Vibration Control. New Toys! 56k warning. - Page 2

just a tip, if anyone wants to dampen for cheap, those laminate floor tiles sell for a few cents each at hardware stores, are self adhesive, and very dense. I lined the inside cover of one my players, and rapping on the top now gives a heavy thud instead of a clang.

Alternatives

The Symposiums are really great, I tried one of the original shelves in my system a few years ago.

One possible alternative is the Audio Resolution shelf. It is not as pretty as the Symposium, and is hgenerally thicker. But it operates on the same principals, and is only $115 last I checked. I have 4 of these, thye made a nice difference under speakers, and under my digital gear.

The craftsmanship is definitely better on the Symposiums, they are truly great sounding and nice-looking products. But if you can't afford them, and don't mind a LITTLE bit uglier look, the A-R's are great, too. They are still solid, just not as pretty. But functionally they are awesome.

I use the 1st generation Symposium shelves (I think I picked them up when they first came out, cheap paper labels and all), along with a Bright Star sandbox and Black Diamond Racing Shelf and multitude of BDR cones to great effect in my main system. I've found vibration control and power conditioning/aftermarket power cords to be incredibly beneficial, especially when it comes to extracting that last bit of sonic info; the decay of notes, rear wall reflections and harmonic overtones on strings and cymbals are more easily heard after treatment. I'd be curious to check out the newer Symposium shelves.

Congrats on your new toys, Yikes. Those things look really nice and well built. Too bad they're completely out of my price range at the moment.

jerb,

There is a school of thought that says that simply adding mass to reduce resonances will get us nowehre. If you simply add mass to a resonant body, you may lower the overall resonance frequency and dampen certain frequencies in the process, but a lower frequency resonance has a tendency to be more audible. If you add mass to a system you introduce a kind of delayed-reaction resonance. The prolonged energy storage behaviour of the high-mass system might have unwelcome consequences. In many cases self-resonance that stays closely related to the signal that caused it will be less obtrusive and annoying than self-resonance that is totally out of rhythm so to speak. It's not necessarily the amount of resonance that is an issue here, it's the character of the resonance. That mirrors my experiences: Putting any kind of high-mass object on top my CDP proved to be detrimental.

Therefore, some resonance tweaking approaches rely more on resonance modifying and tuning than on dampening and deadening of the resonance. I have had great results with DIY wood blocks styled after the Cardas Golden Cuboid idea. It's pretty amazing that a 16 grams wood block placed on top of a 10 kilograms CDP ought to alter and improve its performance but that's what happened in my case. And there are distinct differences in sound and musicality between all of the six or seven different tone wood variants I tried by now. My favourites at this point are Tarara (aka Canary Wood) and Brazilian Rosewood. Ebony is quite nice and Morado (aka Santos Rosewood) too. The Myrtle Wood used by Cardas for his original Golden Cuboids turned out to be less than stellar, by the way. I'd recommend experimenting with some of the better known tone woods. The way I see it: that their resonance properties are beneficial to musical sounds has been established by generations of instrument builders. And there aren't many concert halls that have metal or glass panelling either.

I'm not sure if this product has ever been mentioned in headfi, so I thought I might as well throw in my recommendation for an excellent isolation product. Neuance (http://www.neuanceaudio.com) makes custom sized shelves to either place below your components or replace your rack's shelves. Symposium (and Audio Resolution) were great in my system, but the Neuance did a better job in my situation. YMMV

I'm also a big fan of simple "sandboxes." Brightstar Audio is the only company that makes a commercial sandbox that I'm aware of, but they can be built cheaply (and beautifully). Most importantly, they do an outstanding job on vibrations; I actually think simple sandboxes outperform these expensive composite shelves I own.

All in all, the improvements yieled by isolation and vibration-control tweaks vary from insignificant to clearly audible (both desired and undesirable changes).

Well, it was a pre-owned unit (with a good deal), though it did basically destroy my audio-related fund for the time being. Of course that hasn't stopped me from looking for good SACD's and DVD-A's.

I'll eventually get to making/getting a better looking rack. Mine looks bit out of place with threaded rods and all.