Currently have a Thorens TB-150 which is upgraded to about the fullest extent (Cardas Wiring, New Walnut Plinth, MusicHall Cruise Control 2.0, Rega RB220 Arm, Ortofon 2M Bronze). With that being said, my table is plagued with skips if you all but tip-toe in the room. One of those things that just gets on my nerves. So I have been looking around for a mass-loaded TT.
Is changing to a ClearAudio Performance or MusicHall 9.3 really going to make a different in the skipping? Any feedback on the Goldring Eroica LX Cart? Are there any tables to be looking at?
@hifiron In your OP post you mention interest in the Clearaudio Performance. Beautiful table, but I’ve see it play in a room with bad footfall issues (suspended wood floor), and the magnetic-bearing arm mounted on it (Clarify, I think) was an absolute disaster in that setting. Way too sensitive & springy of a suspension, which is the same problem as your Thorens, it seems.
The rigid bearing arms did a lot better in that setting. Even the magnify, which is a hybrid of magnetic & rigid bearing, should do much better (nice arm). I’d stay away from the fully magnetic arm for sure, even if you solve your table isolation issues (which of course you should!).
My friend reinforced the floor from underneath (it was a basement) and that helped in his case.
handymann @Geoffkait - I tried the bungee cords and besides my near disaster, I found the TT, not being uniform in weight distribution, wouldn’t be level with the bungee cords. Guess I could have weighed my platform with weights to offset the difference, but I just went with metal cable and springs. I’m still not primo as get an acoustic bass load up, when playing heavy bass LP’s. I can listen to regular to high dB levels, but can still get a cartridge feedback with heavy bass albums. Any recommendations?
>>>>The trick is to match the load with the proper spring rate. For example the cryo compression springs I sell are rated at 15 lb/in. Since my springs are only 1.5” uncompressed so you only want to compress them 1/2” or 3/4”. 4 Springs would be ideal for a total mass of about 30-34 lb. Five springs for a mass of 40-50 lb. As you suggest the mass needs to be equally distributed to keep things level. My new super stiff springs will support very heavy loads such as big VPI and Verdier turntables and Classe and other big heavy amps and subwoofers. I suspect when suspending turntables the dynamics of the spinning platter could be an issue. The mass distribution is probably an issue. I would try the cables without the springs and see what happens. Stiffer is preferable to too springy.
@Geoffkait - I tried the bungee cords and besides my near disaster, I found the TT, not being uniform in weight distribution, wouldn’t be level with the bungee cords. Guess I could have weighed my platform with weights to offset the difference, but I just went with metal cable and springs. I’m still not primo as get an acoustic bass load up, when playing heavy bass LP’s. I can listen to regular to high dB levels, but can still get a cartridge feedback with heavy bass albums. Any recommendations?
When using bungee cords the secret is (1) to use bungee cords with the correct spring rate for the application and (2) ensure that all connections are secure. 😛 Timely tip: if you go bungee jumping don’t secure your own bungee cords. 😀
Bungee cords is a preferred inexpensive but effective method of vibration isolation oft used by Universities to avoid the high cost of effective isolation platforms. Bungee cords can provide many directions of isolation, including rotational directions. Where’s the beef? 🍔
As bdp24 suggested, hanging your platform from the ceiling is the answer, although I would not use bungee cords. I used bungee cords once only to come home and find my TT dangling. I use steel cables with turnbuckles to get the level just right. And as Slaw pointed out, I Would also suggest you move your platform from behind your speakers, to one side of the speakers, between you and the speakers, but not in the listening triangle. Behind the speakers, or in the corners, is probably the worse place, due to low frequency build-up.
@stringreen thanks for the suggestion, locking the back cabinet to the wall didn't fix the issue because the issue wasn't with the TT per se. The cabinet combination with the TT is the real issue.
Aesthetics is important in this room for the WAF. It is the first room as you enter the home. Once I finish the attic and move the listening room up there I will be able to place everything where it will fit best. I will also be using the golden ratio when building the walls to ensure the best possible starting point.
That said, I am going to keep the cabinet in the room because its where all my wax is and since the room is so small, having any additional furniture in the room is not going to be feasible. Already a little claustrophobic in there.
I have decided to sell the Thorens and look for another replacement, it is listed on A'gon now hopefully at a price for a quick sale.
Thanks again to everyone who has made some great suggestions here. I am not super handy, so a lot of the construction related projects might have been do-able but not ideal for me.
You could use 4 lengths of small link strong chain or rustic style rope attached to your ceiling securely.... to the four corners of a appropriate sized maple platform... suspended to the length of your liking.... to support your turntable. Nothing touches your floor or wall. Please check tonearm anti-skate. Take off the Thorens 150 rubber platter mat and purchase (Google it)... Yamamoto Sound Craft PB-19 pure ceramic disks (about $30.00) and place 8 of them on your platter in a circle pattern. Place and play your record directly on the ceramic disks. Check your tonearm VTA. You will be amazed by the beautiful musical sound produced by decoupling your record from the platter using pure Yamamoto Sound Craft ceramic disks and floating your turntable from the ceiling. Best Wishes
Ron - I told you how to fix the problem. You seem not to be able to read or not wanting to fix it. Your Thorens is a good turntable, your table is not. The wood wedged between the wall and table is very much like the wall support.
Checking in... wanted to circle back to the post with some findings.
1. Supporting joists under just the listening room was not helpful. The foyer/listening room/dining room all have this trampoline floor issue.
2. I borrowed a VPI from a local dealer and set it up in the same spot with supports in crawlspace removed, no skipping issues.
So while the Thorens TD-150 is a fantastic sounding table, I think after the move from a slab to crawlspace, its time to let it go find a better more-suitable home.
@slaw thank you for your insight and opinion, sorry for not disclosing the slab-crawlspace move up front.
Really appreciate the ideas here. While I am not sold on moving to a VPI, I think the combination of increased support in the room, dedicated isolation platform, and a non-suspended TT is my direction.
Forget anything I ever posted, as @ toddverrone knows me better than I know myself.
Maybe, I'll (PM) @toddverrone regarding any other issue I'm thinking about. Hopefully, this measure will make it clear to all who subscribe to @toddverrone thinking, will have a say in what (he) thinks should happen with any future post I make.
At every issue I tried to address with the Op, I never received any response.
@toddverrone, why do you chose to say" "you either drink too much or need to get laid"?
I’m not "mad", I’m just passionate.
Without knowing me, you have created an "impassionate expressive description" of a person you don’t know, yet somehow feel a need to make public that I’m a "basket case".
I don’t know why you feel this (need), but it is over the line in the context of these discussions.
Your posts have diverted the attention from the OP’s post.
Having said that, I don’t know why my post regarding how I dealt with my support structure is now being a reference by the OP to another poster as something he’s considering!
Floor support. For each area you want to stop floor vibes, get into the crawl space with a four by four cut to the length long enough to span two nearby joists. Place your piece of wood perpendicular to the two joists. Prop the piece of wood up with a jack from HomeDepot which will cost less than $20.00 each. These jacks use a wrench to screw them up and down. Easy to do. Works really well to quell the vibes!! You can dance near the area you've supported without skipping needle issues.
" the original reason for this post was because my previous non-suspended table had none of these issues."
hifiron, Would that (fact) be a good starting point and an honest reason in need of disclosure before you made a mess of this? Wow! I knew something was wrong.
As usual, I’m the one who seemingly is the "bad guy". Give me a break!
toddveronne. See?
Frankly, I’m the one who gave toddverrone the basics for his current TT set-up/the springs.
@geoffkait exactly, I want to spend time on improving isolation, the original reason for this post was because my previous non-suspended table had none of these issues. So I am trying to decide if going to a mass-loaded TT would be a better first step instead of investing tons of isolation.
Current project for this week is to get some 2x12s and some bottle jacks to see if that will stiffen up the floor and stop the shake.
The slippage problem seems to be normal upon start-up of the TD150. I have decided to keep the table as it is an impressive setup. There are some good and relatively cheap options to brace the room.
@slaw I think you may find going for a walk may be a good idea. No need to get so mad! OP said he can’t use a TT shelf because of the chair rail molding, which is obvious in the pic. That means he’s still able to anchor the console to the wall behind. Also, the old console looks great, it’s not a surprise he wants to keep it..
And what do you mean people want to hold on to their money? The obvious starting point is supporting the floor from underneath and then securing the console to the wall. There's nothing to throw money at here until he addresses those issues.
The Op initially said the wall mount was ("out of consideration").
Based upon his use of an antiquated console, (which I presumed to be of importance) most here seem to want him to remodel it and affix to the wall. I can only assume his wall is out of consideration as far as hanging stuff on it?
These "initial words" by the OP and the fact that most want to hang onto their money led me to my recommendations.
His set-up is probably the worst possible scenario. Not only does he have the worst possible scenario for room construction but he has his TT set up in the worst location... right behind a speaker, and then right between the two speakers.
He initially said he was looking for a mass loaded TT.
The main question is, why am I still posting here?
I’d opine it’s a little more complicated. The resonant frequencies of tonearm, cartridge and platter which are circa 10-12 Hz means they’re liable to be affected by seismic I.e., low frequency vibrations including, but certainly not limited to, those produced by footfall, subways, traffic, and Earth crust motion. In addition, this seismic vibration is in six (count em!) directions, including horizontal plane and vertical and a bunch of rotational directions. Therefore, the walls are moving too. The whole house is moving in all 6 directions! You can run but you can’t hide. Everything is relative so for trampoline floors the wall might very well be better than the floor. But there’s really no substitute for real vibration isolation, i.e., decoupling.
The problem with your turntable is not the up/down movement of the table, but the rocking left/right. If you try the fixing to the wall as I described above, I am confident you will be happy with the results. If you aren't remove the wood, if you used the turnbuckle, plaster the wall and move on to solve the problem in another way. My suggestion has many times worked for those with your issue.
The same principles do apply to turntables. The same principles also apply to amplifiers, preamplifiers, CD players and speakers. Bungee cords is an excellent example of mass-on-spring physics, upon which almost all audiophile isolation devices are based. Mass on spring acts as a mechanical low pass filter. Bungee cords operate the same way as steel springs and air springs, air bladders. Many audiophile isolation devices such as Vibraplane and Minus K come to us directly from atomic microscopy and from the mother of all isolation companies, Newport Corporation. Minus K in its first incarnation - or would that be carnation? - was Newport's Sub Hertz Platform.
When I was a postdoc at U. Oregon I was introduced to atomic force microscopy, a technology that uses a stylus in the sub-micron tip size range to physically scan and touch-tap to map and image the topography of biomolecules such as DNA, proteins and other structures on a solid support. The resulting images showed hi rez, three dimensionality of biologically relevant tertiary structures. An example was propogation of RNA polymerase II on a DNA template in solution. As you can imagine, any vibration needed to be removed from the microscope and detection system in order to gain maximum resolution. The solution was to suspend these microscopes not with mass loaded heavy laser tables, but with bungee cords from the ceiling.
I don’t see why the same physical principles couldn’t apply to turntables.
I was responding to the poster previous to my comment. I am pro decoupling and pro draining and to a lesser extent pro damping. In combination, not separately.
Yep, 100% right on. Going to take some time this weekend and investigate some options under the crawl. I only have 2' of working space between the bottom of the floor joists and the earth below.
Fixing the deflection in the floor from underneath is not that difficult, its the choice that requires a bit more effort in a shorter time span physically ,but it is THE only choice that removes the problem. All others are band aids that somewhat work at varying degrees , and at differing degrees should you change the table or the rack. A solid foundation will always give better results and cost less and take less time to do where access is available, than the hours of work it takes to earn to save for an inflated , retail band aid to solve an easily solvable problem, not solved at all but just masked with band aids. No brainer for me, a Saturday morning and its over, free to have any table, rack or speaker, stand mount or not with greater choice on design and function and cost.
I already acknowledged some racks and stands are not too bad. And I never mentioned anything about damping. I trust you aren't confusing isolation with damping.
hifiron, I had a similar problem in one house I owned. We added 2 ft. of space to the depth of the room when building and the floor became a semi-trampoline. The room was now 20' wide and 16" deep. The joists ran from front to back so they were 16' long X 7 1/4" in height. The Maplenoll Ariadne TT at 70 lbs. had trouble tracking most records if someone was moving in the room.
The solution proved to be building a beam by connecting three 2" X 12" boards together. If they are not long enough to span the distance under the joists, put the spliced beams at different locations so the strength is maintained. Glue and nail the boards together at several locations both top and bottom. Use 6" X 6" posts to support the beam. Since you are over a crawl space and I was over a cement floor of the basement, you will need to make solid footers to support the posts and thus, the beams. The footers are going to need to go below the frost line if you live more north in the U.S. That means you would need at least 3 footers 12" in diameter and 42" deep. Use heavy duty 6 X 6 hangers anchored in the footers with a 1/2" J-bolt. Where the beam touches the joists, anchor this location with hurricane straps from the joist to the beam every few joists so there is no chance for it to slip. If you run this beam down the middle of the support joists, the bouncy floor problem should be a moot point.
Once I did this, my Maplenoll tracked beautifully with even a 250 lb. buffalo like myself walking or mildly jumping. Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, you will have to buy some materials--about $125.00 worth I would guess. But the other solutions might be better than before or they might not--this one will work! You'll be able to use the TT you like the best, too.
Try a wall mount or a stand/rack. See what you like better. By the way, I build strong decks for people I know sometimes and the name I use is Gibraltar. You can jump on my railings and still be safe.
And Geoffkait, there are a few racks where the sound is vastly improved over just about any other method of supporting your equipment--Sistrum racks, for instance. Tremendous improvement in sound with no drawbacks. Drains those vibrations quickly to the floor, don't damp them.
The sound becomes much more live and real sounding. It even allowed me to take all 4 corner bass traps out of my room--you couldn't tell the difference in or out anymore.
Wall rack all the way. I built a custom one that extends farther out into room, cut the back of my stereo cabinet out and the turntable looks like it is on a cabinet shelf but it is actually just above it. See my system page for a picture.
I use an isolation platform I made from a maple butcher block and 4 springs. I don’t have footfall issues, but it improved my sound.. however: I don’t recommend a spring isolated platform, whether it’s air or coil springs, as your turntable already has springs. Doubling springs are not a good idea, as it has been reported that it messes with the sound in a bad way. I think affixing the back of your rack to the wall and going into the crawlspace and reinforcing under your rack are your best first bets.
That is completely opposite to my experience, and if it wasn't different from the experience of many others, there would be many rack manufacturers out of business.
Trying the inexpensive options I laid out would let you experience how this option can work within the system you now have. This sort of end user experience is invaluable. Changing to a completely different TT/suspension does not give you any real answers going forward within your current framework.
If you bring home a different TT, not only do you have a totally new/unfamiliar design to try and interpret but you lose whatever synergy you had to start with. How does this help?
I never tried a really good rack. Placing equipment on a maple block with cones under it on the floor does give me a better sound. Any piece of equipment. Well, I can't keep everything on the floor because of practical considerations but my turntable is permanently on the floor.
Two different spring systems can be used effectively only if their respective resonant frequencies are separated in frequency by a sufficient spacing. Otherwise the two spring systems will interfere. It would be like a car traveling down the road with two sets of identical springs for each wheel. It would be a very bumpy ride. LIGO isolation included dual layer heavy mass-on-spring systems. So there's no doubt this technique works or why.
No, I don't "follow". You're still saying that most racks and stands are "terrible", and that is a silly comment.
OK. let's try a different approach. Most racks and stands amplify structureborne vibration. Which is terrible. That's why moving electronics from the rack or stand and placing them directly on the floor usually results in better sound. Even without any isolation. Now do you follow?
@audiopoint the rack is open to store my vinyl records in it, no bracing. :-\
@bdp24 lol, ultimately a new listening room needs to built in the house for anything super crazy, this is the first room when you walk in the house. Aesthetics are somewhat important ;-)
I'll take a look at some options. I was also toying with the ideal of bringing home a MMF 7.3 or ClearAudio Concept from my local dealer to see if a non-suspended table works more favorably.
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