Component Isolation Tweak

[GrahamJohnMiles]

A quick suggestion that I've been experimenting with. Take a couple of old-fashioned chalkboard erasers, the ones with the vertical laminated felt strips and wooden back. Shove them, felt up under your components, especially the digital source and give it a listen. Seems to me the tangled wool felt should be perfect for absorbing and dispersing vibration. I'm hearing improvements but the trouble is I've made so many changes at once recently I can't tell how much the erasers are contributing. Be interesting to hear other opinions.

[wkhanna]

Ha!

Sounds like an intuitive application.

 

But I wonder how many here have ever seen a real (old-fashion) eraser, let alone used one?

 

When I was a child in elementary school, the teacher would assign a student each week to clean the erasers at day's end. This task required rounding up all the erasers in the room, taking them outside to the rear of the building, & beating them together until the action created only minute dust clouds & the individual was covered head to toe with the white talcky powder. We considered it an honor to be chosen, & took perfect completion of the task as a minimum requirement.

 

In fact, one of the largest manufacturers of chalk boards in the US was in the adjacent small town next to where I grew up in Western PA.

 

Sorry, us old curmudgeons go off like this often.

Now BTYRSP.

[GrahamJohnMiles]

Tell the truth, my teachers, back in the evil 60's used to chuck them at noisy kids. I managed to get three beaten up ones off a schoolteacher friend, and have ordered a few more off ebay.

Oddly, enough since I've been using them great sections of my music have been erased. Ah well, still a good tweak. Bet it would work wonders on a turntable.

[ipeverywhere]

I use those gel shoe insert things, just the heel ones, under my CD player. I can't tell if it made a difference. It does sound just the tad bit brighter and open but my analytical side says that can't be possible. It was a much cheaper experiment than the isolators sold at the Hi-Fi store. Anyway, it's another option. The gel does allow me to shake the CD player slightly side to side/forward and back so it must be dampening at least a little. I like the black eraser idea as well. Probably a bit more elegant than the "funky shaped blue things" everyone asks me about. I should buy more gel and try it under my other components. Maybe a double-blind shoe gel insert vs. felt eraser test is in order.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

[wgscott]

 

But I wonder how many here have ever seen a real (old-fashion) eraser, let alone used one?

 

 

We still use them, but, admittedly, it is University of California.

[wkhanna]

And some of us still have patches on the elbows of our twead blazers.

Wonder how those would work under my DAC?