that are all over the place in terms of frequency. 

The cartridge, all it does is generate a signal based on this energy. But it cannot distinguish between movement caused by the signal in the groove, dirt in the groove, and vibrations coming from the table and arm. The cartridge just adds it all together and sends the signal down the wire, to be amplified about a million times.

This is why when the question was asked recently which is more important the cart, arm or table the consensus was the arm and table. Your experience just now confirms this. What you just did in essence is improve your turntable. What you just heard is this outweighed a lot of other stuff you did including a much better cart and even a hugely better phono stage. 

But what you want to know is, Why? What is going on? I'll tell you.

All those vibrations, not just ticks and pops but music too, they travel down the arm and into the table and all the way to the feet and then into the rack- and no it does not stop there!

The rack is now vibrating only because it is vibrating in sympathy with the cartridge we call it ringing. Ringing happens with all kinds of things and is a major reason why Townshend Podiums are so incredibly effective. Ringing also happens in speaker cables (F1 are designed to minimize this) and other wires. Ringing is why MC carts sound bright until we load them down. Ringing is you might say a thing.

In your case the feet on your table and your shelf or rack were ringing a lot at just the right frequency to aggravate that is to say reinforce ringing in this frequency range. Where you got lucky, the cork was just the right material to break this cycle. Listen closely you will hear it is not just ticks and pops but the clarity and detail around everything in that same frequency range is improved. I imagine cymbals are a lot less tizzy for example. Sax you probably hear more reed and body now, no longer blown out by the exaggerated presence region.

When you try Nobsound be prepared to experiment because while they are pretty good they are broadband and not tuned to one narrow little band like cork. Same for Townshend Pods, which will probably be a lot better not only for the superior isolation and damping but also because they use a thin felt type material that probably performs similar to cork. Which is by the way pretty decent stuff- Mark Baker uses a very thin little bit of cork on his Sovereign turntable. But Baker is clever enough to use it as tuning (it is on only two of three feet) and a tailored thin slice at that.

Which is why the short answer, you got lucky. But at least now hopefully understand a little more of why.  

I got lucky when I switched to Sota 38 years ago.
Springs do a good job stopping the ring.

Isolation/damping is everything with a turntable. They will pick up literally any vibration. Surface noise, as mentioned, is part of the game. But sometimes those ticks and pops can be exacerbated by a poorly set up cart, or a mismatch. Nail down the vibration, then meticulously dial in your cart, and play with your phono stage settings as well to tone down the pops etc.

Then buy a properly suspended turntable.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I didn’t realize this topic was so thoroghly covered in the Spirings Under Turntable thread. I just got done reading the first page. Some interesting discussion for sure.

Does anyone else have any experience with the ISONOE product?

Isonoe is direct replacement of the stock Technics feet, it was originally designed for professional use (where the sound pressure and vibration are very high near the big sound system) and adopted by audiophiles, it was more efficient on OLD Technics SL1210 mk2 series (notorious for bass feedback problem in the clubs), actually NEW Technics GAE, G, GR series have an improved stock feet.

If you need a spring for Technics then do yourself a favor and use Isonoe (here is the manual). It’s a high quality product from the UK that does not look cheap on Technics.

I hope you understand that some of the most active posters about spring suspension on this forum and in this topic Do NOT have any Technics turntables, never tried them (or tried some basic models over 30 years ago). They use lightweight belt drives!

You will find various Technics turntables in my virtual system, including SP-10 mkII and my old upgraded SL1210 mkII which I have since 1995, with Isonoe feet since 2011.

P.S. Nobody uses springs under reference Technics DD such as SP-10R, SP-10 mk3 and SP-10 mk2. People use them in a massive plinths (no springs, never).

Thanks Chakster. Beautiful photos of your systems.

Also keep in mind what Atmasphere has written many times about the potential role of the phono stage in enhancing ticks and pops. I think the phenomenon he describes is very underrated as a cause. I own very large heavy turn tables that are isolated by feet that do not pass mechanical energy efficiently but never by springs or any sorbothane. I also feed the output of the turntables to any one of three high gain phono stages. I rarely if ever hear a tick or a pop, only on my most marginal and worn out LPs. In fact, ticks and pops rarely if ever have anything to do with footers or the method of suspension. They usually arise at the LP surface, enhanced by the electromechanical interaction of the cartridge with the phono, resulting in resonance at the frequencies of ticks and pops.

Source equipment always benefits from good footers. It is especially important for turntables. Id say that you need to address the stand upon which the TT sits also. Vibration is the enemy for all the system but especially source equipment.

@artemus_5  I never realized that until now. I have one of those Pangea Vulcan racks from Audio Advisor. 

Now that you’ve realized  TT’s performance is greatly affected by floor and airborne vibrations, read up on this blog for more options on turntable isolation.
https://coloredvinylrecords.com/blog/best-turntable-isolation-platforms/

@geoff3,

"Isolation/damping is everything with a turntable."

It really is.

I once placed a cheap nondescript plastic turntable (given to me by a friend) on top of a lightweight bit extremely rigid wooden table who itself was stood on a carpeted floor and was surprised at just how good it sounded.

[Somewhere between my Rega 3 and Linn as used on a wall shelf!!].

It was, as I recall, a particularly wide and spacious sound, if not having any bandwidth to talk about. The fact that it probably cost less than the Linn K9 cartridge was remarkable enough.

The importance of turntable isolation is another thing that we should all agree on.


@chakster ,

"P.S. Nobody uses springs under reference Technics DD such as SP-10R, SP-10 mk3 and SP-10 mk2. People use them in a massive plinths (no springs, never)."

Apparently that was the approach of the BBC too back in the days when they relied almost entirely upon vinyl playback.

I’m guessing that the use of sheer mass would help push unwanted structural resonances up into frequencies that would prove harmless to decks such as the SP10.

No doubt that it would also help some of the presenters cue up in their self-op studios. The Technics decks were very popular with broadcasters from the early 1970s up til the era of CD.



@audionoobie,
"This certainly can be a crazy - yet rewarding - hobby we have here."


It certainly can be. It was almost a case of chasing your own tail back in the day.

Some 30 years ago we were kind of stumbling around in the dark following distant voices conveying word of mouth messages.

However things are much better now that we have access to the kind of helpful information we’ve already seen in this thread.


"I even threw on a 2-eye Columbia pressing of Miles’ "Nefertiti" from the 60’s that I knew was not the quietest, and it was VERY listenable."

That’s the kind of sign that we all look for, but it can also be an irresistible temptation to want more, and more of it.

Your hard work seems to have finally paid off, and my guess is that you’re now very close to the absolute pinnacle of what can be achieved.