2017, Chapter 4:
Deprogramming
Welcome, comrades!
Welcome to this wonderful new age of audio glasnost!
Deprogramming Part Four: Damping Drivel
Progandists like to blather on about “damping,” even when it is criminally misapplied—and, of course, there are never any numbers to back up the claims. There are many classes of products where damping is absolutely critical—products such as speakers, headphones, and turntables. In other words, products that move.
When something moves, damping becomes an important metric. You wouldn’t want to have a speaker made out of 22-gauge sheet steel, because they’d literally ring like a bell and sound awful. Similarly, you wouldn’t want a turntable platter made from carbon fiber, because you’d rather have a lot of mass to smooth out any variations in speed, as well as to help provide an inert platform for the record. That’s why you tend to see thick walls on speakers, internal damping applied to headphones, and massive turntables. Damping is important for these products.
For a product that just, well, sits there? Not so much, comrade.
Putting a DAC in a CNC lead billet enclosure will do approximately zero for its performance. Wrapping that same DAC entirely in sorbothane (a damping compound) again, will do pretty much nothing. Same goes for an amp, a preamp, or pretty much any kind of electronic component. Despite this, propagandists frequently go on about features such as “isolation feet,” or “CAD-designed nonresonant chassis.”
So, here’s the quick summary:
- For products that move: damping is important. Manufacturers know this, and may be able to provide quantitative data on how they have damped their products. If not, the informal “knuckle rap” test on speakers to hear how “dead” they are provides some information about damping. In terms of turntables, physical and material construction provides clues—heavy metal platters and plinths usually are better than thin plastic, for example.
- For products that don’t move: damping is not important. This includes products that are moved, such as portable devices. If they don’t have a spinning or vibrating component, damping doesn’t really matter.*
*Really. Even though some ceramic capacitors can have piezoelectric properties (that is, they generate voltage when vibrated or squeezed), the magnitude of this effect is tiny in proportion to the voltages involved, and will be obviated through the impedance of the overall power supply, as well as the circuit’s inherent PSRR.
Except for a monumental project that Mike/Baldr is cooking up, Schiit is reluctant to unwilling to talk about future products. Bad Things Happen when you get ahead of events.
