indranil, you are using the isolation in a room with a peer and beam substrate or joists? If so, please also consider the amplitude of which such a floor can itself move. Just like a car can only do so much to smooth out the hills of a road, it can smooth out the undulations of the road, but not the higher amplitudes.
Do you have an approximate weight of the TT and the preferred shelf you are using? Obviously I am guessing, it might be the amplitude of the floor movement that might need to be addressed also?
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Rix, just how would you address that? |
mitch22,
Sorry I did not respond to you earlier.
This is just in regards to bass. Low frequencies in air are more powerful than most people think. Get a set of test tones, a test record, CD or download. Play a 30 Hz test tone and turn it up. You will hear everything in your house rattle. Go to the room farthest from your system and that room will also be rattling! My point is that putting you sub woofers on spring is not isolating anything from the bass. Springs or no springs the house rattles just the same.
It would be difficult to AB a spring situation correctly. So it is difficult to prove or disprove to yourself or anyone that springs improve the sound of a system. Just changing the height of the main speakers is enough to change the sound. Putting springs under your amplifiers will do absolutely nothing. You may be able to prove this to yourself by listening to your system with and without springs under just the amps. You should be able to set and reset them quickly enough. When you do this you have to be very honest with yourself.
Never believe just what someone hears. Human hearing is way to variable to be trustworthy. You even have to be careful with groups of people. You can't even trust yourself so you have to be very careful when you do these experiments. Not to mention that all those springs look butte
ugly.
Cheers, Mike |
“Butte”, a nice town in Montana.
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I've been using these springs under my maple block/VPI deck for several weeks now. My Classic TT is coupled to the block with EdenSound footers. Although I won't make any claims of new found audio nirvana, the isolation provided by these springs is legit. I'm sure there were changes but I've made a lot of upgrades over the last 60 days (including new Ayre and Pass Labs electronics). I was using anti-vibration pads under my maple block before adding the springs. When the needle was in the groove, I could whack the shelf below and hear audible thumping. Didn't take much at all for this vibration to make it's way up into the turntable. With the springs, I can hear a very faint thump but I have to hit the shelf HARD and the volume has to be up very loud. Much harder and louder than the setup will ever see under normal listening circumstances. |
“Butte”, a nice town in Montana.
It is indeed! I spent a very pleasant weeks vacation there as I figured it was the best location of a decent size town for exploring Yellowstone but it turned out to be very nice town in its own right! Then onwards from there up and across to Washington state for a road trip |
Never been. Just knock off the “e” as in back side:) |
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God started in the Pacific NW and got tired as creation made it East and South to the Butte as it we’re.....of the joke
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And Sh!te rolls downhill...... |
Tomic
He obviously became completely stumped when he reached Illinois..... |
Folks,
Another basic turntable question.... Where do you put the level on the turntable to balance it? Is it at the center of the platter or on the body which hosts the platter? The level position at the center of the platter for my turntable is not the same as it is on the body.
Those who are leveling at the center of the platter, how do you level it after putting a record on the platter? The center of any record is not flat and hence this question. This is more of an issue for those who are balancing a turntable over a set of springs or some float-based isolation tools.
By the way I have tried a Vibraplane platform, incredibly heavy, to isolate my turntable from the footfall noise but it didn't work to my satisfaction. So far the combination of CSC springs that I designed along with Ingress roller bearings gave me the max isolation from the footfall issue. It doesn't completely eliminate it but reduces it to a great extent, requires a very big hit on the floor/amplitude to move the woofers in the speakers. I think that audiom3 has also experienced something similar.
It appears to me that a complete footfall isolation for my turntable placed on a wooden suspended floor would be very difficult to achieve if not impossible. I am now going to experiment with the next option of wall mounting the turntable and also use some sort of isolation (Spring or HRS Platform) to get to the desired level of seismic isolation....
Thanks.
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I use the level on the turntable plinth. Left to right, front to back -both sides. If the platter is not level and the table is level, something may be amiss.
Can you reinforce the floor beneath your room? Lally columns will help.
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I would avoid wall mounting in a timber-frame house unless the wall is sitting on the external basement concrete. |
Platter and top surface of plinth should both be level, or both should be on the same plane even if not perfectly level. Otherwise, you might have an issue with the tonearm mount not being on the same parallel plane with the platter, which would mess up your alignment for sure. Ideally it should not matter where you put the level on the platter, unless you have a deliberately dished platter, in which case yes put it in the center of the platter.
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indranilsen, the devise that has to be level to prevent skating forces is the tonearm. So the best place to put your bubble level is on the tonearm board or plinth right at the base of the tonearm. If the platter is a tiny bit off it won't matter.
It is absolutely possible to completely eliminate footfall sensitivity. It just requires careful engineering. Any of the suspended Sota's, SME's and Basis turntables will do this. I can take a Sota Sapphire put it on a collapsible card table on a wooden floor, jump up and down in front of it and absolutely nothing will happen other than the suspension bobbing just a little. If you put a MinusK platform under your turntable you will get the same result. Can you make a suspension that will work as well? Absolutely. But, you will have some work to do and you will have to spend some money. I have a design for a suspended platform in my head. The form is easy. It is getting the right spring rates for a given weight and applying damping that are the difficult part. I would use a quartz solid surface material laminated to MDF. This makes a very well damped panel for the base and platform. The spring hangers would be 1" aluminum laser cut to shape, drilled and tapped then anodized. These would be mounted on the base at the corners and the platform hung from them with the springs. On the bottom of the platform I would mount paddles at each corner which extend into cups mounted on the base. These cups would be filled with a viscous oil to provide damping. Soft rubber boots hung from the platform extending over the cups will provide a seal to keep dust out of the oil. There you have it. I should think it could be built for $500 in materials. |
mijostyn... the devise that has to be level to prevent skating forces is the tonearm. So the best place to put your bubble level is on the tonearm board or plinth right at the base of the tonearm. If the platter is a tiny bit off it won’t matter. Even a level pivoted pickup arm will generate skating force provided the arm has overhang, which almost all do. The armboard, platter and plinth should all be located on absolutely parallel planes and if they’re not, there will be an issue. In mijostyn’s case, he’s mentioned several times that his pickup arm azimuth changes when VTA changes. That can be explained by a misalignment between arm/platter/plinth. |
Obviously cleeds. But out of level a tonearm will add additional skating forces one way or the other and yes in an ideal world all parts of the turntable should operate in exactly the same plane. It is just a good measure to put the bubble next to the part that matters the most. And you are dead wrong cleeds. Unless you are using an arm that is dead straight raising and lowering the arm will change the azimuth, within the arc where the arm is expected to operate it is very slight but it will change by a minute or two. |
mijostyn... But out of level a tonearm will add additional skating forces ... That’s true. ... in an ideal world all parts of the turntable should operate in exactly the same plane. Yes, or at least in parallel planes for the turntable, plinth, and arm. It is just a good measure to put the bubble next to the part that matters the most ... If you’re using a typical little bubble level to set up your turntable, it’s no wonder that you have some of the playback problems you report. You’ll get more precise results with something like this.... Unless you are using an arm that is dead straight raising and lowering the arm will change the azimuth ... Correct. But there’s no reason to accept a turntable setup where those critical component parts - turntable, plinth, armboard/pickup arm - are not in proper alignment. If they cannot be properly aligned, then one or more of the parts are defective. Or poor quality. You've previously said that your stylus tilts towards the spindle when the arm is raised, but I wouldn't accept that from my turntable setup. |
Hello,
Thanks a lot to all who provided valuable feedback to my turntable level question. I am still a novice when it comes to setting up a turntable and I am learning a lot from the current discussion. There is a possibility that my platter didn't fit exactly as it should on the body of the turntable. Musical Surroundings folks replaced the platter of my Clearaudio turntable a few months back and they put a newer version platter making the required height adjustment of the tonearm. I am suspecting that something went wrong in that installation but the problem is how do I prove it to them and have them fix the issue. The turntable plays ok without a visible issue....
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I had an idea...I think that a fine tuned damp mass in the speakers will do marvel but i cannot make it myself....
:)
But then i think that doubling the springs at the 2 ends of the speakers would be better and an improvement because the removing of resonance would be facilitated, less than with a fine tune damped mass but anyway.... That worked....
I put 4 (chinese copy of the nobsound springs) new boxes with the 7 springs on top of the speakers adding only a few pounds of concrete to my already heavy load( around 75 pounds ).
More details in the imaging and better bass without negative impact on the higher frequencies...
Now my speakers are between 8 springs boxes each...
Total success....
Very low cost....
The mechanical embedding of an audio system is very important....Resonance kill the naturalness of timbre....To conduct listening test to finetune your springs installation for speakers, always listen to the instrument timbre first and last, not only to the frequencies affected by modifications.... |
Whatever gets you through the night.
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I would lose sleep imagining one or more of my cats splattered under a 75lb slab of concrete they knocked off the top of a speaker.......
Not likely I admit but who knows...... |
I would lose sleep imagining one or more of my cats splattered under a 75lb slab of concrete they knocked off the top of a speaker.......
Not likely I admit but who knows...... I will never do what i do in a common room,nor with children or cat.... :) But i do what work.....And it is working great.... I have learn that the negative impact of internal resonance of the speakers on musical timbre is underestimated....Particularly with springs... But with this placement my sound has never been so natural....In all my listening positions... Anyway i am pretty sure nobody has think about springs under and above speakers.... That’s it.... It is done.... Hifi for peanuts is my "mot de passe"....Shocking for some, impossible for most..... But i made it..... And yes "Ron Carter is in my room".... My best to all..... |
i forget to clarify the fact that if i related my experience here it is only to inform people about the unbeknownst negative impact of internal resonance of speakers on timbre in particular....This negative impact was always there unbeknownst to me with one set of springs..... That is my experience....
I am perfectly conscious that putting 75 pounds of concrete on top of speakers with 2 sets of springs boxes under the speakers and under the load is NOT a solution for most people....It is one for me and perhaps for someone else....
My best.... |
uber, If your cat is big enough to nudge a 75 lb weight, I am more afraid of IT than I am of the weight falling on anything. I don't know if I want to get into it, but I don't see the added benefit of putting springs under a weight to be placed on TOP of a speaker, although a weight per se can be beneficial, and I do that myself.
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Lol@ Lewm.
As I said very unlikely but...
We have 6 cats and two of them are 20lb heavyweight contenders.
And at times they play rough....
I could see the 40lb combined weight at velocity hitting a speaker on springs and possibly dislodging said 75lb weight.
But as Mahgister stated, not a great idea for a common area setup which makes a lot more sense. |
My 2 set of springs(4 boxes under each speaker and 4 boxes on top of each speaker and those then directly under the load) are slightly differently compressed by a difference around 8 pounds( the weigh of the speakers+ the load for one set of boxes and only the load for the other set of boxes)... This fact is important....
Then the distribution of the resonance pattern inside the speakers are modified so much that it is possible to immediately hears the difference.... It is not a difference in the direction toward bass frequencies or high frequencies, even if they improved, instead more a direction toward better mids frequencies and better timbre tonality and a better imaging then....A naturalness impossible for me to get with only one set of boxes under the speakers even if the load is fine tuned for them....
I think no one has use the spring boxes in this way, then even with springs internal speakers resonance has a destructive effect that goes unnoticed .... I realize that after my experiment....Adding a second set of boxes decrease internal resonance interferences...
No cat or children allowed in my audio room, and even my wife give me the dust cleaner to use it myself here.....I think that only ghosts of great composers go trough my room but their spectral wandering pose no threat to the equilibrium of this tower of springs, plates, and slabs of concrete.....I will look for some load more dense and compact than concrete..... :)
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..I will look for some load more dense and compact than concrete..... :) Bars of gold bullion perhaps? 😊😊 |
The real problem is subwoofers. You have a significant mass vibrating +- 2 cm. Any vibration of the enclosure is distortion. This is for any speaker, if you feel the speaker vibrating you have distortion. Putting the speaker on springs will make it worse. Fixing a heavy mass to the top of the speaker will lower the frequency it vibrates at, get it low enough and it becomes insignificant. This does nothing for cabinet resonance, vibrating panels. This is avoided by thoughtful design. |
Bars of gold bullion perhaps?
😊😊
Not at all, petrified old heads will do..... :) |
Putting the speaker on springs will make it worse. This is not my ears impressions... I know my ears are biased.... :) This does nothing for cabinet resonance, vibrating panels. 2 set of springs boxes instead of one with small difference in load on them will damp the internal resonance...It is very audible... Audible immediately in the naturalness of timbre..... I know my ears are biased.... :) |
mahgister, You may hear what you say you hear, but the phrase "damp the internal resonance" as a mechanism for what you hear is unclear. In other words, as is so often the case in this hobby, we have a phenomenon on one hand and a hypothesis on the other, and we marry them often without much evidence. Can you say how a mass on springs placed on top of a cabinet can "damp the internal resonance"? I do believe that just placing a mass on top can lower the resonant frequency of the cabinet, but why the springs?
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mahgister, You may hear what you say you hear, but the phrase "damp the internal resonance" as a mechanism for what you hear is unclear. You are right, it is unclear, especially for me.... I only tried to convey my experience.... I tought previously that only springs fine tuned under my speakers could and would do the job... I was wrong.... Adding some mass on the load to compensate for the weight of the speaker itself and create a slight difference between the load on the springs that are under the speaker and those that are directly under the load on top of the speakers, create a better vibrations controls mechanism... The only explanation that comes to my mind is that the 2 sets of springs with a slight difference in compression decrease the power of the standing waves negative impact that are associated with resonance... But i am not a scientist by far... The only fact is the fact i observed relatively to the tonal accuracy with a second set of springs.... The results is amazing and audible immediately... Then i will wait for other’s explanation.... |
@lewm
as is so often the case in this hobby, we have a phenomenon on one hand and a hypothesis on the other, and we marry them often without much evidence. Shocker!
😎 |
Added more of these things, now have them under the turntable, phono stage, amp, conditioner, and all 5 subs. Plus of course the different springs under the Moabs. Things were going great until I started noticing a really bad drone or rumble. Immediately assumed it had to be the turntable, and spent a lot of time tweaking and adjusting making sure everything was perfectly level. Thought I’d solved it a couple times but it kept coming back. Intermittent problems are the hardest! A couple times was sure it was solved, the record would play silent, but then comes the rumble. My big clue was playing Simon and Garfunkel Scarborough Fair, the lead-in groove would be nice and quiet at first until after several seconds the rumble would build up and be quite loud. If it was the motor, or bearing, or anything like that it would be there every record all the time. This was telling me it had to be some kind of resonance in the system. I had been using springs under most of this stuff for quite a while with no problems until recently. But now there were springs under the conditioner. Which is connected to a typically stiff power cord, also suspended. Which goes into the phono stage. Which is on springs. I remembered how much the low bass was affected by tuning the springs under the phono stage. Hmmm..... Well if its a resonance then could be what’s happening is an inaudibly small amount of low frequency rumble is making its way through the system back to the phono stage where its creating a positive feedback loop and what I’m hearing is like that horrible mic feedback only instead of a shrieking scream its this low bass rumble. Simple enough to check. Change the resonance, cancel the feedback, no more rumble. Wedged some stuff under one corner of the phono stage. Silence. Blissful silence. I think what is going on is now with everything suspended everything moves more freely and for the most part this is good. Beyond good. Great! But it really is tuning, and a little care must be taken to avoid having too many things with the same resonance. This will be highly system dependent. Look at my system. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 The conditioner is in a straight line between the sub amps and phono stage. The sub amps are one of the few things not suspended. Could be by springing the conditioner I unwittingly created a situation where the sub amps are feeding resonant energy right into the phono stage. I don’t expect many to have this problem- at least not until they get to where a lot of the system is suspended. Main reason I mention it is because, if you think about it, the same could be happening a lot more often than we think- just at a much less obvious level and without the drone that made this so (relatively) easy to track down. |
My turntable and monoblocs are on springs. When I added them to the phono-preamp, I lost bass response. Frequency response tilted up in the mids. No resonant drone or rumble. Replaced with metal cones and all returned to normal. |
Just a suggestion, try the springs between the wood platform and the concrete block. |
With springs its very important they be tuned to the mass of the component. What seems to work best is a spring soft enough to compress about half way when loaded. If it compresses more than 2/3 then the component is too heavy and you need to use more or stiffer springs. This is what I had with my phono stage at first, and it resulted in way too much deep bass and a somewhat rolled off top end. All I did was add a spring, making the whole suspension stiffer. This tightened up the bass a lot while at the same time improved top end extension.
Phono stages tend to be pretty light weight. I would bet your bass was lost because the phono stage was too light for the springs you were using. You could test this very easily by changing (removing) springs, or adding weight ala mahgister. He has played around and noticed even a change of a pound or two makes a difference in the response.
You have Nobsound, right? Did you try it with fewer springs? You may only need 2 springs per footer. I only need 3, and that’s for the Herron phono stage on BDR Shelf with another small Shelf on top plus one 2 lb dive weight! Once you get the number of springs right fine tune with weight on top of the component. I have a small bag with about 2 lbs of lead shot in it and the difference it makes with cones is barely noticeable but the difference on springs is obvious.
Right now my amp and phono stage are on BDR Shelf, with the springs under the Shelf. Need to try moving them to between the component and the Shelf. When I can find the time..... problem is my system sounds so good now I don’t want to tweak I just want to listen!
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I just received and installed these springs under my VPI HW19 Mk4. They replaced existing tapered rubber feet which I then put beneath the SAMA.
Big, noticeable difference in depth and instrument location. Just an overall, more palpable listening experience. |
With springs its very important they be tuned to the mass of the component. Yes it is very important and i had the experience of audible differences with a modification of less than 1 % of the compressive mass...(between 100 and 200 grams) But for those who will use them with small speakers, easy to damp with a load, the use of the boxes springs ask for a DIFFERENTIAL tuned compressive force to eliminate or decrease internal resonance and not only isolate the speaker.... I try an experiment that make an astonishing difference... I put 4 springs boxes under the damping load on top of my speakers,(75 pounds ) and the differential tuned compressive force created by the addition of the speaker weight, in addition to the damping load, on the springs boxes located directly under my speakers themselves, decrease the standing wave negative power of the internal resonance of the speaker and gives a more natural timbre and a better imaging at the end.. ( It was very important and it takes me a few days to fine tuned, this time for the 2 set of boxes springs, the damping load) For speakers where it is possible to do it, a differential tuned compressive force is very amazing... Springs are good isolation but they had their own problem and are not perfect, nothing is....But with a differential tuned compressive force they are near perfect yes for speakers....2 problems are there: isolation and resonance.... I wrote that because i had see no one making that experiment ....It seems all use only 4 springs boxes under the speakers and it is not an optimal solution for me because of these 2 problems.... And that experiment solve for me the mechanical embedding of the speakers ..... My springs boxes are on top of a multi layered sandwich platform on my desk, near other components, then it was very important for me to solve that vibrations problem on my desk....... It is done at peanuts costs.... For the electrical grid embedding i create my own solution also not perfect but very effective...The more complex to solve was the acoustical embedding... I just make other improvement today with devices controls of my own and i will speak about that in my thread tomorrow.... My best to you.... |
@simao Good to hear. Try 3 footers if using 4.
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@millercarbon I tried lots of combinations under the phono including naked single springs. I even added brass weights inside the amp.
I'll try adding them under the suport board as @slaw suggested.
Of course, it's not to suggest I couldn't start re-tuning all the other springs but that's the path to madness!
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@noromance You mean triangulate the springs under the turntable, rather then under each corner? |
My point is that putting you sub woofers on spring is not isolating anything from the bass. Springs or no springs the house rattles just the same. But it does do a decent job of totally blunting transient function and messing up fine definition in the bass. Super stiff stands for bookshelf speakers, massive ones, and lock-coupled to a rigid floor..all that happens for a REASON. |
Even though Duke (Audiokinesis) and others have posted this repeatedly a lot of people still don’t know. So here’s the scoop: scientific research has demonstrated that human beings cannot hear low bass frequencies AT ALL unless it is a full wavelength.
Got that? Just to be clear, when we are talking about say 40 Hz that is 1/40th of a second. Just so everyone knows, sound travels at about 1 foot per millisecond. One millisecond is one thousandth of a second. 1/40th of a second is 0.025 seconds. Read that one out: twenty-five one-thousandths of a second.
What this means, your 40 Hz bass note travels TWENTY FIVE FEET before it even registers as a sound AT ALL!
In order to believe bass detail has anything to do with stiffness, rigid floor, things that matter in terms of tiny fractions of an inch, when in reality its FEET that matter with bass, you have to ignore all this science.
There is no fine transient information in subwoofer bass. None at all. Its all volume. Period.
That is the science.
If I’m harsh its because I know you’ve read this all a hundred times, and simply decided for some reason or other to keep pushing your false narrative. You can stop pushing. It ain’t going nowhere. Because its wrong.
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MC, I wonder about this too, especially when people talk about the bass response of headphones. Duke is a great guy. One of the best and most honest people in the audio business.
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Duke explained this some 2 years ago (that I saw, and probably before that) and it was one of the many facts that helped convince me to build my DBA.
Audio is full of complex concepts and this is a big one: human beings DO NOT hear all frequencies the same. Not at all. Not even close. Therefore we need to think differently- in some cases like this one very radically differently- depending on what part or aspect of the sound we are talking about.
Its not like we don't perceive all kinds of detail that we ascribe to bass. I say ascribe to bass because it seems impossible for these things to actually be "in the bass".
For example it has been noted by myself, Tim, and others with multiple subs that the subs disappear while the bass appears to be very localizable in terms of being totally integrated into the sound stage. Yet there is no way that information is coming from the bass. It has to be coming from higher frequencies. Our brains map out or create the image of bass in a location, probably same as they create the image of a singer in between the speakers. The result we hear is stable 3D localizable bass, even though in reality the bass is pure volume, the location of the subs has nothing to do with it.
This is easily proven. Everyone with a DBA has moved them around trying to find better and better locations. Everyone who has done this talks about how even the frequency response is. Frequency response is volume. Nothing else. Volume. Not a one of us ever said we moved a sub and the location of the bass changed. Not a one. Because there is no location information in bass that low.
So if there's no location information, and moving the subs around by feet all over the room never alters any bass detail, how can it possibly affect (nonexistent) bass detail if a spring lets a sub move a millimeter?
Rhetorical question. It can't.
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Hi guys, For those that experienced loss of bass using these springs, did clarity and detail correspondingly increase, and visa versa.
Assuming you experimented, what component that was "springed" most benefited the clarity of your system? Thanks. |
