Sistrum or Neuance or...?

If someone is interested in educating themselves on the subject, try checking into these books. I've been doing some reading on the subject and both of these came highly recommended to me by what i would consider experts in the field. The first one discusses state of the art technology that NASA and the aerospace industry make use of and the second book explains how and what to test for when experimenting with various methods of mechanical energy control. Sean
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Clarence de Silva's "VIBRATION, Fundamentals and Practice"

Steve Goldman's "Vibration Spectrum Analysis, A Practical Approach"

Twl -

"I think it far more likely that these same people lack the necessary technical understanding to grasp the obvious explanations that have been put forth several times on this thread already."

Your statement is that your rack's design rests on a theory of unidirectional energy flow based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics. There is nothing obvious about this 'technical explanation' except that it is a simplistic and inadequate analysis of the transfers of energy involved. The second law of thermodynamics says that energy flows from a source to a sink, that it takes work to force it to flow in the opposite direction, and, (in the fine print) that this flow often becomes irreversible because of the difficulty of reassembling the dispersed energy.

Let's neglect for a moment the building structure sitting between your rack and the earth. Earth's crust has its own vibrational frequency sensitivity - it does not propagate higher frequencies well but readily propagates low frequencies (trucks, earthquakes, low & constant seismic activity). The directions and distance of propagation vary with crust structure and force magnitudes.
The meaning of this from a rack's point of view is that earth can be a sink at some frequencies and a source at others.
As to your statement about anything sitting on the floor/ground moving along with the floor/ground : you're missing the point. The force/energy analysis of a rack sitting on a vertically vibrating floor is not different than that of a component on a shelf experiencing airborne vibration - but is more complicated. It now includes gravity as well as higher magnitude translational forces.

The reason for the lack of response to your statements is that anyone trained in physics or engineering knows that adequate analysis of these energy transfers is a complicated process of theory and measurement. I don't happen to think that Audiogon is the right place for such a discussion, and I agree that the thread should be allowed to die.

Good-day,

Robert here at Star Sound Technologies, LLC.

Hello Sean, I have not forgotten about your published question. This morning I was finally able to read all the threads posted from the previous week.

In order to assist you and the balance of interested parties and provide a greater understanding of our technology, today I have taken a few steps towards this new short term goal of ours.

I have asked one of our mechanical engineers to write a descriptive paper on Coulomb friction as I feel the more information we can provide you with the concerns to the actual problem itself (associated with equipment’s efficiency of performance) the easier it will be to digest the rest of the information that will follow. We will have a separate link to our website that we will post here in order for everyone to review this initial paper.

I have also requested that Brent Riehl, our Lead Designer and inventor of the Audio Point®, to provide more accurate information and in a more descriptive manner than I am capable of. We know that the information provided by Brent will clear up a few concerns and present a more detailed picture for you. We also realize that his involvement will lead to even more questions and that situation we view as a positive thing.

In addition we have also requested that Dr. Wilbur Highleyman, D.E.E. and one of our founding members to provide additional technical information on the applications of resonance control. Dr. Highleyman is currently in Africa and will be returning in two weeks so please afford us the time it takes to respond here.

After reading your replies concerning actual testing at your residence and realizing that you have knowledge of how much time involvement it takes to properly research and test resonance, we want you to understand that Star Sound would never create any animosity should your testing results differ from ours. Your environmental surroundings are completely different than that of ours as this characteristic alone would have a profound impact on your overall results. Actually anyone providing us information based on third party testing of our products would be graciously accepted here as that type of service costs upwards of thousands of dollars to procure.

If you really enjoy the process of discovery as you seem to rely on much of what you find through your own understanding and testing methods, we are working on providing you a few formulas that have helped us in the past. These are only formulas as we cannot guarantee you that the results you attain will be of a positive nature or similar to ours, but it is a fairly reliable initial approach. At the very least it should help you with your overall knowledge with concerns to vibration and the controlling methods thereof.

I am sorry that we are not timelier in providing you information and answers but we are a very busy group this time of the year. I will soon commit a bit more time to remain focused on helping you as much as we can. We simply ask that you have some patience as we begin this course.

As always – Good Listening!

Robert Maicks

Gee, I posted the cement thing without even being a Sistrum owner...no bandwagon here. However, since posting, I recieved Sistrum stands for my speakers. Needless to say, I haven't "tested" them, nor have I returned to my physics books of twenty plus years to "figure" them out. Even with a white paper (that honeslty I won't fully understand anyway), why would I buy on that alone? I trust my ears...and I am keeping them, gladly. In the business world there is a lot of BS...but ultimately someone has to make a sale in order to remain in business. If you would like to know the differences I heard and the equipment that I own, etc. please feel free to email me. I will gladly assist a fellow audiophile who is honestly looking to upgrade their system. Otherwise, I really do have better things to do....like listen to music.

I fell upon this while looking through Ken Lyons' posts. Its interesting to see what has and has not changed in three years. Just for the archives:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?htech&980018129&openfrom&1&4#1