vibration control

Vibration control and vibration isolation is definitely a big issue for fighter jets and NASA spacecraft and much is done to ensure that vibration doesn't interfere with electronics, most of which provide critical functions.

Rok2id... Retired now, but I worked for 40 years on missile guidance systems.

The hardware is designed to work under extreme vibration. The shaker used to perform vibration testing shakes the whole factory building when in use. The effect of vibration is to induce mechanical faults. Bad solder joints let go, screws come loose, stuff like that. We never see a purely electronic failure, or digital data dropout.

Of course, the requirements on a nuclear armed missile aren't as severe as Rodman's audio amp. What the hell. So we hit the Chinese embassy. Big deal.

Eldartford: you are priceless.
I worked on missile G&C in the army. Air Defense, Field Artillery, and anti-tank. Worked like a champ in the middle east thingy.
But nothing as complex as a high-end power amp.

You know, there are measurements and measurements. If you are looking at a scope image of a waveform thru an amp in a vibrating box, and subtracting that from the un processed waveform, differences down to -100db or more will be easily seen. That's good enough for me.

What all the isolation folk forget is that not only is the component base vibrating but the AIR is transmitting such vibrations, which are typically uncontrolled. A room excited to 85db with 95db peaks or more will certainly be loud enough to couple to even well damped gear.

When we did vibration stuff with low frequency quartz crystals, we used a then couple year old Crown DC300 to drive the table.

Here is something that I have wondered about. I have not opened up a lot of high end speaker cabinets, but the few that I have peered into all have crossover electronics boards sitting unprotected inside the speaker box. It would seem to me that the inside of a speaker box is the hottest environment wrt vibration in the entire stereo system. I wonder how much could be gained by isolating the crossover boards or even how to do it in such cramped quarters.

12-31-11: Tonywinsc
"...all have crossover electronics boards sitting unprotected inside the speaker box."

Hence the eyebrow-raising whenever the whole cable or passive component vibration topic comes up. Oh, and lets not overlook the sheer number of "active" speakers with, dare I gest, "gain stages"!!! Why these speakers just don't go into a self-destructive oscillation feedback runaway is mind boggling. [joking]

Vibration is the main reason why time travel is impossible at the moment.

We are waiting for someone to invent a decent method of vibration control or isolation before we can go any further. Very frustrating as we are so close to perfecting the technology. We did try a decent power chord & that helped.

You'll experiemce time travel when you buy the better power cord, attach it to a better power amp, which is connected by better wires to a better speaker in a system that has been optimized with dedicated lines, power conditioning, room treatment and vibration control.

You'll be transported back to a smokey little jazz venue, circa 1960. Maybe I'll see you there?