What is sound floor

Hello Redkiwi, I am very grateful for your last post, because I am indeed not quite happy with the rendering of the bottom end, not deep bass mind you, which my subs take fairly nicely care of, but bass from about 30 hz up. Perhaps it is indeed a question of energy storage within the amps in question. I'll have to go into this. Cheerio and regards,

I use a Bright Star Little Rock slab on my very lightweight components to mash them tightly against the Black Diamond Racing Cones, Audiopoints, or Goldmund cones that I use underneath them. My lightweight components are a New Tjoeb CD player, a couple of tuners, an ARC PH-3 phono preamp, and, before I sold it, my ARC LS-15. This seemed to anchor them more securely to the cones and improve the focus and resolution. But of course, I could be imagining things. Currently, my BAT VK30SE preamp is heavy enough to bear down enough on its own onto the Audiopoints it sits on (on a Sistrum rack, full of Audiopoints), so I no longer use a Little Rock on top of it.

Hi Detlof. Just my opinion of course. Weighing components down can reduce the peakiness of resonances in the mids and highs, but just shifts them into the bass (at best). In my playing with using mass I eventually concluded that although neutrality could be obtained, the energy storage was smearing the bass. This resulted in what was initially a pleasing increase in bass weight. But I eventually realised there was something about the sound that was unnatural, and eventually pin-pointed it as time-smearing of the bass making it appear to lag the rest of the music. It is only in the last few months that I have finally had success with using light/rigid structures. Previously I had felt there was a trade-off between the superior PRAT of light/rigid, and the superior removal of resonant peaks of the mass damping approach.

I have to admit, however, that with very heavy components the light/rigid approach has so far been less successful for me (eg. my Plinius SA250 Mk IV and my Theta combo respond less well than some of my lighter stuff - but still sound better to me on light/rigid/damped supports).

As far as PRAT goes, like all other aspects of reproduced music, I have never come across a system where its PRAT is perfect.

Keis. My playing with this vibration issue suggests that it affects electronic equipment like DACs and solid state amplification too. You should give it a try.

Having a good solid non-vibrating floor would improve any stereo sound for two reasons I can imagine.
1. Accoustically the speakers are better coupled and the floor doesn't give to add out of phase vibrations that kill low frequencies and muddy up the bass and mid range.
2. Less vibration improves some components such as cartridge tracking and possibly CD laser tracking. Some also subscribe to vibration of pure electronics such a tube filements and circuit boards reducing fidelity. Maybe...

Gosh, Redkiwi, isn't our life complicated. I use a 25kg iron weight on each of the output transformers of my Jadis 500, also one each of the same heftyness on the Spectral 360's and one on my DAC. Cannot say that my music is without PRAT and I feel, that I would notice GROSS time smearings and this especially in music which I am familiar with from live events. But all the same. I will go into this again and listen with and without weighing the components down and report. Cheerio

When someone says that a change to their system lowered the noise floor they are saying they heard more low level detail emerge from the general murk that lives within the reproduced sound. The noise that is not correlated with the music is not usually the issue, it is the stuff that is correlated with the music that does the most damage to our ability to hear the more fine details.

I don't find weighing components down improves the sound at all. It can take out peaky resonances but causes gross time smeering which robs the music of its PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing), which is that thing that makes you want to move with the music. Instead you are best to isolate equipment from vibrations by supporting it with light and rigid structures (eg. welded steel racks, spiked to the ground and with spikes supporting the shelves), and then to have some form of damping of the shelf. If you are going to damp equipment then it is best to use a damping sheet. Sheer weight is not the way to go from my experience (I have travelled that path).

Do you mean "noise floor" by any chance? I'm not going to explain it well, but it's a term used to describe the background noise of the recording. For example, it might refer to the noise that a microphone preamp makes, tape hiss on an analog recording, static on an LP, etc. A digital recording made with excellent mics and preamps should have a much lower noise floor than a recording made on a cassette player with a cheap Radio Shack mic. Some components also add noise when playing...certain turntables, certain tubes, transformers, etc. The lower the noise floor, the more the actual instruments and voices stand out against the background.

As far as the stone slabs go...your guess is as good as mine. People do it to dampen the vibrations, but I have never tried it. I think it's one of those things that would work for some and not for others. I suppose it couldn't hurt...or could it?