A world first? Passive v active isolation platforms test
- Thread starter spiritofmusic
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The Silicron Nitride balls I got from this site,
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/silicon-nitride-ball.html
but I can't recall the supplier. I think I had to buy 10 minimum at a reasonable price. I don't use the balls which came with the Ingress Engineering 7075 cups. I felt that the balls which came with the cups allowed for too quick a roll frequency. Too rapid. I wanted something that kinda moseyed a little more. Took a little more time to rock and roll. When I give my GT 2000 a push, it gently rocks. Back and forth, back and forth. Gently slowly taking a bit more than 2 seconds to do a cycle. That's more like it.
Now that I think of it, this was about the speed of some water in a bathroom sink I watched move backwards and forwards during an earthquake. A somewhat disconcerting experience.
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/silicon-nitride-ball.html
but I can't recall the supplier. I think I had to buy 10 minimum at a reasonable price. I don't use the balls which came with the Ingress Engineering 7075 cups. I felt that the balls which came with the cups allowed for too quick a roll frequency. Too rapid. I wanted something that kinda moseyed a little more. Took a little more time to rock and roll. When I give my GT 2000 a push, it gently rocks. Back and forth, back and forth. Gently slowly taking a bit more than 2 seconds to do a cycle. That's more like it.
Now that I think of it, this was about the speed of some water in a bathroom sink I watched move backwards and forwards during an earthquake. A somewhat disconcerting experience.
Dear Marc and Peter,
Why do we (the "collective" we) think we have any actual, valid, physics-based or mechanical engineering-based or electrical engineering-based understanding of A) whether and, if so, how electrical components in a piece of equipment generate "self-noise" or "self-vibration," and 2) how such "self-noise" and "self-vibration" is conducted out from the noisy and vibrating components, down the printed circuit board or hard wiring and to other components in the same piece of equipment and up to the top of the cabinet and down to the feet or footers on the bottom of the chassis?
How do we know that rubber feet do not absorb such self-vibration and release it as heat in the rubber? (This is how sorbothane is supposed to work.)
How do we know that pointy metal feet or roller balls and saucers don't conduct and drive vibrations from the shelf below up and into the piece of equipment to which the metal feet or balls are attached? (Which way did those early Mod Squad Tiptoe "mechanical diodes" drive the vibrations anyway? Did they insulate the component from vibrations coming up from underneath? Or did they drain self-vibration out of the chassis and down into the rack?)
How do we know that a heavy metal shelf acts as a "sink" into which nasty vibrations meet their fate? Maybe vibrations hit the metal shelf and rebound back up into the equipment?
On these seemingly mysterious and elusive topics of internally generated vibration and energy "drainage," if we do not have a panel of mechanical engineers who are in agreement (haha!) about which components create vibrations and how those vibrations are conducted from part to part within a chassis and then out of a chassis, how do we really have any idea what we are talking and writing about on this subject?
Of course we can make up our own theories about things or subscribe to whatever theory suits our A/B comparisons . . . but don't we (quite possibly just me) really need to take a course in basic mechanical engineering or get some expert scientific advice on these topics?
By the same token we do not have evidence to dismiss the notion out of hand. So why not keep an open mind? Why not even try some experiments for one's self? The only thing that is lost is the ignorance that comes with not having tried anything. What is gained is that most valuable of commodities:
Experience.
Basic mechanical engineering goes a long way into explaining vibrational behaviour.
Source Wikipedia:
1) The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system in a given frame of reference remains constant—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another.
2) Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. When surfaces in contact move relative to each other, the friction between the two surfaces converts kinetic energy into thermal energy (that is, it converts work to heat).
3) Piezoelectricity /pi?e?zo??il?k?tr?s?ti/ is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress. The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure.
4) Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains until it is able to move away by means of an electric current or electrical discharge. Static electricity is named in contrast with current electricity, which flows through wires or other conductors and transmits energy.
5) An electric current is a flow of electric charge. In electric circuits this charge is often carried by moving electrons in a wire. It can also be carried by ions in an electrolyte, or by both ions and electrons such as in an ionised gas (plasma). Electric currents cause Joule heating, which creates light in incandescent light bulbs. They also create magnetic fields, which are used in motors, inductors and generators.
If we change our audiophile line of thinking from "vibration absorbers", "vibrations sinks" etc. to something like "energy conversion mechanisms" we are a lot closer to explaining what is actually going on.
Hey Theo. You can't get off that easy. A photo or two of your table with the rollerballs and mag lev please
I've been living with the Stacore Basic Plus and Advanced under my balanced transformer and cdp for over a couple of months now, Sablon Reserva Elite pwr cords upgrades to my cdp and linestage.
Ok, the initial experience was startling in what it brought in terms of reduction in noise flr, revealing of detail, and cleaning up of bass smear.
The ongoing day to day experience is just as remarkable, but in a different way.
Now remember this is just on digital, and I speak as a true vinylphile who has always found digital lacking and uninvolving in the final analysis despite being excellent in lots of ways.
I'm getting what I never thought I ever would from digital, a real ease and density in the mids and upper bass that has previously been the main advantage of digital over analog.
There's just this organic and holistic quality off my Eera Tentation cdp that is so spookily analog-like, I'm reassessing all the attitudes I've had about digital from that first God awful Brothers In Arms cd in 1983.
This in its way is mirroring M Lavigne's experience w his digital, and I can't praise enough Stacore's role in my system in getting to grips w those deep issues that have been holding back my sound's ultimate potential.
Ok, the initial experience was startling in what it brought in terms of reduction in noise flr, revealing of detail, and cleaning up of bass smear.
The ongoing day to day experience is just as remarkable, but in a different way.
Now remember this is just on digital, and I speak as a true vinylphile who has always found digital lacking and uninvolving in the final analysis despite being excellent in lots of ways.
I'm getting what I never thought I ever would from digital, a real ease and density in the mids and upper bass that has previously been the main advantage of digital over analog.
There's just this organic and holistic quality off my Eera Tentation cdp that is so spookily analog-like, I'm reassessing all the attitudes I've had about digital from that first God awful Brothers In Arms cd in 1983.
This in its way is mirroring M Lavigne's experience w his digital, and I can't praise enough Stacore's role in my system in getting to grips w those deep issues that have been holding back my sound's ultimate potential.
Ron, these are all good questions to which I really don't know the answers. I will say that I have experimented a bit and have paid attention to the solutions of some manufacturers. My SME table for instance offers rubber rings and the hard steel balls as contact options on their footers. The manual suggests that the rubber be used only to protect the finish of fine furniture and for best sonics to remove them to allow for the metal balls to make contact. I listened to both options and prefer the metal. I presume the metal balls allow for the transmission of vibrations away from the turntable better than do the rubber rings.
My Magico Mini speakers are coupled to the massive stands by three cup in ball devices. I once read an explanation that these are designed to drain the energy away from the speaker itself into the stand. I do not know if Magico tried placing this speaker on rubber footers and then the stand, but I presume they offered the solution that sounded best. The compliance of the rubber would allow speaker movement which would probably smear the sound as the drivers would be moving back and forth slightly.
Rubber footers under SS amps may absorb vibrational energy and convert it to heat, but a direct path for these vibrations into 250 lbs of steel mass may be even more effective at getting the vibrations away from sensitive electronics. I plan to experiment a bit to find out. I do know that the transformers vibrate and that the electronics are sensitive to external vibrations because the amps sound better when placed on Vibraplane isolation platforms, so ground borne vibrations are not traveling up to the amps from the floor.
Those Tiptoes and other metal cone footers may provide a pathway in both directions so it is possible that vibrations from the shelf below could pass up into the component. But, at least in theory, the shelf below is the Vibraplane which is a massive steel shelf and casework isolated on air bladders, so there is little if any movement from that shelf present to come up into the component sitting on it.
I agree that it would be very interesting to see specific studies addressing these issues, but for now, intuition, experimentation, and listening are guiding my decisions.
Ron,
IMHO there is no such think as a collective "we" in these high-end subjects - just many "I"...
Engineers and scientists know a lot about vibration and how to deal with it, but the weak link is in the perceptual side - no one had quantified the subjective effects of vibration in defined and clear way in electronics. Science contributes to our hobby mainly in technological aspects, but not in psychoacoustics.The main issue for consumers is that high-end designers are like artists - they design very different type of equipments using very diverse components - for example, there is a large variation in power transformer design, characteristics and assembly. It is completely impossible to have unique solutions to tweak all components or defined rules.
Even worst is that typically designers include the effects of vibration is their sound signature - sometimes suppressing just part of it highlights the remnant, creating an unbalanced product.
IMHO, unless we have a system to practice, the best we can do is learning from others people descriptive experience. Forget about the motivation - sometimes people feel tempted to use science to prove their solution is better than others solution, either as a self-placebo or to impress others.
+1!
Also most of the time availability of items for experimenting - I would love to try an active table under my DAC!
+2
we can only turn to science for science. it's completely up to the individual to interpret the musical/enjoyment consequence. and it will be ever thus. we are stuck with the human element.
Unlike my experiments with high mass turntables that were negative I found active platforms including air do great things for electronics, you should get a couple to try with your DAC and other electronics. Jareck's Stacore platforms look very tempting.
david
Ron,
IMHO there is no such think as a collective "we" in these high-end subjects - just many "I"...
The main issue for consumers is that high-end designers are like artists - they design very different type of equipments using very diverse components - for example, there is a large variation in power transformer design, characteristics and assembly. It is completely impossible to have unique solutions to tweak all components or defined rules.
Even worst is that typically designers include the effects of vibration is their sound signature - sometimes suppressing just part of it highlights the remnant, creating an unbalanced product.
IMHO, unless we have a system to practice, the best we can do is learning from others people descriptive experience. Forget about the motivation - sometimes people feel tempted to use science to prove their solution is better than others solution, either as a self-placebo or to impress others.
Very valid points, Micro!
I'd say in general good engineering, just like good pure science, has this indispensable artistic (=creative, free mind, intuitive, you name it) component.
And this component is indeed much stronger present in vibration control, esp. in damping analysis, which seems to be a black hole of engineering.
It seems that we lack there not only a comprehensive theory to understand damping in various materials under various conditions, but even worse
we even lack a clear system how to organize measured data! Its is difficult to extract data which would be useful outside the immediate conditions of
their extraction. That's why vib control does seem like an art from the outside - one has to go much by trial and error and intuition since published data
are of only v limited use if one can find them at all (unlike, say, plate curves of vacuum tubes). But there are more or less reliable data of course, some even with seemingly consistent
listening correlation (a subject in itself!). Rubber for example. Mentioned above frequently as something that converts vibrations to heat, it is in fact a
v poor damper. Using dynamical mechanical analysis (DMA) as a methodology and agreeing that the loss modulus is more indicative of damping than the loss factor,
the loss modulus of rubber at 1Hz. is e.g. 37 time LOWER than that of teflon and 45 times lower than acryl. So per cycle it dissipates much less energy than other two examples.
At the same time storage modulus, representing the energy stored and returned per cycle, is twice that of acryl and 6 times that of teflon.
So rubber rather stores and gives back energy than dissipates, at least at ULF (could not find exact higher freq. data at the moment).
This seems to be indirectly present in various opinions of rubber compromising sound, present also in this thread.
Cheers,
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David, it's a huge pleasure to hear that! You are an audiophile legend for me and not only for me.
While I would be careful with super heavy mass TT's, I'm quite positive I could challenge
the Schwingrahmen on your EMT927. Actually, my whole approach to vibration control was born when I refused to
pay the $$$ for a Schwingrahmen for my EMT930 to the "EMT gang"
BTW, in your heavy mass TT experiments, did you try oversiffening the Kinetics tables I can see in your pics and placing the TT
exactly at the geometrical center of the isolation table?
Cheers,
Hello Jarek,
I think your points contain some great observations, and I appreciate you posting them here.
I’d add that I have no reason to believe that not only do we lack a “comprehensive theory to understand damping in various materials under various conditions, (and) even worse we even lack a clear system how to organize measured data”, but that we also lack a comprehensive theory in regard to individual component behaviour with respect to topology and implementation.
Though there may indeed be compelling counterpoints, I have not yet found any evidence, empirical, objective or otherwise to suggest that the best solution for a low-torque, low-mass, belt-driven single pivoted tonearmed turntable will necessarily be the same for a high-torque, high-mass, idler-driven gimballed tonearmed table, nor indeed for the same turntable with the same cartridge but different arms (say, an Aro versus an Ikeda, if we’re being silly about it).
As PeterA has eloquently stated and you have alluded to, given that topology of individual components varies enormously in our ‘hobby’ - not to mention, mechanical components such as a turntable is itself a hugely complex set of interdependent variables introducing its own set of data points - intuition, experimentation, and listening will for those of us not in your position be the best, and likely, only way forward, coming to conclusions limited to specific configurations, performing evaluations on a component-by-component and system-by-system basis.
Best,
853guy
853guy, thank you, but I'm on the same boat! That is the whole point - I have to construct, put under the intended conditions, measure, listen, think, repeat.
Published data on damping are limited and difficult to interpret. Unlike e.g. plate curves of tubes. One can predict (using e.g software)
not only the THD, but the whole harmonic spectrum of a given tube under given conditions. Then using the known correlations between
the harmonic spectrum and the sound (e.g. monotonically falling spectrum) one can develop a good starting point for breadboarding.
Here not really so.
Cheers,
Thank you, gentlemen, for the thoughtful and interesting replies to my post.
I agree (of course) that experimenting is worthwhile and fun, and allows us to hear what works for each of us in our particular component and rack situations.
I agree (of course) that experimenting is worthwhile and fun, and allows us to hear what works for each of us in our particular component and rack situations.
Hi Jarek,
Of course, yes, in many ways we’re all in the same boat, and I agree that damping/isolation/energy transfer is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish when compared to the known knowns of tube plate curves as you say.
Yet by having evolved a product over time you’re perhaps better placed to offer data points beyond a single system and/or a single component in that same system as is the case for nearly all of us, providing a cluster of aggregated data that may give some insight into where the greatest gains might be found apropos your particular approach, and conversely, where the limits might lie as gains taper off and diminish.
While I have the greatest respect for your willingness to post here - and especially, the down-to-Earth and open-minded way in which you articulate your thoughts - my suspicion is that we are possibly still well short of a single isolation/damping/energy transfer mechanism/methodology that will give equivalent benefits across all components and all systems. Nevertheless, a willingness on behalf of manufacturers like yourself to share combinations of greatest efficacy, and perhaps as importantly, those of least efficacy, may provide us with data to better understand (though of course, not “know”) ahead of time which solutions are potentially most likely to confer benefits that are predictable, rather than the gamble that many of us currently take, calling it “experimenting” to intellectually soften the blow.
I say this as someone who went all in with a particular form of vibration management and discovered any sonic gains came at the expense of a reduction in musicality, resulting in a net loss for my particular system. That my experience with that particular product is likely not to be universally applicable to those whose systems configuration is not the same only reduces it to a experience of lesser observational value. Hence, my appreciation for your posts here.
Cheers,
853guy
This is one a/b I went into w serious expectation bias for the opposite outcome that transpired.
All I'd heard from Mike Lavigne's and Rockitman's experience amongst many others was that active isolation was slam dunk.
I mean if it works for lab gear better than anything else out there, audio could certainly not be an exception.
Added to the fact that the issue in most systems APPEARS to be lower bass, and active is King sub 1Hz.
So I very nearly passed on the Stacore, only price convincing me to give it a go (and even here it still nearly didn't happen due to the fantastic ex-demo deal on the active I was being offered, and my plan was to buy a single platform for tt use and leave it at that, Stacore was in effect pricier than the active for this one planned platform).
So, a lab device w better isolation specs sub 1Hz, versus something passive that promised better at "broadband" isolation, but hey, I'm only concerned about that sub 1Hz region.
Then to have this expectation bias heavily pro active and anti passive within 30s be turned fully on its head, esp after the active device was also compelling in its own right when I was using it solely waiting for the Stacore to arrive from Poland, remains one of the biggest epiphanies in my system building evolution.
In my system at least, sub 1Hz I'm sure is kinda cool, but it's the frequencies up to 100Hz and beyond in this "broadband" region that are more critical.
This being evidenced by the absolutely analog-like midband density of tone I'm getting via my cdp, and real agility into upper and mid bass.
Nothing I've ever done re changes in my system has got my digital presenting a sound so authentic and full bodied.
This is worth the price of admission alone, and I remain compelled to seeing Stacores do their job under my other components too
So, however it all works, in my case it really does, and Stacore is now critical to me fulfilling the range of potential of my system that the change to acoustics and power grid started when I made my house move and decided to create the dedicated audio space.
All I'd heard from Mike Lavigne's and Rockitman's experience amongst many others was that active isolation was slam dunk.
I mean if it works for lab gear better than anything else out there, audio could certainly not be an exception.
Added to the fact that the issue in most systems APPEARS to be lower bass, and active is King sub 1Hz.
So I very nearly passed on the Stacore, only price convincing me to give it a go (and even here it still nearly didn't happen due to the fantastic ex-demo deal on the active I was being offered, and my plan was to buy a single platform for tt use and leave it at that, Stacore was in effect pricier than the active for this one planned platform).
So, a lab device w better isolation specs sub 1Hz, versus something passive that promised better at "broadband" isolation, but hey, I'm only concerned about that sub 1Hz region.
Then to have this expectation bias heavily pro active and anti passive within 30s be turned fully on its head, esp after the active device was also compelling in its own right when I was using it solely waiting for the Stacore to arrive from Poland, remains one of the biggest epiphanies in my system building evolution.
In my system at least, sub 1Hz I'm sure is kinda cool, but it's the frequencies up to 100Hz and beyond in this "broadband" region that are more critical.
This being evidenced by the absolutely analog-like midband density of tone I'm getting via my cdp, and real agility into upper and mid bass.
Nothing I've ever done re changes in my system has got my digital presenting a sound so authentic and full bodied.
This is worth the price of admission alone, and I remain compelled to seeing Stacores do their job under my other components too
So, however it all works, in my case it really does, and Stacore is now critical to me fulfilling the range of potential of my system that the change to acoustics and power grid started when I made my house move and decided to create the dedicated audio space.
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