Wooden Platforms Redux

Dave and others, never thought this could be so complicated. Thanks, Mark

[>>>" I asked in another thread about wood under components to eliminate vibration etc" <<<]

I don't think you can totally eliminate vibration, the best you can hope to do is shift them out of the audible range, where they will do less harm.

Vibration attack your system from 3 different fronts ... (1) Equipment Generated, (2) Air Born and (3) Floor Born ... each will require a different strategy and method of approach

Equipment Generated should be drained away into a higher mass shelf. Believe it or not, this is one of the purposes of the stock feet on our equipment, but we have come to realize that there are better alternatives (cones, wood blocks, roller bearings etc etc.)

Air Born, these are vibes that are generated by your speakers. Have you ever sat in a friend's Home Theater, and had your pant leg flap around when the SUB fired off. Your equipment senses this also. The defense here is to MASS LOAD (add weight to each component)

Floor Born ... this is the one that makes the guy's with the Turn Tables crazy ... can you say foot falls. Your rack will conduct various forms of vibration from the cars and trucks passing you house, HVAC system under thier normal operation, and even the natural Geo-Seismic shudder of Mother Earth. Against these infiltraters you must Decouple.

What I hope you get out of my post is there is no one device that can cure all forms of vibration.

Vibration Control can be harder than Chinese Arithmetic (and I mean no disrespect to our fine Pacific Rim members)

Make a plan ... plan your work ... and work your plan

T J MAXX stocks maple platforms in various sizes.If you don't see what you are looking for,take a visit in another week.If you find the right size,give it a wrap with your knuckle.Don't want overly ringy/nor overly dead.

thanks for these very interesting responses.

Another inexpensive and very effective way to dissapate vibrations is to use small wood blocks - roughly 1" x 2" x 2" (exact dimensions do not seem to be too improtant - except that one dimension needs to be greater than the height of the equipment feet). You can get 1" boards from a local hardwood retailer and cut your own from a variety of woods to experiment. You'll be surprised at what differences various woods will yield. I've tried oak, walunt, teak, maple, mahagony, bocote and zebrawood with the latter being my favorite by far. Be certain to put the wood in direct contact with the component chassis, and not under the component feet. For some reason, placing the wood with the grain parallel to the chassis seems to work better that putting the chassis on the end grain of the wood. This works for amps, preamps and CD players.

Even more effective is placing V-Pads between the wood and the equipment shelf; or even under the butcher block if you use that. You can get V-pads (ribbed rubber-cork - rubber pads) at heating and cooling supply retailers for about $2 apiece. They are designed to reduce vibrations in machinery and are very effective. They are about 3"x3" and if cut into quarters fit nicely under the small wood blocks. The combination of V-pad with wood does a very effective job of isolating airborne and/or rack/shelf-borne vibrations while the wood dissapates equipment vibrational energy with different woods yielding different sounds. Try the v-pads under your equipment rack as well.

This becomes a very inexpensive and dramatically effective tweak.

I am not aware of anyone using plywood in these applications. Not that it won't work, it just won't sound the same. If you want to try a low end solution, the usual recommendation is to go and get a 2 inch thick butcher block from Bed, Bath and Beyond