Alan C

Just testing the waters for an idea put forward by vegescoob to deal with specific Hi Fi matters in their own threads. If there's enough interest, we could push for a forum.. If not...........

My question is around Isolation... I got some great answers from some well informed, keen audiophiles about Mains... so I'm looking to extend this to isolation...

There's loads available, made from;

• Wood (MDF to 100 year old Russina Cedar)
• Metal (aluminium to Titanium)
• Rubber (er....)
• Specialist Substances (foam through to multigrade rubber & metal aggreagte)
• Probably more still..

I'm more loking for Isolation under my source & Amp rather than a table as I have a soundstyle 5 tier that I'm about to fill the hollow legs with sand...

Any other suggestions or real world uses?

Fuzz 2

Some also use Cork.

Alan C

Ta.. Any good? Where did you use it?

More detail the better...

Fuzz 2

Not used it myself, not really into home Hi-fi, (Car Hi-fi yes. )just an observation of freinds kit in his old Mans home some time ago, couldn't tell you what it was isolating though.

Andy

dba

Alan,

Isolation is a religion,you either believe in it or you don't.Personally,i have only ever spent a few quid on a solid support and blue tack,or Foculpods at a push,starting to really believe in this can be really costly and tbh,a huge settee will have a much bigger impact.In a dedicated listening room and a hugely expensive TT then fair enough,but in a standard lounge i doubt you can hear anything over and above all the bass bounce!

if you don't believe me,take a look what you will end up with,after at spending at least 5k on the stand ONLY



some will go even higher on Mana,they really believe that each stage reduces isolation further

play with speaker positioning,and buy some Foculpods,you will save yourself a lot time and money

hades

Blue-tak : surprisingly good, but a bit "soft" sounding. Aluminium is a bit brighter. You'll probably find you can get some effect by folding a bit of aluminium foil into a cone shape. Carbon Fibre is also allegedly good at making things un-muddled, but can be a little lifeless. Glass shelves on sorbothane feet is quite popular, as is anything spike shaped. Another option I've heard working well in a high end table is shleves made from a fancy wooden sandwhich held up on bits of string!

At the risk of being boring, Nordost Pulsar Points are the best isolation I've ever encountered for the money IMHO. 4 for ~£50 for the aluminium ones. Work great under speakers too. In a £2k+ system, I'd say they're much better value than upgrading source components. I'd suggest get 3 packs, put 3 under your source, 3 under the amp, and 3 under each speaker. Get 'em on a try before you buy/money back type offer, I seriously doubt you'll send 'em back.

You can get Titanium ones too which are allegedly better still, but they're over £200 for 4, so only really for high end kit.

P.S. I have no association with Nordost, other than owning some of their kit (including 6 packs of alluminium pulsar points!)

mart360

squash *****!!!

cut em in half

meant to be the dog s danglys!!

mart

cheapo method blu tak

M

hades

P.S. Alan - I'd already pointed you at the man that first got me trying the pulsar points on the other hi-fi thread.

dba

Alan

some more evidence of what madness you are contemplating

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...735581626&rd=1

I'm currently listening to Highway 61 Revisted on vinyl,and as far as i can here it doesnt need any shower curtain rings although some squash ***** might tame the top end of the harmonica i think

Alan C

I must be loosing it.. Damn that Kronenburg!

I'd been looking at the mains stuff primarily.. but the isolation may be a same day buy or later dependent upon the price I settle for the mains conditioning...

I'll hopefully be speaking to Alistair soon.

Call me a snob.. but if the Blu tac / tennis ball arguments held up, then we wouldn't have pictures like that below or people (like me) spending £50 on some Pulsar points...

Nothing wrong with giving them a try however.....

I like to think that alittle more thought, design and decent R&D has gone into the products that do seem to work... It's all very intersting hear how the different materials affect the sound in such ways....

Most of the fun appears to be in the experimentation..

TelBoy

Mana isolation platforms are indeed excellent, although they're expensive and relatively inflexible, in that if you buy or have made an equipment stand, it's a welded affair and can't be altered/added to etc. However, as loudspeaker isolation platforms, where (barring the extreme example in the pic above!) this isn't an issue, and they work brilliantly. Just make sure you have a long flat duster to keep them looking respectable.

In terms of amps and source components, there's a strong argument for avoiding metal-based supports altogether, to avoid any Faraday Cage effects. Although small, they're worth eliminating if you can do so for no extra cost. Accordingly, i use Hutter equipment supports - a wood laminate/composite construction which you buy in a modular fashion, i.e. you can add to it whenever the need arises. The bottom "shelf" acts as the isolation platform, with each subsequent shelf being supported by four non-ferrous pillars. Worth investigating.

If money was no object, however, i'd have Townsend Seismic Links for every piece of equipment, as these really are the last word in vibration/interference control.

Although, i'd repeat what i mentioned in the other thread - Base platforms really are worth their weight in gold, especially if you're using a predominantly iron shelving system - they take away a lot of the brightness and add a lot of "naturalness".

One of the other DIY quirks worth looking into is the "brick on top trick". Wrap a house brick in a tea towel and place it carefully on your CD transport - almost all will sound different as a result. Weird but true. I've seen many systems with "unidentifed" weighting objects atop CD transports - definitely worth trying, if only for the reaction from your other half!!

For speakers, make sure you're familiar with Soundbytes - a specialist high-density metal ballast. Some speakers benefit enormously from this treatment, although don't get carried away or you can deaden the musicality. Whatever you do - don't use sand. For one, it doesn't work at all well, and second, in cases where the sand hasn't been dried thoroughly, it can rust equipment from the inside out!!

corradoboy

If all these isolation products worked such wonders, wouldn't some of the high end equipment manufacturers consider actually incorporating them into the product in the 1st place ? A bit like if Slick 50 was actually beneficial to an engines lubrication, the oil companies would include it in their oil products I have an amp from the late 80's which was £650 then (read over £2k now) which has rubber pads as feet. A good friend has a new £8.5k Red Rose valve amp which has similar rubber feet. Go figure ! I can however see the justification in isolating a turntable, but again it can be approached in the wrong (IMHO) way. Spiked stands, or tables bolted to walls seem totally wrong to me, as the music you are playing will be vibrating the floors and walls, and the rigidity of the supports will transfer much of that back to the T/T. Most high end T/T's I have ever used have suspended platters and armboards, which should hint at the futility of then trying to place a pliably (is that a word ) damped piece onto an overly rigid platform. As for that picture of the equipment on dozens of isolation platforms As they appear to be spiked then they are ideal for transferring as much vibration as possible (think stylus ) up to the next platform, and with all those flat surfaces there is plenty of area for catching airborn vibrations (sound).

I recommend buying as good equipment as you can afford/justify, use good, but reasonble cables (I have an Audioquest Quartz Hyperlitz 3 which was £100 in the early 90's which is only marginally better than a £6 Tandy Gold Audio ) and use the rest of the budget to build up a music collection to play on the bu99er. As much fun as trying out new products is, and as much of a buzz we all get when we spend big wads of hard earned, the reason for it all must be for music listening. Give me £2k of hi-fi and 800 CD's over £10k of hi-fi and 50 CD's anyday.

Now, anyone fancy a placebo

TelBoy

The thing is, most high-end manufacturers *know* their equipment is going to be supported on some after-market arrangement, so they don't bother increasing the unit cost on account of improved isolation. Rubber feet DO work reasonably well, BUT they can be improved upon, no question, no placebo effect anywhere to be seen!

Not sure spiked feet can be compared with wall-mounted supports though?!!! Spiked feet are just exploiting fundamental physics of lowest possible contact area, whereas i don't know anyone who uses wall-mounted supports, apart for things like televisions, to be honest.

As for the 2k/10k comparison - i hear what you're saying, but at the risk of offending davyboy further, those spending 10k on a system probably aren't going to have to forsake buying CDs for the next five years or whatever. It's just a question of priorities - 10k on a system or 10k towards a new car/holidays etc - everyone's different.

dba

not quite,but they are a bugger to setup.If you had only one stage on spikes fair enough,but not that lot,its not in doubt that isolation to that extreme will reduce vibration,its just whether you can hear it or not.Many swear by it and have regular fighst with the Hutter mafia on the fora,each to his own

mj

You need low-tech first to see if there is a difference - take no notice of telboy, his *advice* will cost you a feckin fortune

ala, total cost about 6p:








BTW, is there a standard size for high end separates? - or is that a contradiction in terms? - it's just I can get my hands on cheap granite....££££

Freak

Cut some squash/tennis ***** in half
Place a sheet of glass on top of them and the system on top of that.

Failing that make a poured concrete pillar- almost every dj booth i use has that or some large breeze blocks to support the turntables and it works incredibly well (when you can feel/see the floor vibrating but the turntables arent you know its doing a good job!)

hades

There's a whole lot of people who'll tell you that what you're trying to achieve isn't actually isolation, per se, it's management of mechanical energy and resonances. TelBoy's brick trick (which a lot of people have used) can't produce isolation, it can damp vibrations.

Anyway, to address the post above
Yes, it's amazing how far technology has moved backwards over the last 15 years. In the late 80s, a NAD 3020 was arguably the best sub-£200 amp. Do you honestly believe it would win a head to head with a new £200 amp, let along a £700 one?

Are you saying that because something is pricey, it clearly is perfectly designed in all ways? Don't look in the drivetrain forum - there's people changing bits on £26k cars, convinced it improves things.

Also disagree with the 800 CDs comparison. I probably have 2-300, and there's some I wouldn't really miss. Give me 100 good CDs that I like over 1000 CDs to get the numbers up anyday

As for placebo - I know I set up 3 packs of pulsar points on my Dad's system when I was visiting his, he was out at the time. He walked in, put a CD on, and said "what have you done to my hi-fi"; no prompting, no money spent. Now he's going to buy some. I don't call that placebo effect.

So corradoboy, I couldn't agree more, apart from nearly everything you said

Freak

Not hifi strictly- but its related so ill post it anyway.
I had the pleasure of using a vintage Bozak CMA-10-2 DL and a Urei 1620 (both Dj mixers) the other week....
Very old and highly regarded- and i tell you what, the sound was out of this world. So much warmer than brand new mixers i use night in night out.
So yes vintage stuff can sometimesbe head and shoulders above new stuff. Not necessarily for features- but for sheer sound quality, warmth and clarity yes.
the fact that second (third, or fourth) hand nowadays they cost more than a top spec brand new modern eqivalent is testament to that

dba

and sometimes cd players from the mid eighties can sound remarkably good

hades

I would argue that newer DJ kit probably suffers a bit from more features and therefore a less pure signal path (and probably a lot of digital processing rather than a little analogue) spoiling sound quality. Newer "purist" hi-fi shouldn't suffer from that, but I accept your point, Freak. I admit, there are certain "classic" designs that arguably haven't been improved on in years, such as LP12 t/t, Quad electrostatic speakers. Older kit is also often "warmer" and less clinical sounding, which certainly suits some peoples tastes

Not convinced about mid-80s CD players, apart from maybe one or two really high end ones. I don't think that e.g. a Marantz CD50SE (early 90s, £400, possibly "best in class") would win sonically against their latest £400 offering.

So whilst I admit there are exceptions to my earlier sweeping generalisation, I don't accept that 15 year old £650 amps are generally better than new £650 amps, let alone new £2k+ amps.

Anyway, weren't we talking about isolation?

corradoboy

My 15 year old amp was tested back to back recently against an almost new Musical Fidelity and a 2 year old valve amp. The MF had beautiful tone, but on changing to the valve amp we realised that a significant amount of the bass was simply missing (at 1st we thought it was the speakers). The valve amp restored the missing part of the frequency range and was, as you'd expect, very warm, musical and effortlessly easy to listen to. We only had a few minutes at the end of a 4 hour session to try my old amp, but even from cold it stood its ground exceptionally well. All the bass was present, and if anything a little clearer and deeper, but it was beaten (just) in overall tonal representation by the valve. I certainly won't be rushing out to replace it sometime soon, unless Alan C's (thread starter) Sugden kit blows me away tomorrow night.

dba

It should blow you away.I have the A21a and its faultless

Power Junkie

iTrader: (1)

The Sugden Headmaster is a great bit of kit. just let it warm up. The headphone amp within is superb and great for late listening..

Dr Hu

I still find it difficult to believe that an amp which has ZERO moving parts and is totally solid state can sound 'better' when isolated.......

All the hi-fi mags say you should spen £xxx on a equipment stand - why? - I could possibly understand it with a turntable, which actually scratches it way through a plastic groove on a record - but anything else - how can it possibly affect it??

It just doesnt seem to obey the laws of physics......

dba

its microphnonics,apparently,small noises getting in and playing tricks

corradoboy

Given the electromagnetic clutter that the air is so full of these days with 000,000's of mobile phones and 000's masts everywhere, maybe the next product we all NEED is lead boxes, or lead lined rooms. My 13 year old CD player is made from magnesium, apparantly to keep out such waves Slowly, but surely, we're all getting cooked

TelBoy

Yep, that's true. But if you put an amplifier on carpet, then on metal, then on stone and then on wood, you'll get four different sounds, i guarantee it. Why this should be so i couldn't explain, nor would i care, but it does make it worth the effort to get the most suitable material possible to optimize the amp's potential.

Alan C

The thing is, the components ARE moving... Put you hands in front of a loud speaker and you will feel the air moving. OK, so the speaker diaphragm is visibly moving, causing the air to move, but it is moving at frequencies between 10 & 20,000 times per second (generalising here for Dr Hu..) This is the audible frequency ranges.

The solid state components of any electronic device are passing electronic waves at similar audible frequencies (mains hum in the power supply) right up to many thousands and millions (LED's) of times higher... every component vibrating merrily away. Emitting direct and harmonic energy... Also, all of these components are interacting and causing a 'cloud' of vibrating energy around the box.

The majority of this energy will get re-absorbed into the box, or a neighboring box, 'poisoning' components designed to operate at a certain temperature or frequency range... This 'poison' will inevitably 'colour' the sound in some way....

Every surface you put the box on, or near, will either absorb or reflect those waves, adding it's own colour... each surface will do this differently colouring the music in a good way (by reducing the waves so much that the box operates as near as perfect as possible) or a bad way.. reflecting the waves straight into that expensive & critical Digital to Analogue converter...

The trick that everyone here is trying to do (or not if they think this is a load of cr@p) is to reach that near perfect sound that the box manufacturer designed it for...

Problem is.. the variations upon the box & surface theme are pretty near infinite.. meaning that you'll be spending a long time trying to get it right... the best thing to do then is to listen to some of the expensive, tried & tested & even down right ridiculous suggestions here... and you never know..

mj

thanks



but it sounds better than it did....

Alan C

You're welcome (I'll forgive the selective editing... )

Though yours is definately on the more sensible, easy to impliment, cheap and (obviously from your point) succesfull side!!

I can't try it myself as I have a shelf.. but Dr Hu might find it usefull...