Equipment isolation and vibration damping.

[YashN]

I was playing with different types of bamboo boards, from cheapest to expensive Japanese imports. Most expensive from them are quite thick, and they add to sound characteristics rather than isolate. The idea is everything what we use to support components needs to be neutral, is bamboo neutral?

 

There are a few things to consider:

 

You'd rather use something like metal for the surface in contact with the ball.

 

The bamboo item can be constructed in several ways. If you zoom in on the IKEA pics, you can see that this one is made up of several layers glued together. One of the reviews I came across actually recommended that type of construction, or several layers of those in various alignments.

 

Bamboo may not be neutral per se, but it may be more natural, especially regarding acoustic music.

[YashN]

find it too easy to reach out for support to one of the corners of the woofer box that doesn't have a device under it, and tipping it over. I may go to 4 devices per woofer too, just for a reasonable amount of stability.

 

Use a safety fall-back support device at these corners, which do not usually touch the lower surface of the component.

 

Do not use 4 unless you make absolutely sure that you have managed to make the 4 totally horizontally level.

 

If planarity is missing with 4, this will end up as chatter or additional sound coloration detrimental to the overall accuracy of music reproduction, hence the recommendation to use only 3, which is the minimum number to define a plane. Proper placement of the 3 will define the stability of the plane.

[YashN]

To the extent that any of these must bear a certain amount of weight over a given surface area size, isn't the "resonant frequency" ultimately determined by the weight of the device plus the platform? In other words, a lighter weight can use a less inflated tube, therefore a springier, lower resonance. A heavier weight object will put more pressure on the tube, thereby raising the effective air pressure and the resonant frequency. Obviously you can increase the size of the tube only so much...

 

Good question, once you add parts, there is a need to consider the new system's natural frequencies. This is why I am not too fond of the current air-cushion for now as I haven't seen any measurements relative to the frequencies and damping or the transfer chart, but that won't prevent me from trying it out and listen for SQ effects.

[YashN]

I meant to ask, where you find bamboo boards.

 

Forgot to mention that I found mine at the 'Dollar' Store nearby (it's actually called Dollarama here).

[YashN]

A 6 foot tall, 95 lb speaker has to high a center of gravity to worry about a little 'possible' chatter.

 

You'd worry about it if you were serious about getting great sound.

[YashN]

I also use very good Japanese bamboo boards, much better quality than those from cheap Ikea stock.

 

What about their construction (in terms of layers)?

[YashN]

Visually it has layers.

 

I'll see if I can find that review or article about bamboo and audio. It goes to some length with that construction or layering aspect.

[YashN]

Here it is:

 

Audiobeat - The Best Things in Life Are (Almost) Free: IKEA's Aptitlig Chopping Boards

 

What makes bamboo so effective in the audio world is its structure and the process that allows us to turn what is basically a massive fibrous grass into a flat board. The bamboo itself is formed from long bundles of cellulose fibers, bound together by lignin, a natural thermoplastic resin. The closer to the surface you get, the greater the density of those fibers. The result is not unlike natural carbon fiber, but considerably heavier. Take that structure and cut it into strips that can then be stacked face to face to create a single flat board and you have a random, composite, variable-density material -- which is just about ideal for dissipating mechanical energy effectively without converting it into a single, dominant resonant frequency the way that glass or MDF does. Great in theory -- how does it work in practice? Better than you are going to believe -- which is exactly why Atacama and Quadraspire have made it central to their product lines.

[YashN]

One thing I am serious about is not getting told what to do by a 'Google Gadfly' with a lot of unconnected and conflicting data rattling around uselessly in his youthful head, precious little wisdom, diarrhea of the fingertips, and a decidedly rotten attitude !

 

You're classless and ignorant. Join the other trolls.

[YashN]

I tried more expensive square shaped thick bamboo boards of layers construction, both horizontal and vertical. Such as:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]19770[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]19771[/ATTACH]

 

These look quite cool for vibration dissipation.

[YashN]

I have read that marble tiles to go under the equipment (above the roller balls) should be 1/2" thick. I am having no luck finding them; all I find is 18"x18", 3/8" thick tiles. How critical is this?

 

Also on the same lines; 3/4" birch plywood is common, 1" is special order; again is it critical or not a deal breaker.

 

 

I would check how much they ring when tapped. You may find the sound of wood more natural, but the thing with wood is that the surface may dent after a while, and then the motion of the ball won't be smooth and can even induce sonic colorations.

 

So, if you do get marble or some other material which does not ring much, that would do. Or and alternative would be a few layers of material, e.g: metal (in contact with the ball) stuck to wood, or a sandwich of metal layers with something like rubber in between.

 

The upper surface also needs to be coupled to your equipment. On the other hand, if you're also managing air-borne or internal vibration with feet, it will be some form of intermediate coupling.

 

Best to try several alternative and see what gives.

[YashN]

While on my way back home tonight, noticed the shops were opened till later today, so headed into an old Chinese shop and asked for metal balls or some other type of balls, and looked around for a while until the old woman shop-owner showed me some crystal cuboid blocks with a slight concavity in them.

 

I think these might do: they're $5 each.

[YashN]

The ceramic bowls and plates have arrived from Thailand.[ATTACH=CONFIG]19806[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]19807[/ATTACH]

 

I spotted a few of these at the Chinese shop the other night, saw some of them have a bump in the middle, but some items are smooth.

[YashN]

Click on the various photo highlight circles to see what's on offer from HRS and how they work.

 

[YashN]

Slightly off topic but on the subject of isolation, vibration etc, how much harm are humming transformers going to do to ones sound? Presumably there's a lot of vibration caused, is this going to be significantly impacting SQ (apart from about as long as a piece of string)? This is leading to- how much effort to I put into resolving this (balanced transformer, move home..)

 

Good point, I am re-thinking my SET Tube Amp because of that.

[YashN]

I have both the ESS rack and the Entreq Silver Minimus.

 

The ESS rack is nothing short of incredible. It was probably the biggest leap in my system in terms of musical enjoyment.

 

And I wouldn't listen to my digital source without the Entreq box.

 

Thanks for the feedback, skyline.

 

There's quite a hefty and thoroughly interesting thread where we talk about the Entreq and Tripoint devices as well as grounding among other things if you want to share your listening impressions there, that would be awesome too:

 

[h=2]AC Filtering, Grounding Boxes, Linear PSU and Balanced Power.[/h]

[YashN]

Does this mean horizontal vibrations potentially do more damage than vertical ones? I don't know but I think this is a possibility. Another, perhaps stronger possibility is that there just happen to me more horizontal ones than vertical ones. (To my current understanding -- always subject to modification of course -- seismologists refer to the former as "primary" and the latter as "secondary".)

 

In seismic event, if I remember correctly, the P Waves are larger than the S waves.

 

Additionally, S waves do not travel through liquid...

 

Now, as mentioned previously (first post), the air-cushion predominantly is dealing with vertical isolation (or at least the predominant goal of using it by those installing it is avowed to be this).

 

However, since the air-cushion in the form of a partially inflated inner tube has freedom of motion in all directions, it can also help isolate for vibration and rotation in the horizontal plane, as well as provide some isolation from tilt, i.e. rotation around axes in the horizontal planes.

 

So, I would say that if the inner tube is used below the cup-and-ball, it is already pre-filtering some of the horizontal plane vibrations and rotations before they reach the cup-and-ball.

[YashN]

Hi Dave,

The "problem" here is that you are speaking from direct experience as opposed to not having any experience with this, theorizing a lot (often erroneously),

 

I've seen you theorising erroneously too and I pointed this out as John Swenson did too ('curvature is needed for isolation'), and Daudio made the same mistake (not surprising here at all).

 

and simply repeating what others have said as if you discovered it.

 

Yet, you've been doing this for years yourself. At least you mentioned your real sources once here of all the same re-hashing I've seen in several forums (some fawning elements erroneously think you invented this).

 

Now who am I going to believe about how the water feels: Someone who has spent some good time swimming? Or someone who might have (or might not have) dipped their toe in once? ;-}

 

Perhaps you should believe someone who has researched and then tells you not to swim in these waters because there are sharks there?

 

My experience matches yours: the air bearing works well vertically and doesn't do much horizontally. To be clear, it might be more than zero in the horizontal plane but it is essentially close enough to zero that this is how I think of it.

 

Which is what I was saying... The action is predominantly vertical (first post in this thread for those who read carefully and understand logical and rational thought), but it still has the other degrees of freedom, so it moves in all of them but to a lesser extent than the vertical action.

 

And rotationally, does even less.

 

But it still moves in those directions too.

[YashN]

I have reversed the order under my DAC and my pre amp and am listening for a while.

 

Looking forward to your comparative listening impressions.

[YashN]

These look great, found them on WBF:

 

 

 

These effectively isolate components in a magnetically levitated constrained layer. 3 can support components between 6 and 60# and are adjustable in approximately 1.5# increments. They promote "naturalness" over enhancement, and will not rob systems of bass or mid-bass, or thin out the sound.

 

I like the idea.

[YashN]

However, I do not remember one question being answered:

 

How do you use the roller/cup solution to floorstanding speakers when on thick carpet? Do you just rest the cups on the bare carpet? Do you use a solid base beneath the cups? If so, what material? Maple, granite, etc?

 

Both would work IMO. The more important things seem to be the surfaces in direct connection with the ball: you'd need a strong, flat, non-resonant material on top of the ball and ideally a totally flat, hard material beneath but since that has some practical issues, we use a slightly curved surface under the ball.

 

The problem you face with carpet is the difficulty in having a level surface, so perhaps to help with that, you'll want a heavy flat surface on the carpet before installing the 3 ball-and-cup arrangements for each speaker.

 

Right now I just have my speakers on cheap Parts Express spikes that poke through the carpet to the subfloor.

 

This will actually couple your speakers to your floor. Hence, any seismic vibrations will strongly be passed onto your speakers.

[YashN]

If I do place a thick-ish (1"+) base for the rollerball floor platform should I spike that through the carpet?

 

Unnecessary: if it's heavy enough it won't slide over the carpet surface.

 

For the other surface, look for really flat, hard and non-resonant: you could build your own with a thin plate of metal to which you add a layer of rubber or something like that (constrained layer damping).

[YashN]

I tried Barry Diament's tire innertube/ball bearing isolation tweak on all my components, and while it vastly improved my sound setup (CD player - Schiit Modi multibit - Schiit Valhalla 2 - Beyerdynamic T90, all fed into a power conditioner), the sound seemed to regress and grow worse not long after... I kept tweaking things, getting more and more frustrated, trying to recapture the awesome improvement I initially heard... I'd read somewhere that audio tweaks need time to settle and the sound can change for the worse while things are "settling" until it reaches peak break in... is this what's going on? Does anyone who's done these kinds of tweaks have any experiences of this sort? Thanks.

 

Not sure what's going on, but have you tried also isolating your power conditioner?

[YashN]

Can you provide the link? What are they?

 

I don't have the link but a Google image search or a Google search for the words below the post might bring you to the post at WBF. The words below the post also describe what they do.

[YashN]

Looks really pretty but spikes transmit vibrations quite well. For real isolation use balls & cups for horizontal. True isolation of vertical vibrations is more difficult

 

I agree, if there's anything to be learned from the thread is that seismic isolation is fundamental and isolation is different from coupling, which the spikes do. Now, this is not saying you cannot combine one and the other, but the seismic one is more important as per Townshend.

 

So, the design and finish look great but too many spikes...

 

For the vertical isolation, the air cushion helps. Actually, the air cushion when partially inflated can also help with isolation in other axes of motion, so coupling it with the ball-and-cup is definitely a good idea.

 

I believe it is in the first half of the thread where I linked to some research papers for seismic isolation of buildings, these are a good read, or else the Wikipedia page on seismic waves provide more info: I sort of remember reading and posting that one of the two main types of seismic waves doesn't pass through water, so if it's the vertical one, you could envision a water-filled layer for isolation here.