Vibrapods | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

dngl · Oct 2, 2001 at 11:37 PM

I'm willing to believe that vibrapods will help CD players stay on track and reduce error checking, but I find it difficult to believe that vibration damping your power unit, amp, and preamp would do anything. Is there any base to companies' claims that vibration isolation for components other than the source will help?

chych · Oct 3, 2001 at 12:05 AM

In my opinion... no, companies just want your money...

In Jude's opinion... well, I mean, he probably has sorbothane under his cable's

morphsci · Oct 3, 2001 at 4:36 AM

Well since Jude is hopefully busy working on the head-fi store, let me take a crack at it.

I use a custom base of oak and sorbothane under my line conditioners. Why, because they have transformers in them that vibrate. I also damp the cabinets to reduce resonant hum. As far as power amps, you should see the size of the toroidal transformers in my Adcom GFA-565's. They do not vibrate very much because they weigh 45+ lbs, but I have each one on 4 vibrapods that sit on top of a home built oak stand with spikes to couple it to the floor. After I installed the vibrapods I do not feel any microvibrations in the chassis of the amps. However, I cannot claim any significant sonic effect. As far as my preamp, well its is on vibrapods because it is on the same rack as the tuner, CD, and turntable so I want it isolated vibrationally from them and vice-versa. I am a big proponent of both physical and electrical isolation of components.

jude · Oct 3, 2001 at 9:25 AM

I've never used Vibrapods, but a lot of people swear by them. I use Sorbothane feet by Audioquest, but I can't honestly say they made any easy-to-hear difference in my rig -- they're a bit difficult to A/B easily because I took the stock feet of my 333, and those SorboGel feet stick like crazy to the flat parts of my 333's underside. My rig did sound better after I put them under my 333, but it's really unfair to say that they had anything to do with the better sound, as I also concurrently made other tweaks to the rig (I know -- bad tweaking practice), and so I couldn't really tell what did what.