Harmonic Resolution Systems VXR Stand

Mike Lavigne said:

no; sand or lead shot absorbs energy and deadens things. and will dampen a spongy floor. it's just not the best answer mostly and there are simply more musical passive treatments to choose from. it use to be that lowering the noise was a good trade off with less energy. but keeping things more linear mostly is better now.

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Mike your post above is very welcome because as I followed this thread the question that was increasingly arising in my head was can you have too much damping and isolation and if so how do you achieve an optimum balance.
There has seemed to me to have been an implicit assumption in most if not all of the posts that the more isolation/vibration elimination the better your system would sound and that seemed at odds with other references in the past to flat sounding systems and the music lacking in energy. I also recalled Steve Williams reporting some time ago about how he had removed all the Stillpoints from his system and had preferred the resultant sound by just relying on his racks.
At the time I did wonder about trying the same but decided against it as I suspected his racks were better than mine and I wasn't unhappy with the sound of my system which has benefitted from extensive Entreq boxes and cables together with a range of Stillpoints.The Entreq is of course directed at electronic noise like EMI/RFI as opposed to mechanical noise.
As your post indicates this whole issue does appear to be more complex and chasing after ever more expensive and exotic vibration/resonance eliminating devices is a lot more nuanced than it might appear.
Have I interpreted your comments accuarately and can you enlarge and share your thoughts more fully?

Indeed removing the Stillpoints and going all CMS was a huge positive to my system.

Barry2013 said:

Mike your post above is very welcome because as I followed this thread the question that was increasingly arising in my head was can you have too much damping and isolation and if so how do you achieve an optimum balance.
There has seemed to me to have been an implicit assumption in most if not all of the posts that the more isolation/vibration elimination the better your system would sound and that seemed at odds with other references in the past to flat sounding systems and the music lacking in energy. I also recalled Steve Williams reporting some time ago about how he had removed all the Stillpoints from his system and had preferred the resultant sound by just relying on his racks.
At the time I did wonder about trying the same but decided against it as I suspected his racks were better than mine and I wasn't unhappy with the sound of my system which has benefitted from extensive Entreq boxes and cables together with a range of Stillpoints.The Entreq is of course directed at electronic noise like EMI/RFI as opposed to mechanical noise.
As your post indicates this whole issue does appear to be more complex and chasing after ever more expensive and exotic vibration/resonance eliminating devices is a lot more nuanced than it might appear.
Have I interpreted your comments accuarately and can you enlarge and share your thoughts more fully?

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Barry,

what I like about active is that it's linear. it really does not have a character since it is much stiffer than any passive (spring) approach since instead of settling and overshooting, it can start and stop. which then leads us to more linear passive choices that don't change tonality. a few years back you saw stillpoints everywhere, but then people seemed to hear them add a bit of a mechanical type sound to things. so now it's more a matter of approaching every situation with an open mind and not just throwing any one brand at optimizing any piece of gear. don't assume anything. but have an idea of what sort of sound you want.

this is how I approached my room acoustics tuning too; I eliminated any sort of distortion in the reflective hash. finding the most neutral sound.

some of these very expensive rack systems evidently do find a somewhat neutral decoupling approach possibly limited by the footers on the gear. one still needs to deal with that.

be approach agnostic, but pro musical message.

I hope there is something in my rambling of use.

Ron Resnick said:

This just came out from HRS.

It looks pretty solid!

View attachment 30885

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Hi Ron,

Thanks for posting this. Does anyone know how much this Rack costs?

Best,
Ken

Mike Lavigne said:

Barry,

what I like about active is that it's linear. it really does not have a character since it is much stiffer than any passive (spring) approach since instead of settling and overshooting, it can start and stop. which then leads us to more linear passive choices that don't change tonality.

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Hi Mike,

I am with you regarding using Herzan on a sturdy rack rather than going with the ultra-expensive racks!

However, with a lower budget, I am thinking of following your approach, but using Vibraplane instead of the Herzan. By your statement above, can you give some more details about what is missing (sound wise) with the Vibraplane as compared to the Herzan?

If you have already talked about the difference somewhere else, I would appreciate if you could point me to it.

Thanks,

Michael

Steve Williams said:

Indeed removing the Stillpoints and going all CMS was a huge positive to my system.

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But Stillpoints are not actually damping anything are they? Aren't Stillpoints more about "mechanical grounding" and rigid?

Mike Lavigne said:

Barry,

what I like about active is that it's linear. it really does not have a character since it is much stiffer than any passive (spring) approach since instead of settling and overshooting, it can start and stop. which then leads us to more linear passive choices that don't change tonality. a few years back you saw stillpoints everywhere, but then people seemed to hear them add a bit of a mechanical type sound to things. so now it's more a matter of approaching every situation with an open mind and not just throwing any one brand at optimizing any piece of gear. don't assume anything. but have an idea of what sort of sound you want.

this is how I approached my room acoustics tuning too; I eliminated any sort of distortion in the reflective hash. finding the most neutral sound.

some of these very expensive rack systems evidently do find a somewhat neutral decoupling approach possibly limited by the footers on the gear. one still needs to deal with that.

be approach agnostic, but pro musical message.

I hope there is something in my rambling of use.

Click to expand...

You realize that Stillpoints don't dampen anything. The are not really isolating anything either. It is rigid coupling. If you have a very solid floor this might be a good thing but otherwise it is of dubious value. Active isolation is something completely different and shouldn't be compared to Stillpoints. You might compare it to proper passive isolation, such as air suspension and/or elastomer suspension. You also have to realize that active suspension will have some latency as it is based on feedback loops but given the low frequencies it is designed to damp it is likely inconsequential and works as advertised.

The big difference between rigid support on a suspension of some sort (passive or active) and a platform that this itself damped (shot/sand/bitumen etc.) is that the platform, which is itself damped, will absorb the vibrations made by the equipment itself and a rigid shelf will not. If that overdampens and deadens your sound then that kind of indicates that what giving you a "lively" sound was possibly an artifact of the vibrations, which are now being somewhat damped. Of course a shot/sand solution will not offer the best in floor derived vibrations (it will help but not as much as a proper tuned or active suspension) and should be used in conjunction with a suspension of your choice.

Personally, I use rigid racks or put heavy items directly on my floor (it is wood on top of solid concrete...no sponginess whatsoever) with a bit of extra elastomer feet where appropriate. If I was going to go all out, I would bypass all boutique rack/suspension sellers and by proper scientific equipment from the vendors I listed above. If it works for optics and microscopes, it works for isolation of audio gear.

I worked in a lab once that was doing Atomic Force Microscopy and they had actually a specially designed room-within-a-room to control vibrations from the outsideworld and THEN they had SOTA air suspension tables with active control that the actual microscopes were mounted on. The also had the walls treated almost like an anechoic chamber to remove airborne vibrations...it was an erie place to be because it was very quiet...almost oppressively so (not as bad as an actual anechoic chamber though) but they were able to make measurements no one else could because they had successfully isolated the equipment to a level most others did not.

So Brad, what do you think of my conversation with the designer of a well respected audio passive rack system, that lab grade active isolation is superior at protecting eg a tt from floor- and air-borne vibrations, but not great at dealing w the vibrations created by the tt itself?
Ie no gear that active isolation is designed primarily for eg electron microscopes produces anywhere as much movement and noise as a tt w massy spinning platters, moving arms and undulating styli
His argument was that active isolation was never designed to deal w gear purposely putting out vast amounts of vibration pollution
And that gear like tts needs tech that deals w vibrations emanating from the tt itself, preventing it feeding back to the tt
He contends active isoln doesn't fulfil this requirement anywhere nr as well as sorted passive systems

My guess is that high quality turntables don't generate that much vibration on their own. If they do, I think it would show up at the screen of the Herzan.

Thekong, massive moving platters must produce vibrations of an order of magnitude greater than any silent lab gear like microscopes
Platters, arms, carts, styli, all moving, all creating some kind of chaos
I really have no way of knowing whether the counter argument I've put forward is relevant or not, just seems like it's worth considering
I fully get the owners of active under their tts are getting great results
My trial of Accurion was good, just not stellar
But I am reconsidering

Sprit, I am not even talking about improvement in performance!

I remember seeing a video showing a light clapping of hands around 8" from the Herzan could cause it to react. So, I would think if a turntable really generates that much vibration, then the Herzan would react also. I don't think Mike is having this problem, so I suppose at least his turntable is not generating that much vibration.

Of course, some turntables are better than others in this regards!

Sure, that is scary effective tech
I wonder if it can cope with a bit of "dad dancing" to The Bieber while the lp is playing?

spiritofmusic said:

So Brad, what do you think of my conversation with the designer of a well respected audio passive rack system, that lab grade active isolation is superior at protecting eg a tt from floor- and air-borne vibrations, but not great at dealing w the vibrations created by the tt itself?
Ie no gear that active isolation is designed primarily for eg electron microscopes produces anywhere as much movement and noise as a tt w massy spinning platters, moving arms and undulating styli
His argument was that active isolation was never designed to deal w gear purposely putting out vast amounts of vibration pollution
And that gear like tts needs tech that deals w vibrations emanating from the tt itself, preventing it feeding back to the tt
He contends active isoln doesn't fulfil this requirement anywhere nr as well as sorted passive systems

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That is a rather interesting conversation. Whether a suspension is active or passive I am not sure how much vibration it is dealing with from the thing it is supposed to isolate. Generally the frequencies suspension systems are designed to deal with are low frequecies (in the few Hz range) but the vibrations being generated by a TT or electronics are signficantly higher in frequency I would imagine (33.3 RPM for some rumble or sub harmonics and harmonic of this rotational velocity) (50 or 60Hz hum and harmonics from power supplies) and those will not be addressed by the isolation system to any great degree...at least not an air/elastomer suspension or active electronic one that is supposed to work at low frequency. This is why I was thinking that the platform you set the TT on could be absorbing those frequencies if you used sand/shot/kitty litter...or as I found in a patent application:

"Preferred granular material is low density polyethylene and glass microspheres. The granular material fills hollow structural members or is placed into intimate contact with open structural members. The lightweight fill effectively damps vibrational modes without excessively increasing the weight of the structural member"

I have speaker stands that are sand filled that I used to use with my Reference 3a Master Control MMC monitors and it added a lot of mass but damped those steel tubes very effectively. It seems lighter materials work too.

Silcone (like used in bathroom caulking) can work as well in smaller spaces but it would take a lot of it to fill large tubes.

Most vibration control is designed to protect the thing from outside interferrence and not from the thing itself. Only something that is good at absorbing vibration over a broad frequency range will work with electro/mechanical devices and that would be something like sand or similar. I remember there was German brand called Clearlight Audio that made some interesting racks and shelves with a proprietary wood based (I think) damping material.

http://clearlight-audio.de/

unfortunately, only in German.


Here is the google translate explanation of their technology.

"
What is RDC?

This RDC (resonance deadening components) consists of a mixture of different fine granules such as rubber, quartz sand or acrylic. Depending on the mixture, the density and structure of this material will change and produce a finely stepped damping flexibility.

If disturbing energies are forced into the RDC substance, then these vibrations must pass through each individual granulate particle, whereby the direction and density are constantly changing and the energy finally dies.

This is achieved thanks to RDC with a comparatively low mass expenditure. The different material densities also lead to a uniform attenuation over the entire frequency spectrum.

The information on the load capacity of the individual cones is intended as a guideline, which should serve to ensure that your installation areas (floor tiles, parquet, etc.) can not bear any damage."

They build it into their platforms and racks, make tonearm headshells out of it (I need to try this now that I see it) and turntables with a bunch of the stuff.

"The RDC rack panels are spiraled on the underside with RDC material. For the top level, a complex sandwich plate with two counter-rotating RDC coils is used."

spiritofmusic said:

So Brad, what do you think of my conversation with the designer of a well respected audio passive rack system, that lab grade active isolation is superior at protecting eg a tt from floor- and air-borne vibrations, but not great at dealing w the vibrations created by the tt itself?
Ie no gear that active isolation is designed primarily for eg electron microscopes produces anywhere as much movement and noise as a tt w massy spinning platters, moving arms and undulating styli
His argument was that active isolation was never designed to deal w gear purposely putting out vast amounts of vibration pollution
And that gear like tts needs tech that deals w vibrations emanating from the tt itself, preventing it feeding back to the tt
He contends active isoln doesn't fulfil this requirement anywhere nr as well as sorted passive systems

Click to expand...

I had a look just now at the Herzan stuff and it claims active vibration control up to 1000Hz. This means that it should be actively neutralizing the vibrations in all conceiveable ranges from the turntable, assuming they are large enough to be detected by its sensors, which given the intended applications should be very sensitive. I would guess that the source of the vibration is really irrelevant to the platform and it should actively compensate for vibrations coming from the TT if there are any significant ones.

Still, I can imagine a good passive design is competitive and equally broadband, like this RDC composite. There is always a question with feedback loops as to whether they have acted quickly enough to really address the issue before it has done sonic damage. If it is a continuous rumble, for example, then i can imagine it will do a very good job with that.

My discussion has been w Peter of Symposium
I'm fully aware he has a "party line" to promote, but I've always found his responses to qs refreshingly open, candid, non personally critical of other brands and approaches
His assertion is that active is superb and possibly most superior on noise reaching the tt ie room-, floor- and air-borne, but not NECESSARILY superior at dealing w internally created vibrations inherent to the tt ie platter rotation, arm mvts etc
Here, he genuinely believes his approach of isolation via Rollerblock Modules and constrained layer Ultra or Quantum Signature platforms are more appropriate, practical and effective
My enquiries are made in the light of my trial w lab grade active Accurion i4 just not being as stellar as Herzan owners on this forum

You're right Ron, suspended designs like the Kronos or even O-ringed SMEs, wont benefit
My point about tt-created vibrations and whether passive isolation may be more suitable, still stands

Ron Resnick said:

I think a component on a Herzan on a rigid stand is theoretically (as with most things in this hobby the facts and the individual circumstances and the implementation beat the theory) the ultimate solution for every component except a turntable with a full suspension. I keep thinking that the movement of a full suspension on a turntable would "fight" with the Herzan.

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We can not be sure. Belt driven suspended turntables only suspend the chassis and platter, not the motor. Any minimal relative movement will affect drive and probably sound. Putting the whole system in an isolated platform looks desirable, unless the correction pulses of the active table excite the turntable suspension. IMHO we must try or ask to know, it is not possible to guess.

One of the reasons I decided to postpone any analog upgrade is that I considered that until I had listened to the Forsell placed on an active suspension table. such as the Herzan, it would be premature to think about any other analog component!

microstrip said:

We can not be sure. Belt driven suspended turntables only suspend the chassis and platter, not the motor. Any minimal relative movement will affect drive and probably sound. Putting the whole system in an isolated platform looks desirable, unless the correction pulses of the active table excite the turntable suspension. IMHO we must try or ask to know, it is not possible to guess.

One of the reasons I decided to postpone any analog upgrade is that I considered that until I had listened to the Forsell placed on an active suspension table. such as the Herzan, it would be premature to think about any other analog component!

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What are the good EU racks and active isolations? Getting this stuff from the US is too expensive.

Spiers And Robertson
N London
Passive air shelf £2k
Active electronic £6k