IKEA bamboo cutting board and Herbie's Audio Lab Tenderfeet

[TubeLover]

These also are very reasonable and seem to be reviewed well.....anyone using them?

 

https://www.musicdirect.com/recommended-gifts-under-100/bright-star-isonodes-set-of-4

 

JC

[AudioDoctor]

I use the "Pro" versions because they are cheaper.  No "Audiophile metal bling, but they work the same. Not as cheap as your solution, but cheaper than IsoAcoustics identical but Audiophile version.

 

https://www.musicdirect.com/vibration-control/IsoAcoustics-Iso-Pucks

[TubeLover]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

I use the "Pro" versions because they are cheaper.  No "Audiophile metal bling, but they work the same. Not as cheap as your solution, but cheaper than IsoAcoustics identical but Audiophile version.

 

https://www.musicdirect.com/vibration-control/IsoAcoustics-Iso-Pucks

Thanks. Those look well worth considering.

 

JC

[AudioDoctor]

7 minutes ago, TubeLover said:

Thanks. Those look well worth considering.

 

JC

 

I don't know what you're supporting, but they sell a pack of eight (a smaller version) of these, each supports 6 lbs, for $99.

 

The one linked above supports 20lbs each.

[TubeLover]

10 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

I don't know what you're supporting, but they sell a pack of eight (a smaller version) of these, each supports 6 lbs, for $99.

 

The one linked above supports 20lbs each.

I need support for two monoblock amps that appeared in my picture (above in the discussion) and weigh 70 pounds each. So, would need the bigger ones you linked. 

 

JC

[barrows]

Hey folks, great discussion.  Bamboo can be a wonderful material with excellent damping properties.  BTW, my feeling is inter-component vibrations (with the possible exception of components with moving parts) is not really a "problem" in my experience, and the option of "draining" those vibrations is not really that relevant to performance.  Much more problematic is the vibration which comes from the loudspeakers, shaking everything.  I generally prefer to isolate components rather than trying to "drain" them.

Anyway: I found this source which will make Bamboo shelving in custom sizing, as what is available from Ikea is too small for my needs:

 

https://www.cuttingboardcompany.com/3-4-thick-amber-bamboo-custom-cutting-board-natural-edge-grain/

 

Yes, more costly than Ikea, oh well...

 

I ordered a single shelf 19"x16" to try on my rack in place of one of my Acrylic (plexiglass) shelves.  The plexiglass shelving is fairly dead, but some suggest that bamboo sounds even better, I am going to find out.  Perhaps then I'll replace all of my rack shelves with bamboo.

[Ralf11]

Who wants to come cut out my Bamboo??

 

You'll need to crawl under the deck, but there is no charge...

[fas42]

The overall issue here is that vibration causes a degree of electrical noise in various parts of the circuitry - and just enough to detected by the ear ... yes, this shouldn't be so, but if the components and the links between them are like they are in most systems, it will be an audible issue.

 

What to do? Best solution is to engineer the hardware of the circuits so that this factor vanishes - but living in a real world of commercial products where such is not often considered, the next best thing is to kill the vibration. I do a bit of both ... dive inside, and physically stabilise areas which I suspect are too 'fragile'; and, damp, separate the enclosures on the outside. If you do enough, well, it will be enough ... 🙂.

 

A key factor also is that I aim to have the vibration of the speakers 'drained' to a much higher mass - the frequencies and levels of vibration are greatly reduced ... this always works for me.

[robocop]

Barrow's I certainly recommend Bamboo shelving and I've tried nearly all types. Try and source bamboo laminated panels and get cut to size.

Example below these are very rigid and strong but light. They come in different thicknesses from 20mm to 50mm. A number of rack manufacturers are including bamboo shelves on racks now. The large Ikea  APTITLIG Butcher block, bamboo, 17 ¾ x 14 ¼ "

$19.99 is the common one I've tried for size and sound. 

 

[robocop]

A major problem is what the listening room is made out of. This in turn influences devices supporting components. In reality its a minefield and one can only get a good compromise by trial and error. Let alone airborne and floor vibrations which is where good component construction comes in ie: circuit boards chassis and cases.

 

Personally I lean towards wood in various configurations. I use to manufacture all steel welded rigid frames with iron sand filled columns spiked to the floor and shelves spiked to frames. My last one of these had black granite 30mm shelves. Replacing these with Ikea butcher blocks did change the sound and I much preferred it. Nowadays I run a laminated American Oak rack with bamboo footers under components. I run on the theory that a lot of critical music instruments are in fact made of wood and this is what gives their particular sound trait. 

[Ralf11]

needs to withstand a Richter 4.7 with no IM distortion

[barrows]

@robocop,  Well, ahh...  I did provide a link to where one can find bamboo "cutting boards" cut any size one needs, in various thicknesses.  Of course all bamboo boards are laminates, as bamboo grows as a hollow tube, and to make boards of any size requires laminating many smaller pieces together.  I am sure the fact that it is a laminate contributes to its ability to damp vibrations, as any laminate will have fewer resonance modes than any more coherent material.  I am sure DeVore speakers are taking good advantage of this resonant behavior with the bamboo cabinets they use.

Another interesting material just on the horizon is Hemp based boards, these are another conglomerate material of pressed hemp fiber and a binding agent, so far these are being marketed as an alternate to solid oak flooring, so apparently the conglomerate is very dense-I suspect these may have very good vibration aspects as well.  Hemp fibers also have a promising future for speaker cones, I am sure driver makers are on it!

 

My rack is made of a maple frame, with maple shelf supports, with plexiglass shelves resting o sorbothane isolation pads.  So I am looking to improve its performance by changing out the shelving with bamboo.  The bamboo shelves are similar in price to custom cuts of plexiglass.  I may try some Herbie's products instead of the sorbothane to support the shelving as well, as the Sorbothane seems to deteriorate over time.  My system has come up a level since switching to optical Ethernet, and the Iconoclast interconnect, and small changes are more easily audible now. 

[Ralf11]

hemp boards work best when playing Phish

 

bamboo gives better SQ for Chinese flute

[robocop]

Never found sorbothane to be an advantage under any hi-fi component. Its somewhat an insulator damper and certainly not rigid tending to keep any vibrations within component and dulling the sound. I cut a bamboo board into pieces 20 x 30 x 18mm thick and use these between components and shelf(mostly 3 to a component). I still use blu-tac under speaker to speaker stand(laminated Maple) which is spiked to floor(wooden). I subscribe to theory: better to remove any vibration to earth with different materials to break up resonances as quick as possible. I've made footers from brass, copper, aluminium and stainless steel(spikes, cones cylinders) all impart a different sound that tends to be brighter. Hence my moving back to wood which is more forgiving and seems more balanced.  

[Ralf11]

https://www.motioncontroltips.com/app-turns-apple-ios-devices-professional-vibration-measurement-tools/

[barrows]

56 minutes ago, robocop said:

Never found sorbothane to be an advantage under any hi-fi component. Its somewhat an insulator damper and certainly not rigid tending to keep any vibrations within component and dulling the sound. I cut a bamboo board into pieces 20 x 30 x 18mm thick and use these between components and shelf(mostly 3 to a component). I still use blu-tac under speaker to speaker stand(laminated Maple) which is spiked to floor(wooden). I subscribe to theory: better to remove any vibration to earth with different materials to break up resonances as quick as possible. I've made footers from brass, copper, aluminium and stainless steel(spikes, cones cylinders) all impart a different sound that tends to be brighter. Hence my moving back to wood which is more forgiving and seems more balanced.  

 

I do not much believe in the concept of "draining vibrations to ground".  But, the construction of the home has a lot to do with this, certainly, if one has a suspended wood floor, nothing is going to drain anywhere.  On the other hand, this approach may have some validity if the floor of the listening room is a concrete slab poured on bedrock.  with loudspeakers, spiking them to a suspended wood floor couples the vibrations to the floor, where that energy then travels back into the speaker after reflecting off of room boundaries: this smears the sound.  The better approach is to isolate the speaker from the floor, products such as those offered by still points and IsoAcoustics do this.  Also, some very high resolution speakers have such isolation built in, like Raidho, whose speakers come with built in bearing isolation systems.  As mentioned previously, I find better results from isolating components from vibration.

Now my room has a suspended wood floor, results may be different in the case of a well grounded concrete slab on grade...

[fas42]

The principle that has always worked for me, from the beginning, is to increase, hopefully dramatically, the effective mass of the speaker cabinet - or the supports of the speaker drivers; mass loading is another name for this.

 

Companies like Wilson worked this out ages ago - make the supporting structure very heavy, inert, 'dead' to vibration - and immediately the 'sharpness' of the sound increases. Of course, this will highlight any deficiencies in the preceding electronics - but it's a false move to allow the cabinet to wobble, to "blur away" this inconvenient truth, 🙂.

 

Locking to a heavier weight underneath is trivially easy to do, just by using Blu-Tack correctly - easy to reverse, to check what has been gained, or lost.

[barrows]

21 minutes ago, fas42 said:

but it's a false move to allow the cabinet to wobble, to "blur away" this inconvenient truth

This is total BS, the speaker drivers move both forward, AND back well before the cabinet has any chance to move.  While making a speaker cabinet which avoids resonances is highly desirable, and I am in favor of doing that, the cabinet does not need to be high mass to avoid resonances (that is just one approach).  I would suggest that you get out a bit and listen to some speakers.  I would suggest listening to Raidhos, which are isolated by bearings and can easily wobble around on those bearings if you give them a shove:  I challenge anyone to suggest that Raidho speakers "blur" sound, they are some of the highest resolution speakers available.  As for mass, it has been proven to me to not be necessary:  Vivid audio makes (relatively) lightweight, composite cabinet speakers, which avoid resonances through very good design, without resorting to high mass.  Again, have a listen to those speakers.  Both of these brands are among the very best speakers available. 

[Ralf11]

one point, Barrows: the cabinet may be moving at time t, caused by cone movement that occurred at time t-1

[barrows]

24 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

one point, Barrows: the cabinet may be moving at time t, caused by cone movement that occurred at time t-1

Perhaps you are right.  But my experience listening to speakers suggests that there is no sound blurring/loss of resolution when a loudspeaker is decoupled from the floor.  We (Sonore) used Raidho C-1.2 speakers at RMAF in our demo system one year, and the precision and resolution of that speaker is SOTA (and it is not even the highest level in Raidho's line)-the speaker is a monitor, and the dedicated stand is very lightweight and decoupled from the floor by a bearing system-a light touch on the set up and it moves.  I do not think anyone who has heard Raidhos (any model) would suggest that they suffer from a lack of resolution (blurring).

Here at home, I changed my speakers from being spiked to the floor, to resting on an industrial based decoupling solution, and resolution and focus increased.  So while there is a lot of conventional audiophile wisdom suggesting that coupling speakers to the floor is the way to go, I have heard very compelling evidence to the contrary.

[Ralf11]

Agreed on decoupling - of course one advantage of Maggies and electrostatic designs is you no longer worry about it

 

The really odd thing tho is that you bothered to respond to one of Frank's posts...

[barrows]

Yes, planars have their advantages, and are very good at what they do well, (I remember being amazed by my Uncle's Quads as a kid) unfortunately, they are not for me (especially as they are relatively affordable as well due to no need for expensive cabinetry) as they just never seem to have enough body to their sound to suit my preferences.  As much as I acknowledge the things they often do better than conventional drivers in a box designs, still, the better examples of drivers in a box work best for me.

[fas42]

59 minutes ago, barrows said:

This is total BS, the speaker drivers move both forward, AND back well before the cabinet has any chance to move.  While making a speaker cabinet which avoids resonances is highly desirable, and I am in favor of doing that, the cabinet does not need to be high mass to avoid resonances (that is just one approach).  I would suggest that you get out a bit and listen to some speakers.  I would suggest listening to Raidhos, which are isolated by bearings and can easily wobble around on those bearings if you give them a shove:  I challenge anyone to suggest that Raidho speakers "blur" sound, they are some of the highest resolution speakers available.  As for mass, it has been proven to me to not be necessary:  Vivid audio makes (relatively) lightweight, composite cabinet speakers, which avoid resonances through very good design, without resorting to high mass.  Again, have a listen to those speakers.  Both of these brands are among the very best speakers available. 

 

Ah, so the speaker drivers move back and forth, and then do nothing until the cabinets have reacted, by vibrating. And then the drivers switch on again, when the cabinets have settled down - clever speakers, them ... .

 

I examine situations by considering extreme variations - what if the drivers were bolted to a massive lump of concrete, many tons worth? Would the sound be wrecked because the driver frame was completely locked to an 'immovable' object ... I suspect not ...

 

I have been listening to speakers for 30 years now - one of the first I came across, to go down the "impressive route", were Duntech, Sovereigns?? - enough heft to crush a small car, from the look of them ... still didn't 'work', because they were not stabilised sufficiently, to the floor.

 

I like, 'tight' sound ... and that is something I don't hear far too often - there will always be exceptions depending upon how the engineering is done - and no, I haven't listened to Raidho, or Vivid.

[fas42]

One of the big gains of, yes, box speakers is that proper coupling with high mass ensures that the bass line in the music comes alive - "where's the subwoofer ... ?!!" 🙂 ... planars are typically not well stabilised - so, low "body" , 😉.

 

The friend down the road uses tiny, tiny Tannoys - mid/bass driver almost as small as the tweeter, in size - yet, plenty of guts to the sound - because we have spent quite some effort in optimising the coupling to their stands, etc.

[barrows]

Received my 19" x 17" x 3/4" bamboo shelf today.  I replaced the shelf under my amp (a plexiglass shelf of the same size), and took a listen to a couple of reference tracks.  Definitely an improvement, not night and day, but meaningful for sure, and not just a change, but certainly an improvement.  Slightly more natural sound on vocals and a little more ambience around instruments in the stage were the first obvious improvements.  I am sure I will notice more over time and playing lots of music.  Looks like I'll be changing out my other shelves as well...  no noticeable tonal shift at all, just a bit more resolution.