Best material for putting components on?

[Roumelio.]

21 minutes ago, crisis said:

Or Ikea.

 

 

Yes, Ikea... My nearest ikea is 100kilometres away.

[frankn]

I'm very happy with 1" Slate shelf (which has very low 'Q' compared to most wood) under my TT. The slate also provides mass loading to the stand. The combination of Slate, a set of 3  Stillpoint5s under the solid 3 Layer Clear Audio Avant Garde plinth provides a very inert platform to play LPs from. For the digital side of playback those components sit atop Lenehan Isolation platforms which also sit on concrete pavers. 

Is it overkill, perhaps, but it sounds good and life's too short to keep on experimenting every week. 

[crisis]

14 minutes ago, Roumelio. said:

 

Yes, Ikea... My nearest ikea is 100kilometres away.

Mines about 20 minutes but I still don't go there. I wouldn't go if it was next door.. The missus picked them up for me.

[Addicted to music]

37 minutes ago, Assisi said:

@Addicted to music

Your responses to @guru  are a cop out given your unnecessary comment on a product with which you obviously had no experience of whatsoever.  I like others have used the product and found it to be beneficial.  As I said previously maybe it would be more useful for everybody that you try before you make the comments about something you know nothing about.

John

 

 

 

Not a cope out, I see no value in spending $88 on 3 disc that looks like it's made from raw materials that's worth $0.20 each and I stand by that decision. There is no measurements made to the said improvements but like everything else YMMV.   Good luck in this journey.

[Assisi]

21 minutes ago, Addicted to music said:

 

Not a cope out, I see no value in spending $88 on 3 disc that looks like it's made from raw materials that's worth $0.20 each and I stand by that decision. There is no measurements made to the said improvements but like everything else YMMV.   Good luck in this journey.

@Addicted to music I have no difficulty that you do not see value and to say so pleasantly .  However, just because it looks like 20 cents worth from a poor photo doesn’t mean that it is. It is time that the fall back position is not just that something does not measure.  Some of us rely upon our hearing and brain to tell us what is happening.  As you can detect  my experience does vary with yours and I am on a journey. 

For somebody like you with your years of audio experience and over 7,000 posts a little bit more considered wisdom and embracing of the possible may of benefit to everyone.

John

[Assisi]

44 minutes ago, crisis said:

Mines about 20 minutes but I still don't go there. I wouldn't go if it was next door.. The missus picked them up for me.

@crisis If you did go you may be surprised as to what other "products"you may find that would prick your interest audio wise.  I found some slats on a wall that went into some acoustic panels that I made. I don't know whether they work but they look okay.

John

 

[crisis]

11 minutes ago, Assisi said:

@crisis If you did go you may be surprised as to what other "products"you may find that would prick your interest audio wise.  I found some slats on a wall that went into some acoustic panels that I made. I don't know whether they work but they look okay.

John

 

Well the Minister of Finance also picked these up so I know what you mean.
I am interested in your acoustic panels (although someone else may not be so enthusiastic..), do you have pics?

[bob_m_54]

With people using anti vibration media between shelf surfaces and solid state equipment, do you do anything to negate the vibrations and resonance induced in the equipment enclosure? It seems to me, that if there was a noticeable difference using the isolation material between the equipment and the shelf, there must also be a noticeable effect from vibration through the equipment cases?.

[Roumelio.]

I own what looks like one of the most plasticy craptacular turntables there are. I've lost recollection of what Technics calls the plinth material but "plastic" should do for now. Resonance and vibration can become a significant issue. I'll tell you what some people use, it's called "play dough" otherwise known as non-hardening modelling clay. They stuff it around all the non-moving parts to add mass to the table and reduce resonance. This will of course change the acoustic qualities of the table, but some people quite enjoy doing things like this. It doesn't look like much but it works.

 

Edited July 20, 2017 by Roumelio.

[bob_m_54]

Yep, it's obvious for Turntables, but I was mainly talking about Amps, DACs, CD players etc.

[Roumelio.]

It's obvious for turntables because they inherently make music and need to be somewhere near the rest of your devices such as your amp and speakers so as not to be a pain in the arse. One can just as easily relocate an amp to another room if its causing audible issues. Not so sure about a CD player or DAC or whatever. The inherent reason why you would stuff a plinth on a turntable with acoustic deadening material though is because it is inherently the music making device (if you stick your ear on a turntable platter you can hear it making music when nothing else is turned on).  Small changes with poorly made plinths can make the world of difference in removing things like reverberation that will make your turntable sound like a fart in a can.

 

Changes in acoustic material in a speaker box will also make changes to how the speaker performs, think of the interior of your car on the basis of the same principle above (trying to create a good sonic environment in a tin can.) You can try adding some dynamat to your speaker boxes, but you either may or may not like the results. It can make your speaker boxes sound just a bit dead. The thing with speaker boxes is that they're designed acoustically as a whole (if we're talking about a properly designed, well thought out speaker and not cheap nasty crap). You may not improve upon the design of the speaker box and you may take something away from it.

 

You're free to experiment though.

[bob_m_54]

@Roumelio. Yeah, I think you missed my point though. If SS devices like Amps and DACs, where there are no electro-mechanical components, are affected noticeably by mechanical vibration from the surface they are resting on, surely the resonance induced into the enclosures would also greatly (if not moreso) affect the sound as well. Do people who are believers of vibration isolation for these components also consider this and treat the enclosure as well? I understand how this could be done, if I considered it necessary. I was just wondering why there is very little mention of this, when vibration isolation comes up.

[Addicted to music]

29 minutes ago, bob_m_54 said:

@Roumelio. Yeah, I think you missed my point though. If SS devices like Amps and DACs, where there are no electro-mechanical components, are affected noticeably by mechanical vibration from the surface they are resting on, surely the resonance induced into the enclosures would also greatly (if not moreso) affect the sound as well. Do people who are believers of vibration isolation for these components also consider this and treat the enclosure as well? I understand how this could be done, if I considered it necessary. I was just wondering why there is very little mention of this, when vibration isolation comes up.

 

You have an absolute valid point.  However in many cases that would void warranty.

what I like to see is the screen shots of measured Freq and distortion, impedance and to monitor in realtime by introducing the known vibrations.

ATM all we hear are the believers that just say;  "trust me, There is a difference!"

And even if the difference was observed by myself I'd like to see what I'm hearing that's different between unapplied and applied.

With CD players I'd like to see the error rate that it accumulates, unapplied and applied.  Current CD, bluray etc or any discs can spin at such a high rate and some cheap units such as the Sony s470   If there where error rates you'd see that effecting picture quality as well, and it will start to skip sections and hesitate.  Even with such internally introduced vibrations, you do not see any of this!

[Roumelio.]

I'm not even going to enter into the discussion about whether this affects DACs and CD players or other digital devices in the same way.

[Hergest]

1 hour ago, Roumelio. said:

If you stick your ear on a turntable platter you can hear it making music when nothing else is turned on

 

Makes my head spin.

[Roumelio.]

19 minutes ago, Hergest said:

 

Makes my head spin.

 

You're doing it incorrectly, put your ear next to it when you're playing vinyl with your amp turned off you will get the picture.

[joz]

30 minutes ago, Hergest said:

 

Makes my head spin.

 

Careful not to push the spindles into your ear.

[Hergest]

36 minutes ago, Roumelio. said:

 

You're doing it incorrectly, put your ear next to it when you're playing vinyl with your amp turned off you will get the picture.

 

Whoosh!

[andyr]

36 minutes ago, Roumelio. said:

 

You're doing it incorrectly, put your ear next to it when you're playing vinyl with your amp turned off you will get the picture.

 

 

That's known as 'needle talk'.  I have found (with the same cart) that the noise level is different with different arms. (I could hear a lot of noise with my DV505 ... and very little when I changed over to a Graham 2.2.)

 

The Univector I am using now also delivers very little needle talk.

 

Andy

 

[Addicted to music]

46 minutes ago, joz said:

 

Careful not to push the spindles into your ear.

 

You need to clean that ear sometime...

[Roumelio.]

47 minutes ago, andyr said:

 

That's known as 'needle talk'.  I have found (with the same cart) that the noise level is different with different arms. (I could hear a lot of noise with my DV505 ... and very little when I changed over to a Graham 2.2.)

 

The Univector I am using now also delivers very little needle talk.

 

Andy

 

 

My Technics SL-D2 is barely audible unless I want to go and stick my ear right up against the stylus. The point was that with an analogue medium in the case of vinyl there will always be some frequencies that can be excited. It's part of the process and this is why turntables need extra noise dampening and need to be removed from the pathway of other devices that can cause vibration. That's one of the reasons why your turntable has sprung feet. It's also why you should have some degree of separation of your turntable from the rest of your setup. In the end it doesn't matter what its called directly, its what you choose to do about it.

 

I'm not sure we should talk about the same rules applying to CD players and DACs.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Roumelio.

[Assisi]

14 hours ago, crisis said:

Well the Minister of Finance also picked these up so I know what you mean.
I am interested in your acoustic panels (although someone else may not be so enthusiastic..), do you have pics?

@crisis  Hi Phil,  This post may not fit in this thread but maybe there is some affinity. 

The matter of room treatment has intrigued me for some time.  This is because people on this forum and elsewhere often say that the best thing that you can do is treat the room to enhance the listening experience.  It is all about the room, the room, the room.  I am told that my listening area is reasonably good untreated and there are limits as to what one can do without having approval.

 

The last qualification is that I know virtually nothing about the technical aspects of reflections, absorption or traps etc.  I just like to experiment and see what happens

So taking into consideration the above I saw in Ikea some outdoor flooring.

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/categories/departments/outdoor/21957/

I wondered what I could do with it.  It looked good.  I bought a few a panels in the wood (The Middle Photo).  Interestingly I know somebody who also bought the same product with the same thought in mind.  I then thought that they are just flat and may not be particularly useful on their own.  So the project evolved. 

 

I now have rectangular wooden frames with a sandwich of products inside. They weigh a few kgs  The back is light ply followed by “egg container” like foam, then comes the wooden flooring and lastly pieces of various timber moldings randomly stuck onto the flooring strips.  I have 5 panels, 3 of which are covered with light hessian that passed approval and 2 are open.

 

There is no science as to where I placed them.  It was more about where would they fit.  I was told that the room was too dead with the 2 uncovered high up on the middle of the side walls.  They are now upright and down low.  The 3 covered ones are up high on the back wall and 2 on a beam in the middle of the room.  I cannot say with certainty as whether they are of benefit but I think that there is benefit.  They make me feel good and I am happy.

 

As an aside the daily post titled “Sound Walls” from Paul McGowan yesterday was about the spectacular Oslo Opera House.  I thought that there were similarities with what I what I tried to do with reflections and absorption.  The scale is a bit different. Have a read. 

http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/sound-walls/

John

[Assisi]

In the second photo you can just see the wooden flooring slats on which the molding profiles are stuck and to the right a piece of the "egg container" foam.  The ceiling of the living area is complicated which probably helps with sound treatment.  However, I think that there is a very minor difference between the strength of the sound on the left side of the system sound stage compared to the right side.  If so it might be to do with the change in the ceiling profile that you can see in the 1st photo

John

[bob_m_54]

4 hours ago, Addicted to music said:

 

You need to clean that ear sometime...

Soulwax :-)

[bob_m_54]

5 hours ago, Addicted to music said:

 

You have an absolute valid point.  However in many cases that would void warranty.

what I like to see is the screen shots of measured Freq and distortion, impedance and to monitor in realtime by introducing the known vibrations.

ATM all we hear are the believers that just say;  "trust me, There is a difference!"

And even if the difference was observed by myself I'd like to see what I'm hearing that's different between unapplied and applied.

With CD players I'd like to see the error rate that it accumulates, unapplied and applied.  Current CD, bluray etc or any discs can spin at such a high rate and some cheap units such as the Sony s470   If there where error rates you'd see that effecting picture quality as well, and it will start to skip sections and hesitate.  Even with such internally introduced vibrations, you do not see any of this!

Yes, it's all very much in the ear of the beholder isn't it? And with the price of some of the different products, wouldn't you think the vendors would have some sort of hard data to back up their claims,  rather than just customer endorsement?

With CD and DVD Players, isn't that what ? X oversampling, and error correction is supposed to address?

In the case of solid state amps and DACs, I guess I'm just a bit skeptical when claims are made of vast improvements, when only a small part of the problem (if it actually exists) is addressed.