I am looking for a very sturdy turntable rack or stand, preferably with a couple shelves below the turntable top shelf. I've seen a couple expensive ones. Any solid ideas that don't cost $3K or more?
Yep Build your own as I did as I was saddened by the prices being asked. 4 lengths of all thread rod, a number of nuts and washers and 4 pieces of 2 inch thick maple 24x18. One drill, couple wrenches, couple hours and all done. Infinitely variable shelf height, level any shelf in seconds. Cost? $300 max.
Right. That is pretty much what I did. DIY. Next step up from what uberwaltz built, incorporate a sand bed into the shelf the turntable will sit on. Next step up from that would be what I did, cast the shelves from concrete with a sand bed cast into them. With a granite machinists plate on top its massive and stable and near impervious to footfalls and other vibrations. http://www.theanalogdept.com/images/spp6_pics/C_miller_web/TTstand_1.jpg Mine isn’t adjustable but it is modular. The legs are ABS filled with concrete and bolted together with the shelves so it can be moved one piece at a time. Altogether its near 700 lbs and, you might say, rock solid. This is kind of old but you get the idea http://www.theanalogdept.com/c_miller.htm
@uberwaltz I've just started looking for an audio rack for my son, I'm giving him my RP 3 and some other pieces. I like your DIY rack and wondering what did you use for feet? Eric
Ironically the best approach is actually a stand that allows the turntable to move freely in all directions, I.e., an isolation stand. The best isolation is achieved when the component can move easiest in all directions, all six of them! There used to be the Flexy Rack that achieved some degree of isolation by being the opposite of rigid. Rigidity and mass are the enemies of high performance.
@ericsch Feet are something I really need to try a few more of! Not that so far they seem to have made too much difference but you never know. Right now I am just using rubber boots over the ends of the all thread rod which then sit on steel pucks on my tiled floor with felt cushioning them. Not fancy but the rack is solid and sturdy and I perceive no vibrations at my TT. obviously Millers effort dwarfs whatever mine achieved in solidity!
Not too make to fine a point of it but the really cool thing about low frequency seismic type vibrations, generated by the Earth crust and traffic mostly, is how super strong they are. 🏋🏻♂️ They can vibrate 700 lbs like it was a feather. People think they’re safe on concrete slabs, too. If mass was the answer LIGO would have built a massive stand for their electronics to detect gravity waves. But they didn’t. They built a spring isolation system. Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water. 🦈
Uberwaltz if you can jump up and down in front of the turntable and put the edge of a stethoscope against the platform with music at a moderate volume and not hear an increase in the volume through the stethoscope you are good to go. No other mods needed. Next put the stethoscope against the base plate of the Garrard. You should hear no increase in volume. If you do you have a plinth issue. Turn the turntable off and play another source. Listen to the platter mat on and off. A sturdy stand on a concrete floor is always the best. Trying to predict which plinth and turntables are going to have trouble is difficult and frequently surprising. Some turntables depend entirely on their stand for isolation others you could could put on a folding table and they will do fine.
Geoffkait just don't live next to the highway or train. Where I live we have had one earthquake in 28 years it lasted 10 seconds. If you wan to spend money to protect your system from a 10 second event knock yourself out. Actually, if you live in a sky scraper the wind can sway these buildings and move them several inches. This is what caused the windows to pop out of the John Hancock building in Boston. A few inches would definitely cause many turntables to launch their tonearms. So us vinyl guys would do well staying away from sky scaper apartments.
flupson, the membrane is very sensitive and will make a racket against any solid surface. It is extremely difficult to hold it absolutely still. The bell is usually covered in rubber and you want a solid connection to the turntable.
I’m not referring to earthquakes, Mr. Smarty Pants. I’m referring to the everyday motion of the Earth’s crust. The specific term is microseism. See, you learn something everyday. Well, maybe you don’t, how the hell would I know? If Earthquakes was all they had to worry about LIGO wouldn’t have needed all the isolation stuff since their experiment was way out in the boonies. Besides Earthquakes and trains you can add high rise buildings, construction sites, beaches, roadways, bus lines, and areas like CA and NV with very high microseism activity.
mijostyn Uberwaltz if you can jump up and down in front of the turntable and put the edge of a stethoscope against the platform with music at a moderate volume and not hear an increase in the volume through the stethoscope you are good to go.
A better method IMO is to mute the system, put your tonearm down on a "STILL" record....unmute and slowly raise the volume to normal listening level.......and then do the Audiophile dance.
Extra points of hobby freedom are awarded, if you do this and let your wife catch you in the act. She (he) will likely be thrown off ....ah .. intimidated a little. ........after this, and will leave you alone.
The Audiophile Turntable Dance Test....ATDT..... as far as spousal reaction goes, is superseded only by the "Finding the Best Speaker Spot...... for Bass" .....test.
A sturdy stand on a concrete floor is always the best.
Concrete pads are not bullet proof and contain air pockets. It is important to test for location before placing your setup permanently there. You don’t want to be on top of the air pocket.
I've always found three legged stands best for audio, they seem more stable and much easier to level.
I've liked the rather inexpensive lovan stands found them to be durable solidly built and very stable, I like the individual shelves and how they interlock with spikes. I know not the final word in stylish but they work well and don't break the bank.
If you can best option for a turntable is a wall mount, in most homes.
Thanks. If the OP builds one of these he will not be disappointed.
The best rack is of course no rack at all. For years my turntable sat on the floor. Try it, you will find it is very hard to do better. Very hard.
The way I see it there are three kinds of vibration a good turntable rack has to somehow control. Most of the vibration in a good quiet listening room is from the turntable itself. But we don’t listen quietly, its sometimes quite loud, and so the rack has to control a lot of acoustic vibration. Finally there’s the floor moving around.
Trying to "isolate" all this turns out to be a waste of time. Mostly because of #1 and #2: the turntable itself and the music you’re playing are the two main sources of vibration. So even if your theoretical magical mystical powers extend all the way to anti-gravity morphic fields you still have only eliminated one- and the least one of them at that.
This is why all the very best stands are super solid and stiff. No one makes a six dimensions rack. Even if there were six dimensions, the one guy who never will stop bragging about it never has made more than the one contraption, and gosh I wonder why? http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina24.htm
Lotta work just to wind up right back where you started, having made no progress whatsoever in dealing with the sonic vibrations generated by the speakers or even the component itself. In fact it seems likely to have made them all even worse.
Now the concrete I used is in fact pretty awful in terms of vibration control. Cast a shelf like I did, you will be very disappointed. Because when you hit it, it vibrates. Rings, even. Granite slab, ditto. Might not think this would be the case. Well, a lot of things people think turn out not to be true or work in practice. (see: machinadynamica link above)
Concrete however still has a couple advantages. Concrete is massive. Super stiff. And dirt cheap. Cast creatively in a curved mold like I did, and painted, it even looks pretty good. Connecting the shelves with concrete-filled ABS and all bolted together eliminates most of the ringing.
Most however is not all. The vibration that remains however is all pretty high in frequency. Bed of sand (mixed with a little oil to keep it all neat and tidy and eliminate dust) easily eliminates all the ringing.
So what we have at this point is a super-stiff, super-massive stand pretty much impervious to sonic vibrations, like from music. Yes it will move if you stomp around right next to it. But because it is so massive it moves only at a very low fundamental frequency. A frequency that can actually be tuned, if you want to go to the trouble, either by working through the math, or even by trial and error, adding/removing sand, adding/removing a granite plate, making the shelves different thicknesses. All of which can be done for cheap, and even fairly easily due to the modular nature of the design.
Okay. So now we are left with only the vibrations of the turntable itself. At this point you can use whatever shelf you like. The best I ever heard are BDR, which is what I use. But the rack itself is so solid and stable you could get great results sitting the turntable right on the granite, or even on a sheet of plain old MDF. Remember the top shelf is a sand bed with about an inch of sand. So super stable no matter what you put on it.
Couple bags of concrete, reinforced with a little wire mesh, couple feet of ABS, dozen or so bolts, bag of sand, you could use whatever paint you want and still be way under $100.
millercarbon This is why all the very best stands are super solid and stiff. No one makes a six dimensions rack. Even if there were six dimensions, the one guy who never will stop bragging about it never has made more than the one contraption, and gosh I wonder why?
I have designed my first custom racks and tables in 1998, this is the last one , custom made a few years ago for my Luxman PD-444 turntables. Grey finishing.
I confess I have not read all the responses, but for this need in my basement system where at the time I did not want to spend a lot of money, I went I think to the Home Depot website where I found a very sturdy work table, just the right size for a turntable on top and a second shelf midway from the floor, for under $100. (Shelves are MDF but could be upgraded to any material that could be cut to fit.) All I had to do was assemble it. It holds my Victor TT101 on the top surface with a preamplifier on the underneath shelf. Two of these stands could accommodate a system. If you want something better, I use Adona Audio shelving for my upstairs system. Best bang for the buck, IMO. They advertise on Audiogon. Very nice job, Chakster!
What am I, back in 1985? My Nimbus was the first audiophile 6-D iso platform. D stands for Degree-of-freedom, or direction. Since the horizontal plane ✈️ comprises an infinite number of directions 🔛, there are effectively more than six. You got your vertical. 🔝You got your three rotational directions , one around each of the x, y, z axes. 🚁 We split the difference and say the horizontal plane counts for two degrees of freedom (directions) for 6 total. The reason the number of directions is important is that the waves of seismic type vibration have six directions, all of which affect the audio component to some degree. Like a wave passing under a boat 🚣♀️ on the ocean.
Oh, the Nimbus resonant frequency Fr is lower than 1 Hz for some of the directions. Nimbus uses only 1 airspring which just between you and me is practically impossible since almost any significant load will cause the airspring to flop over, even when it’s pumped up to 40 psi. It’s like trying to balance a 5 LB weight on a rubber pencil. The advantage of a single airspring isolator is you get extremely low Fr - every airspring (for stability) you add raises total spring rate and thus Fr.
As it turns out you can get very low Fr and 2 Hz performance in many directions without all the hassle simply using small springs. Where’s the beef? 🍔
^^^^^^^^ This is the route I took for my Room 1 stand years ago; but I bypassed the retailer, and went directly to the Mennonite community. I had them build me a custom - very low and long/wide welded steel frame with hardwood top design. It has an equal width shelf using the same frame bars design below the hard top, that holds multiple bags of sand.
DIY: Baltic birch carcass screwed and glued to structural posts, 3 x 3/4" bb layer under solid slate slab, all assembled with elastomeric glue (Chemlink M1). Nearest thing to a concrete pillar.
geof.....not in my experience. Some turntables need a lightweight support (Linn), some need a solid support to the center of the Earth. (VPI). They all make a difference.
I use a heavy wood console unit. It sits on a concrete slab in the lower level in my house. You can jump up and down on the floor anywhere and not hear rumble in the TT. Banging on the wood console top produces very little that the TT picks up. That’s why I don’t understand how seismic vibrations can be an issue in home audio. How does the fact that some rare scientific measurements can detect it mean a home audio system is negatively impacted by it? Can your amp or speakers reproduce it? I’m fairly certain mine can’t. If this is related to a turntable, can any cartridge detect it if it’s present? If this vibration can be picked up by the cartridge, is amplifier power wasted trying to produce it? Is that the issue? It seems like there is a built in ability to reject this noise if a home audio system is incapable or reproducing it. It seems to me that energy that is so far below a humans ability to hear Is unlikely to be impacting performance. Can anyone explain what the movement of the earths crust is doing to my audio rig that prevents it from performing at its best? It would be hard to comparison test a spring suspension/isolation approach vs the rigid approach. So trying this at my home unfortunately just isn’t likely.
Geoffk.. I like the (no longer available) isolation device you developed. It appears, to me, that it would definitely tackle the many issues associated with undesirable vibrations.. of any kind. I'm thinking it would have been quite expensive though.. You couldn't build that with left over scrap from your shop.
Thanks for the comment. Yes, expensive to make. And tricky to build and difficult to ship. Three strikes, you’re out. But as we know now, mass-on-spring iso devices are excellent at reducing vibrations originating on the top plate, including the impact of acoustic waves, as well as seismic type vibrations originating from the floor.
You're welcome and I agree.. I own a few tables and right at the moment I'm setting up an Oracle Delphi.. Spring suspension system. Tricky to do properly. I purchased an older version originally owned by one of Oracles "set up" guys. He's owned it since new and didn't mess around with modifications to it. That's why I purchased it. I like vintage equipment that hasn't been messed with but not TOO vintage. I've been audio for many years and have many systems on the go. Nothing extremely complex or ridiculously expensive. I'm at home with "previously owned".
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