WHAT HAS WORKED FOR YOU? ISOLATION PLATFORMS, FOOTERS, ETC. for a DAC?

Excellent David! I have a mix of the original Level 1 (same as the new Level 2, but with the cups made of Alcoa 6061 instead of the harder, superior 7075 of the Level 2, and the cup's bowl surface polished to a smoother texture with finer grit) and Level 3. The level 3 is made as per Barry Diament's design idea---a cup underneath the ball bearing, but no cup above it, the ball bearing instead riding across a flat, hard, smooth surface of the users choice. I found some stainless steel discs on ebay---very cheap!

I have been using Myrtle blocks i cut. I also have Herbies Tenderfeet and prefer Myrtle under everything except my Allnic L3000 tube preamp. The Tenderfeet sound great under my Harbeth. Anyone have any thoughts about Myrtle? 

I used Nordost Sort Kones, which replaced various devices: Tip Toes, Finite Elements rack with Cerabases and then Cerapucs. After the Sort Kones came the Stillpoints Ultra Mini Risers and SS footers. And shortly, the Townshend Seismic Isolation Platform will arrive. The Townshend is the 3rd generation successor to its Seismic Sinks. The first Seismic sinks didn't do much for my equipment, and I missed out on generation 2, which isolated in the horizontal AND vertical planes, something that was not true of the first generation sinks, and which was then supplanted by the Vibraplane (not in my system, just in the affections of the late HP of TAS). I am curious to see - as it isolates down to 3hZ, how the sonics will affect my turntables: an old Rega Planar 3 and a Notthingham Horizon. Unfortunately, my old Versa Dynamics 2.3 is out on the West Coast.
So far, the Stillpoints are the best, but there is a caveat with ALL footers: do not simply put them under the 4 corners and then think you've done everything you need do. You will need to move them around - and it can take a LONG time - to find the ideal spot, which is on in which dynamics have great range and contrast, transient accuracy is evident, low-level detail is at its highest and then - the one most people comment on - the bass is transparent.  Most people who've posted just say, "oh, it was the usual thing, the bass was a bit tighter..." If that's all they got, then they did not wring maximum performance out of their isolation device. TAS did an article in December of 2015, about how the authors experimented with the placement of several devices: Nortost Sort Kones, Stillpoints and several other devices. They found that tiny movements of the foots either improved or harmed the sound. Placement is crucial and you should be prepared to spend at least 20 hours finding the perfect spot. CDs work best for this: turntables will have you jumping up every 30 seconds.

Totally agree with the observation that the location of cones underneath components is a variable. By the same token, cones should always be placed under vibration isolation stands, either in sets of three or four, and those locations affect the sound, too. So, to summarize, we have the variable of cone locations underneath the component, whether the components is isolated by an isolation stand or not, AND the variable of cone locations underneath the isolation stand itself. As the previous poster points out it can take some time to sort out what the very best locations actually are, especially is there are six or more cones involved. Think of it like trying to solve six simultaneous equations in six unknowns. And finally, a big shout out for isolation devices that can isolate in more directions than the horizontal plane and vertical direction. Keep in mind that there are actually six, count em, directions of motion that are involved including three rotational directions. The horizontal plane counts as two.

@gbmcleod and @geoffkait

Very informative and relevant posts for me. Thanks to both of you.

I’ve found out first hand, for the first time, what both of you are referring to with the Anvil Turntable Footers under my DAC. Location does matter!

I believe, in the case of the Anvil Turntable Footers, they are operating in multiple directions. Perhaps @13blm (Bruce) can comment?

Any advice from both of you on keeping track of position and results, especially when one has six footers and two surface areas to cover?

@bg1968  Thanks for your suggestions. I do not have any experience with Myrtle blocks. However, we do have six mature Crepe Myrtle trees on our property. :)  

I'm using Herbie Audio's Giant Fat Gliders to great affect under my speakers.

Hi David. Yes, the footers isolate in all directions but more so in the vertical plane. "Floating" a component only isolates.  We also need to wick away vibration for an isolation/damping device to be effective.  Your footers as you know are virtually infinatily adjustable to find a happy medium between isolation, coupling and damping. It's true that position makes a difference, and sometimes quite dramatic. Pushing them out partially beyond the component perimiter is  also worthwhile. 
Regards,
Bruce
Anvil Turntables

The need for isolation is entirely dependent on the design of your DAC. It is possible to design both an excellent power supply and a non-microphonic DAC - in this case any treatment is pointless: it won’t do harm but certainly won’t do any good.

Unfortunately not all DACs are designed in a holistic sense that the power supply and microphonic immunity need to be as outstanding as the digital to audio conversion and analog section - and thus is why so many have to resort to band-aids.

Benchmark have written about these subjects and appear to take a holistic approach in design - all aspects need to be top notch.

Hi David,

You are moving in the right direction IMO.

"Soft" footers "cushion" the component from external vibration from the floor/rack but also trap internal vibrations inside the component (isolators vs conductors).

Symposium Acoustics system of combining Rollerblocks with their Svelte shelves (conduct then isolate) drains the vibrations from both the component (on top) and from external vibrations from the floor/rack (from below) into the vibration-absorbing membrane sandwiched between SS plates. Detail and coherence are improved over soft (and hard) footers, cones, and Rollerblocks without the shelves IME

Adding spring devices underneath the Svelte shelves (I use Solid Tech) can improve the sound further for extremely sensitive gear.  

Dave

Unfortunately it’s not really a question of "microphonic immunity." There is nothing you can do to make a component - any component - immune to low frequency seismic type vibration, I mean other than isolate it from those vibrations using some type of low pass mechanical filter. That’s because the entire building is shaking, so anything connected to it is shaking right along with it.

Obviously some steps can be talken (but usually aren’t) inside the component to guard against vibration with higher frequencies, you know, using damping techniques,including those produced by the component itself such as transformer hum, CD transport mechanical noise, motor noise, etc.

Right Geoff. I use vibration damping material inside the chassis and stick-on wheel weights on transports/CD players to good effect.

There seems to always be room for improvement in this area.

Dave

Interview discussing microphony and other design choices. The important takeaway is that some designers choose to tackle power supply and microphony issues and others ignore them. If you buy a DAC that is not designed to eliminate these issues then of course you can spend far more than you spent on the DAC itself trying to fix power supply and microphony issues.

http://www.stereo-now.co.uk/interviews-Benchmark.html

"In a well-designed system the DAC chip is the limitation. Anyone who is building “high-end” products that are limited by power supply performance should find a different “d**n” business."

"Before any product is released to market, we subject it to very high levels of vibration while listening to the noise floor and while viewing the noise spectrum on a high-resolution audio analyser. Any disturbance in the noise floor is an indication that a microphony problem exists. We also tap each component with a ceramic probe while listening to the noise floor. Benchmark products are not microphonic and can be used in high sound pressure and/or high vibration environments without isolation accessories."

On the DAC2 and DAC3 the power supply is switched Mode and this new form of power supply running at very high frequency has eliminated all the 60Hz hiss and hum issues that come with a linear power supply.

Benchmark is not the only maker of excellent sounding DACs but I present their design philosophy here to show that not all designers ignore the problems of power supply and microphony - so choose your products wisely or else you face the challenge of trying to get them to work properly through the use of band-aids!

Tapping noise and 60 Hz noise is not why we employ isolation. Those are examples of higher frequency vibration and induced vibration. One needs to address induced noise, airborne vibration AND low frequency seismic type vibration. Even solid state amps and power supplies, .i.e., things with no moving parts or things that seem solid, should be isolated. The printed circuit boards and wires are all subject to vibration. For components with transformers on board the transformer should be isolated from everything else, especially the printed circuit boards. Bolting the transformer tightly to the chassis is probably one of the dumbest things manufacturers ever did. And they’re blissfully unaware of the issue. Or, if they are aware they dismiss it.

If you subject a device to all kinds of vibration and high SPL levels at max volume and you get nothing above the noise floor then why would you be concerned about isolation?

unless you have irrational fears....

Obviously there are vibrations below the frequency speakers can deliver. Those are the seismic vibrations. Obviously it’s better to isolate the speakers along with everything else, no?

"I said this would be fun but I didn't say for who." 😃

Actually the 6 degrees of freedom is a misnomer since it’s obvious that for the horizontal plane there are an infinite number of directions, not just the two X and Z directions. Which explains why roller bearings are so effective for the horizontal and why isolation devices with multiple lateral springs like my olde Nimbus unipivot and whatever iso pod that has a bunch of lateral springs radiating outward from the center. You will also get better rotational isolation with a single spring or air spring than with multiple ones. It’s too bad you can’t get away with using a single roller bearing assembly.

And is why roller bearings are best positioned as an equilateral triangle.

That would be true if the mass distribution of the component is uniform. But since mass is often not uniform - such as when a large transformer is located on one side of an amplifier or a motor is located on the side of a turntable - the mass should be distributed equally among the bearings to ensure the component can move freely in all directions. Obviously cords and cables must be squared away so they don’t apply forces, including rotational forces, to the delicate set up. If mass is not distributed equally more force will be applied to one or more bearings than the other one or two. So, the best arrangement for the bearings is often a non equilateral triangle. It’s whatever gives the best "action" when you touch the component. When pushed slightly the component should return to its original equilibrium position. When the mass and forces are all balanced out, including friction, the system is in equilibrium. It’s the same for springs, the mass should be distributed equally among the springs, so the forces are balanced out, assuring uniform mass-on-spring performance as well as perfect level of the component.

@geoffkait  and others, 

Is there a simple or somewhat simple way to figure out mass distribution of a component, other than eyeballing transformer postion(s) and weightier sections and going by felt weight?

 
david_ten OP
352 posts
07-29-2017 9:28am
@geoffkait and others,

Is there a simple or somewhat simple way to figure out mass distribution of a component, other than eyeballing transformer postion(s) and weightier sections and going by felt weight?

Springs you can measure with a bubble level, when the top of the component is level the mass will be distributed. The only exception is a CD the top of the chassis may or may not be the exact same level as the CD transport. Obviously, or perhaps not obviously, the CD should be absolutely level during play. For roller bearings you have to determine level some other way, for example the surface on which the roller bearing sit. But the only way to determine when the system is balanced is by moving one or more bearing a little at a time until all three bearings are centered in their cups and the component doesn't get hung up in one cup when the mass off balance forces it over to one side. The component should always come back to the equilibrium position where all bearings are in the center of their cups. If the system isn't perfectly balanced the bearings cannot move freely up the shallow angle of the cups, hurting rotational isolation. But this all isn't as hard as it sounds. Once you see the bearings in action you'll understand.

Well, the Townshend Seismic Isolation Platform arrived yesterday, and with the limited time I had, I simply put it under the turntable and spun a record. Keep in mind that the Rega Planar 3 was sitting on 4 Stillpoints Ultra Mini Risers, which lifted the performance of the Rega to what I would consider a "good" level, without comparisons to my Nottingham or my memories of my Versa Dynamics (still out on the West Coast).
My reaction was of the "...yeah, it sounds...nice..." but nothing more than that. In other words, I wasn’t jumping up and down with joy the moment I pulled the system out of mute. And that, in itself, was disappointing. Fortunately, I’m a mad scientist, so I simply thought, this is going to take time. It’s not like the first time I heard my Antique Sound Lab Hurricanes and was speechless (and you can see by the length of my posts that speechless is not one of my more prominent characteristics). Yeah, I hear you laughing out there.

When I returned home last night, I was not up to fooling around with the feet, so I waited until today. I balanced the turntable (using a bubble level that measures front to back and side to side) and played music. First up was an old album by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. The sound was superior to the Stillpoints - but not by much. Then I decided to rotate the front and rear feet on the right hand side. Being the "mad scientist" type, I will rotate a footer so little that, were you watching me, you might say, "You didn’t even move it." And you’d be right. But tiny, TINY movements tell me more than turning a quarter of a turn, or even 1/16" turn.
With one tiny turn (remember, almost invisible to my own eye) on the front right foot, there was a clear improvement in each singer’s voice, but especially Annie Ross’ voice. Also, CLEARLY more audible: the breaths singers take in between measures/notes. That low-level detailing is part of what contributes to the sense of continuousness, the one component that did this better than anything I’ve heard being the Jadis Defy 7. Nothing before - or since - has matched those components for continuousness, although I imagine if I had a very, VERY expensive system, I might hear that. My old 1990 system which I’ve outlined in other posts, would be, in today’s dollars, around $90k, although a $90k system now would, I imagine, surpass my then $50k system in the HEAR and now (that was not a typo).

So, the voice was more continuous, having lost the stop-start nature (where the singer stops singing and seems to disappear until they start singing again) that less accomplished systems convey. Which, in turn, contributes to a more "alive" sound, the way my tuner sounds when I listen to the Metropolitan Opera performances on Saturday afternoons (and those performances, by the way, sound quite "real". If you can’t afford the best equipment (and who can??), listen to one of these performances and if your system is even halfway decent, you’ll have a better idea of what "live" sounds like). Jon Hendricks’ voice moved forward, as though he stepped closer to the microphone, and his throaty quality was quite improved (and this is NOT a good recording - which is why I use it. It can be easier to hear improvements in poor recordings, provided they are vocal and usually recordings no later than 1976, when, it seems, pop recordings got worse). I then adjusted the rear foot: again, tiny incremental turn. THIS time, the soundstage became much more pronounced: I could hear back walls and a room surrounding the singers.

Without detailing each turn (there were only a few more, and in one case, I moved the back right hand foot counterclockwise (the previous turns were clockwise, as I dialed all 4 feet to the starting point, so the only way to go was clockwise). That turn was a noticeable improvement in small inflections of the voice, this time on Lady Sings the Blues (Motown had great music, but the WORST recordings of ANY major label I’ve ever heard), so anything one does is bound to make it sound better.
My music room is in two parts: the original house, and then the addition to the room/house, which has MUCH more solid flooring. The original flooring is a bit flexible (creaky). I can now jump up into the air two feet and come down on my heels, without the slightest feedback coming thru the speakers. (It usually manifested as a kind of "booooom" sound.) The Stillpoints (and I LOVE the Stillpoints) could not prevent the boom: the Townshend wins, hands down, in this application (turntable). Not even close. So, for those of you with spongy floors, the Townshend is likely the way to go.

I’m vehemently opposed to the idea that one can simply put a footer at/near the corner of a component and get good results. All that has ever demonstrated - for me - is the "tighter bass" that so many people post about when they get isolation footers. There is a point on EVERY component that frees the component from colorations and allows the music to whisper, shout, scream, bang or whatever is on the record waiting to come forth unfettered. If you’re unwilling to put in the time and experiment, you will be somewhat disappointed in your economic investment, but even less satisfied with your musical enjoyment.

I’ll have to listen to more records, but the Townshend certainly is in the lead by a long shot, ahead of the Nordost Sort Kones - which, in all honesty, I never warmed up to, but kept thinking it was "just me" (but I have not heard the Sort Fut footers), Stillpoints, Finite Elemente Cerapucs and Cerabases. Whenever I realize I’m RESPONDING TO the music, not LISTENING FOR the "sounds" (i.e., soundstage, imaging and other constructs), that’s a move forward. And remember, in other applications, the Stillpoints may match the Townsends. I won’t know that unless I spring for a second Townshend platform for the CJ preamp, which is supported by the Stillpoints. On that note, though, let me throw this out there: the CJ Classic 60 SE does NOT sound better on Stillpoints. Point of fact, it sounds best on its own feet. I do not know why, but it’s not debatable, not for me. I was nonplussed to discover that, let me tell you, and I could hear it the moment I pulled the system out of mute. I kept thinking "What the hell is going on?" I finally removed the Stillpoints, put the CJ back on the Maple block platform and the music returned.

I’ll put in the Conrad Johnson ET preamp and amp in a week or so, but even with a mere NAD C325BEE, one can get lost in music instead of criticizing the shortcomings. And that’s what we listen to music for, yes? To get lost and taken away.

My only regret is that isolation devices are so absurdly expensive, because, without superior isolation, you may not realize what is actually on the records. As I have said before, I believe: room acoustics, clean electricity and isolation are all intertwined. If you have one, but not the other two, it’s no good to have superior electronics: you can have good - even great - sound, but you won’t have magnificent MUSIC.

Next up is to turn on the Nola Thunderbolt subwoofers to see how much the low bass has improved. I was dazzled enough by the dialing in of the Townshend that I forgot to even turn ON the subwoofer. I think that says something in and of itself...

David, my solution is extremely inelegant. I use a maple chopping block (I have a Finite Elemente Spider Rack) which sits on the rubber feet on the Spider, and I just use a magic marker, which I draw circles around the footers on the maple block, since I’ve found even extremely small movements change the sound. Any footers sit on the maple block board (as does the Townshend platform) It still disturbs me that if I jar a tube trap out of position - even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of an inch - I can hear that I’ve lost say, Janis Joplin’s raspiness when she sings "Summertime". And then I’ll spend 5 minutes ever so gently thumping the tube trap with the palm of my hand down towards the floor to get it back to where I hear that raspiness again. That happens because I brush up against them on my way in and out of the room on occasion. Also, I think the smaller the room, the more it matters on acoustic treatment, but also on isolation devices, such as footers or anything like that. In fact, back when Tom Miller and I were doing a review on the Audio Artistry Dvorak speakers (I think it was TAS issue 97 or so), he and I were discussing transient response and he said he thought it was a little ’blunted.’ I remember telling him to play with the tube traps a bit (because I’d had them longer than him - or anyone else, for that matter: I got mine in 1988. He got his in the mid 90s). He did and the next day I remember just, a propos of nothing, asking if he’d gotten any improvement out of the system and he replied that he’d moved the Tube Trap and the transient response improved noticeably. That was when I realized that even a slight movement could affect sonics. And while I’m remembering that, I also recall that when HP reviewed the Goldmund Reference, back in TAS 41, he mentioned in passing that the sound had been a bit darkish, and that Jeff Goggins, his then setup man had had to move the turntable out of the room and when he put it back in - and I remember PRECISELY what he said- he said Jeff gave the turntable a thorough cleaning and he returned it to the main room and that "maybe it wasn’t  precisely to the  micron replacement in the same spot it had occupied" - and he found it much less colored "much to this writer's utter consternation." So, he sold the seeds of insight even back then that WHERE you put something affects your end result. ( I have a rather startling photographic memory for anything written in a  review in early TAS, up to say, 1995 - but NO other magazine. However, I can never find the car keys, so clearly it's only with subjects I am focused on  to a laser-like intensity.)

Also, I use different color magic markers (sometimes I feel like I’m 5 years old and just learning how to draw when I see how many circles I’ve drawn around the location of the footers). But I then write it down on a piece of paper so that, if I ever have to disassemble anything, I don’t mistake the blue magic marker for the final - and best - result, for the red one, or black one. I have driven myself quite crazy at times, but for me, it’s all fun. It’s only a problem if I lose the paper I use to record changes in speaker location, or write observational notes to myself (the same thing I did as a reviewer).
In other words, keep notes...

@gbmcleod; out of curiosity whats the price tag on the Townshend Seismic Isolation Platform? I googled it but I want to know what I could expect to pay in USD and not the suggested manufactors suggest price?

Incidentally, in my last post, re: HP, I meant to say "he SOWED the seeds of insight even back then that WHERE you put something affects your end result." I’d suggest moving racks up and down the sidewall if you have the space to do it. Or anything else, for that matter, since the Tube Traps (at least in my 13’ x 20’ room) show an inordinate improvement when moved mere fractions of an inch. This seems to hold true no matter the room size. Even in my 24’ x 45’ basement, there were changes in the sonic landscape if I moved a trap fractions of inches. I’m sure that’s not the case in every single room, but in my apartments in San Francisco, that was the case and the house was more solid - and older - than the (East Coast) home I’m in now, which is an entirely different construction (drywall, instead of plaster, as my San Francisco Edwardian-era apartment was), so I have to believe that it holds true in most cases. I recall another time, when HP was reviewing a pair of Thiel speakers, he commented on the tube traps in an oblique way, saying they worked, but they required a certain amount of attention and he wasn’t sure he was getting the best out of them. So, it seems that ANYthing can be placed on a rack, floor, wall, wherever, with "great" results, but for exceptional results, one must put in the time. But the room I’m in now has ASC’s Wall Damp construction (resilient channels, two sheets of drywall [different thicknesses] and all the rest). Interestingly, the basement sounds more "real" than the 13 x 20 room - and the walls are concrete (back then, covered in some spots with boxes, tables, which could break up the 'arrival time' at the listening position). As I recall Robert E. Greene once saying in TAS, if you don’t think the room matters, try moving the equipment into a different room and listen. He’s got far more experience than I ever will...

LAK: the isolation platform is a little over $900.00... I know you can buy the footer "cells" on Audiogon without the platform itself for less. I actually thought of doing that, but decided that the turntable should be fully supported, so I opted for the platform.

Comments regarding the Townshend speaker pods and isolation theory in general that I posted this morning on the Lifting Cables off the Floor thread could have been posted here on this thread with equal relevance.

cheers, Geoff Kait

And now for an update...
The Townshend platform is impressive, but I thought the dynamics just to be squelched, and the soundstage just a little compressed... And then I looked one shelf lower at my Evans microgroove Plus phono stage. Given all the discussion about positioning, I noticed that the Evans was not centered on the middle of the Bright Star platform that it was sitting on. Thinking that I would get minor improvements but still happy with that, and moved the microgroove so that it was more centrally located on the Bright Star. Whoa! 
The Athena label Symphonic Dances - which I had been playing in the last 2 days - suddenly demonstrated a solidity and a dynamic increase that was far beyond what I expected. I mean, the system - still NAD-equipped- did not sound like an "NAD." It sounded quite "powerful." And Bernstein's "Mass", which I'd found lifeless and had left me bored in previous listenings, ROARED. The upper midrange, in particular, showed a dynamic "kick" just missing before
So the Townshend is showing itself to be well worth its cost.  But it also demonstrates the utter importance of placement (The Microgroove, which I just put on the Bright Star, with NO thought of positioning,  surprised me. I moved it several more times - again, fractions of an inch, and could immediately  discern whether or not the movement improved or detracted.
 This is exciting.

Old discarded dry wall would be my first choice for trying to get that special designer look to any superior audio system. And It really sets off the room. 

I had a bad feedback problem through my turntable until I removed the spike feet under my platform and replaced them with isoblocks.  YMMV.

You could also try Herbie's grungebuster + PTFE washer pairs to isolate the PCBs in your DAC as I have done to good effect.  You have to unscrew the PCBs to put them in but this needn't be complicated depending on how your DAC is laid out.

Also, the Synergistic Research ECTs are very helpful for reducing high frequency noise in digital equipment - such as in DACs, USB converters and also in power supplies/conditioners/etc.  But for the ECTs to work at their best you may also need to have the SR FEQs in the room.  I'm not sure about this last point, but I do have the FEQs running all the time, and I can say that the ECTs do something for digital components and power supplies that other tweaks don't attempt and they do work.

Sticking My DAC in the Freezer did improve on the SQ has anyone else tried this?

A DAC is what you call it? Cute!

And by the way thanks to Geoff for a number of very good damping ideas with his cork paper in the DAC.  Those will help too.

david_ten OP1,143 posts07-09-2017 7:40pmAnother update, and a shout out to @bdp24  for bringing these to my attention.

I connected with Mike of Ingress Audio Engineering and will be getting a set of Level 2 and a set of Level 3 Rollerblocks in a few weeks.

David I know this a bit dated, but was wondering what your impressions were of the ingress rollerblocks?

@gwng8   Great that you are getting the Level 2 and 3s in for yourself.

I think it will depend on the component and the only way to really know is to try them out for yourself.

The Level 3s (version 1) with carbide bearings had a significant impact on sound quality and performance for my Schiit Yggdrasil DAC. Quite Amazing actually, and instantly delivered.  I am using the Level 2s (I have 2 sets) under my server and under my Preamp. 

I plan to order two sets of the newest Level 3s so I can swap out the 2s for both the Preamp and it's power supply.

Lol. Lead is one of the worst materials for sound that has ever been perpetrated on naive and gullible audiophiles. Yes, I know it seems like a good idea, all soft and heavy like. 😛 Even the esteemed Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade grew to detest lead although he was a big fan for a long time and, according to your humble scribe’s sources, had one of his employees cart out 200 lbs of the stuff to Las Vegas for use in CES shows.

Besides, mass loading simply changes the resonant frequency of the component. It is not really a substitute for real vibration isolation. I.e., mass on spring. If one is determined to use heavy mass on top of a DAC or anything else, you will have much better luck incorporating a viscoelastic material under the heavy mass, I.e., constrained layer damping.