Record Mats In Combination With Weights

Yeah, pretty impressive stuff. Try the Cartridge Enabler, and if you do be very careful to use only very slight tightening torque. I learned by experimentation. Try loosening very slightly, like 1/6 of a turn at a time, listen, repeat. Depending on your cart, headshell, washers, etc it might not make a huge difference. Then again it might. Someone paid $200 for a micro torque wrench to do this and some people swear by them. Or you can go by feel and listen, same result. Anyway this is real good way of learning super tight is not always better.

My understanding is the Enabler and Mat are the same material, engineered to facilitate directional vibration control. The Enabler for example is marked Top even though it looks like conventional material that could go either way. More here than meets the eye. 

Right. Because you are listening. But not lucky. That's just the way it is. Far as I can tell anyway. Every single thing I ever tried was better than nothing, than just a record on the platter. When I first brought this up to DJ Casser in the early 90's he made me a carbon fiber disk with a hole in the middle, crudest thing he ever made I bet. But that's the way it is when you test, doesn't have to be pretty. It worked, and that was enough.

Since then I tried lots of things. Playing a record generates a tremendous amount of vibration. Never seen any measurements but I bet the stylus in the groove generates far more vibration than the bearing, motor, everything else all put together. This should by the way be obvious and uncontroversial. Play any record, you can hear the music clearly just from the cartridge body vibrating. Can't hear the motor, platter, bearing, plinth, anything else. Just the cartridge. Main source of vibration.

Mats, clamps and weights all help to control this vibration at least in the vinyl. Things like OL Cartridge Enabler or fO.q tape can help with the cartridge. All these things help. The challenge is these vibrations run across the whole audio spectrum and dynamic range. It is super easy to dampen some enough to hear improvement. That is basically what all the different things do. What is super challenging is to control equally well across the whole spectrum. This is harder to do and also a little harder to hear. When one or a few things are made better this stands out. When everything is improved equally well the full nature of the improvement can actually be a little less obvious and harder to hear. Or another way of saying it can take a while to appreciate. But these are worth the effort because they are exactly the sorts of things we appreciate more and more as time goes by.

I have heard the Gravity on a variety of turntables - it is garbage, a con.

Hyperbole to the extreme.

For comparison i have in house weights/refelx clamps from Final audio, Micro Seiki, Sota, Goldmund, Audiocraft and many others. I laso have a variety of mats in the house from Final audio, Micro Seiki, SAEC, Godlmnd, Sota, Seisin, Sumiko and many others.

A 1/2 cup coffee or a lump of your childs playdough sitting on the label could be just as effective.

See what I did there? Used all your own words to demonstrate just how easy it is to throw insults that all boil down to "no you’re not I am neener neener" which frankly is a more respectable reply than you deserve.

guakus-

Do you use the Origin Live Gravity One ? 

Yes, it came with the Sovereign turntable. 

For many years before this I have been using my own DIY carbon fiber clamp. You can see it on my system page. It is designed to clamp the record flat to the platter from the outside edge. It does this by being dished out so only the perimeter of the clamp contacts the record. A carbon fiber washer fits around the spindle and holds the record up just a little less than 1mm above the platter. The clamp then presses the record down from this point, so that the outside edge contacts the platter first. 

Over the years this was tweaked and improved with fO.q tape on the washer and clamp, blue tack under the washer, and a mylar disc. This clamp is so effective that when removed after playing a side the record remains held down by atmospheric pressure. Yes my DIY clamp achieved vacuum hold down. I am that good. 

I took this clamp with me to CES and compared it with everything I could find. I heard nothing better at any price. It was so good DJ Casser copied it for his BDR record clamp. 

The reason I am going on in such detail about how freaking good my record clamp is, I want you to understand just what it means when I say the Origin Live Gravity One kicked butt, stomped its a$$, and it wasn't even funny. Before setting up the Soverign I used the Gravity One on my old table. It was no contest. MUCH better truth of timbre, greater dynamics, impressive detail, extension, just more of everything you want and none of what you don't.

Plus it weighs next to nothing. Slides on and off so easy. Just to look at it you would swear no way this thing is gonna work at all. A weight that weighs next to nothing. That is supposed to control vibration but it rattles. Flimsy, etc. Funny thing though, it works. Use it? Love it!

The lighter weight that will accomplish the same effect without putting excess strain on the bearing is called a clamp.

Turns out the extremely light weight Origin Live Gravity One record weight (barely 2oz) works far better than any weight or clamp. But it doesn't flatten records. Just lets them sound better.