[Nigel]

Hi,

Useful tip on checking a components isolation.

Put a glass, or tupperware container, filled with water on your CD player, turntable or their shelves/racks etc. & jump up & down near the system & see if the water visibly moves.

No movement, obviously better isolation.

I tried it on my CD player, which was situated on five bags of builders sand, glass shelves, Michell tenderfeet, the works - water moved quite considerably. Oh dear!

The CD player now resides on a wall shelf, not even a proprietary equipment shelf. No movement whatsoever! Happy days. Definite improvement in sound quality as well.

Have a go yourselves & post your findings. Also, any interesting tips on improving equipments isolation?

NB. Be careful not to spill any water near electrical equipment.

Best,

Nigel

 

[PinkFloyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Put a glass, or tupperware container, filled with water on your CD player, turntable or their shelves/racks etc. & jump up & down near the system & see if the water visibly moves.

I take it the glass of water is not filled to the brim and that your equipment is in fact switched off from the mains when you perform this jumping procedure otherwise you could end up with a glass of water inside your CD player if one of your floorboards are loose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel No movement, obviously better isolation.

Isolation from what? You jumping up and down next to your CD player? Do you normally listen to music whilst pogoing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel I tried it on my CD player, which was situated on five bags of builders sand, glass shelves, Michell tenderfeet, the works - water moved quite considerably. Oh dear!

Try mixing the 5 bags of builders sand with some cement you may find it improves stability a lot

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel The CD player now resides on a wall shelf, not even a proprietary equipment shelf. No movement whatsoever! Happy days. Definite improvement in sound quality as well.

Have you tried jumping up and down on the shelf?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Have a go yourselves & post your findings. Also, any interesting tips on improving equipments isolation?

5 bags of builders sand and jumping up and down on the spot? I think I'll pass on that "tweak" Nigel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel NB. Be careful not to spill any water near electrical equipment.

Also, be careful when jumping up and down on the spot you may end up falling through the floor.

 

[Nigel]

Hi Mike,

I appreciate your warnings about potential health & safety risks.

Seriously though, I assumed I had some excellent isolation with all that sand etc. I was wrong. A simple wall shelf provides better isolation in my surroundings.

No pogoing but I readily admit to being partial to a little air guitar.

 

[Nigel]

Incidentally,

All credit/ blame should be given to the following article,

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/vinyl/vinyl.html

Best,

Nigel

 

[PinkFloyd]

Something to try Nigel. Get down to a beach and stick a very large rock in your boot. Go home and place this heavy rock "on top" of your CD player, I think you'll be amazed at the improvement in SQ and, no, this is "not" a joke.

 

[Nigel]

Your forgetting, I live 500 miles from the coast & my CD player is a top loader.

 

[PinkFloyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Your forgetting, I live 500 miles from the coast & my CD player is a top loader.

Ah well, in that case you're missing out on one of the most effective tweaks known to mankind Nigel, it really works. Top loader you say? wouldn't happen to be a Rega would it?

 

[Nigel]

I tried house bricks a few years back & they seemed to offer small differences. But nothing like the improvements from switching the CD player onto a wall shelf. My turntable has been on one for years. Have you had a go at the water ripple test yet, Mike? Yes, Rega Jupiter.

 

[PinkFloyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Have you had a go at the water ripple test yet, Mike? Yes, Rega Jupiter.

Yes. I'm jumping up and down on the spot as I type this

 

[raisin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel I tried house bricks a few years back & they seemed to offer small differences. But nothing like the improvements from switching the CD player onto a wall shelf. My turntable has been on one for years. Have you had a go at the water ripple test yet, Mike? Yes, Rega Jupiter.

What type of wall construction do you have? Wood frame or masonary?

 

[Nigel]

Hiya,

Brick walls, raisin. Obviously, this is important.

I'm surprised this thread hasn't generated more interest. Maybe I've placed it in the wrong forum on this site. How the equipment is supported gets back to basic fundamentals & I would be pretty cheesed off if I'd spent top dollar on an equipment stand only to see it failing this simple water test. Likewise, if my stand wasn't isolating correctly, I'd want to improve it.

Best wishes,

Nigel

 

[chych]

Small dense masses, i.e. bricks/sand/granite blocks are useful for damping out high frequency vibrations, but not so much for low frequency (i.e. jumping up an down). Of course a large enough mass (i.e. a wall shelf) will do the trick.

At work we actually need vibration isolation, as we deal with nanoscale equipments (scanning probe & electron microscopy). Vibrations will completely screw up experiments, and give very noisy data. For this, air tables are used (Such as this $15000 one we have, weighs 4000 lb, suspended on air, and can lift another 4000 lb), which work the best, and granite blocks on top of these. An ultrasonic transducer with a sensor can even be added for active vibration cancelling for high frequencies.

And unlike the subjective 'this sounds so much better after I put these $$$ gel pads under my cd player' you get in the audio world... well, we can directly measure vibrations. On a 'still' solid table, you can expect 0.1-1 micron vibrations in mechanisms (of course this depends on a lot of things), but with real isolation, vibrations go down to 10-20 angstroms and lower, which is atomic resolution (and thus, we can image at atomic resolution). You can stomp on the floor all you want, and vibration amplitudes will still be a few nanometers.

Though I have no idea why you guys are isolating cd players. The cd drive itself will induce many vibrations that the entire idea of isolating from the ground is meaningless (and while my flame hat is on, CDs are sooo 1990's

).

Well, that's my view on it, from someone who deals with vibration isolation in an engineering context.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

Put a glass, or tupperware container, filled with water on your CD player, turntable or their shelves/racks etc. & jump up & down near the system & see if the water visibly moves.

back I the day when I enjoyed turning a wrench that is how we set the distributor timing.Glass of water on a flat spot on top the engine.turn the distributor until the the ripples stopped then lock down the distributor clamp.

Had no application to the hot rods though.A radical cam and smmoooooth have zero in common

 

[rickcr42]

Glass of water aslo makes a handy dandy turntable level in a pinch

 

[PinkFloyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickcr42 Glass of water aslo makes a handy dandy turntable level in a pinch

You can also drink the stuff, god is water versatile or what?