WAF Alert: McCormack DNA .5 on Vandersteen 2W sub?

Hi,

Try a Symposium "platform" for your amp. It should take care of any ill effect from it's new location. Try it before you buy it from your local dealer!

Cheers,
Mike

You shouldn't be too influenced by what Marco has done with his sandbox. He isn't really using it in his audio system. He just needed an excuse to build one so he could play in it. He can also hide a lot of things in there too, like playing cards with naked ladies on them.

I bet the McCormack does look good on the Vandie sub! James brings up good points. Maybe you can have a nice solid maple platform built that shares the same dimensions of the Vandersteen and place the DNA on that. Or how about a piece of granite? Also, I think you'll need to protect the sub from whatever platform you choose. Instead of using things like rubber pucks or Blu-Tack which can mar beautiful surfaces, I use gray artist kneaded erasers which can be shaped like Play-Doh, stay soft, and never discolor or harm the solid surfaces they contact.

Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback guys. Wow, I never considered the magnetic field issues-what would Enid Lumely think(anybody remember her?)-the apparently "out-there" writer from Absolute Sound who has in restrospect proven herself way ahead of her time..I can recall that she described elevating her speaker cables on 2x4 blocks to get them off the carpet....now you can buy some manufactured tweak device to accomplish that.) As far as the vibrations for example when I crank up" Dafos" or the "Train Song" from Holly Cole's Temptation album (thanks Marco..) I do in fact feel subtle vibration on the top of the sub, but alarmingly I feel more vibration in the top of the amp case. Could this perhaps be airborn?!!! and the case is resonating? Steve McCormack once demonstarted for me his system years ago in the back of his shop-mind blowing, no-make that chest crunching surfable bass waves coming from his Vandys..Steve are you out there? As far as Marco(code name jax2, a good 'ol friend of mine..) perhaps I can use the naked lady card info as blackmail..of course Marco photographs naked ladies on a regular basis and digging in the sand may be akin to searching for WMD?

Hey Jon- I got more music for you to listen to.....glad to hear the Vandy's are working out and good to see you postin' here. What, ain't they given you enough to do downtown!? You can see by my number of posts here that I'm just sittin' on my hands waitin' for the phones to ring. Dean, my friend, you and Jon are going to get me in trouble with my wife..........again! Gunbei, or the slanted-head green man, as he is known round these parts, stares at naked ladies all day while figuring out ways to embellish their blossoming womanhood into gravity-defying jugs of wonderment for the likes of the great bullshit factory down in southern Cal known as L.A.

Don't give into the WAF J.J.!! Keep up the good fight for truth, justice and a big-ass soundstage!!! Actually, I NEVER put my amps on my speakers......well, it was only perhaps a week or two.....I built a shelf that goes over the top of the Scala's with some marble and inexpensive spikes. That and the sandbox did the trick. Don't know how tall your sub is, but you could do a similar treatment. Sandboxes are a snap to make, very inexpensive, and work very well. You can finish em' in all kinds of fancy plastic fruitwood veneers like they have inlaid on the dashboards of 78' Gremlins. It can match the side of your minivan! I also know a good place to buy inexpensive custom sized butcher blocks, but I have to look that one up if you want it. Play sand is cheap, but the purists are gonna tell you you've gotta get that silicone stuff they use for sandblasting that costs about 10 times the price of play sand. Don't listen to them, you've got mouths to feed. The play sand works just fine. You can hide that spare quad of Siemens Falcons for the Audible Illusions from Mindy if you make the sand deep enough. Just keep Otis away from it or you may end up recreating that scene Jorge used to describe with the cat and the Nye strobes.....remember that one?! I surely would not put an amp on a subwoofer, your just asking for trouble, as well as plenty of ridicule from folks round these parts, man they'll heap some shit on you here that is so foul you will wish you never heard of the Internet! Just kidding, they're a good bunch. Now over there on the Asylum....jeez, those folks are just WAY too serious about this stuff. KeeeRyst, it's just stereo gear! Right guys? Right....am I right? Hey.......where's everyone going........hey, wait......No, I didn't mean it that way..........Hey, guys, c'mon! I've got a bootleg Patricia Barber from Jazz Alley that got smuggled out by the sound engineer.......Aw, c'mon...I didn't mean what I said...I used to own a VPI Brick!

Marco

PS Jon (Bibasset) is the very individual who got me addicted to this insane hobby some twenty years ago or more! He's the man who exposed me to those wonderful old Quad speakers playing with his modified Dynaco and AA pre. That was the tube sound I could never shake off that I wrote about in my system profile. They'd have to boot me out of their ground-floor Park Slope apartment cause I didn't want to leave those wonderful sounds coming from his speakers through those glowing tubes behind the cage.....like being kicked out into the cold away from a warm fire! I don't know whether to thank him, or curse the day he dropped the needle into the first groove on Jazz at the Pawnshop. Once the needle goes in, it never comes out! I'm hooked! Thanks Jon!

Wow! So Jon, you're the one that got Marco started on his downward spiral into Audiophile Hades? Personally, I think a highly creative goofball like Jax2 would have found another insanely expensive outlet for his creativity even if you hadn't let him listen to your system in the early days. He's the resident Audiogon kook and comedian!

Years ago, I had one of those wooden 240 disc CD spinners sitting on top of my subwoofer. I never heard any CDs rattling during scenes like the T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus battle to the death, maybe because my whole building was shaking too, but I did notice a few had gotten shaken out of their slots.

You're probably right about the amp case shaking from both physical contact and airborn vibrations. I was listening to my system last week and noticed a slightly hooty sound in the upper bass and lower midrange. It turned out it was caused by an empty box sitting at my feet. When I picked up the box with the music still playing I could feel the vibration in the sides and flaps of the box. Even when I moved it to the back of the room, I could feel it humming along to the tune. I put some stuff in the box and the noticeable vibes had stopped.

Since audio gear is all exposed to airborn vibrations, my guess is the only thing you can do to reduce the buzzing if your wife insists you place the DNA on the Vandie, is to create isolation between the two units. Granite or a two inch thick piece of hardwood with the kneaded eraser tweak I mentioned might help a bit.

And, since you're an old friend of Marco, maybe he'll lend you some sand or even let you in the sandbox. But don't go digging around for those nudie girl playing cards, who knows what else he's got hiding under there.

Good luck,
Dean