Townshend Seismic Pods under Rack ! or Isolation Feet on each individual shelf to component !

[rgmd11]

I Recently purchased a Timeless Audio Unlimited Rack, which along with being extremely well made and aesthetically beautiful, certainly to my ears made a notable sonic difference with my components for the better, mainly better articulation and a more natural tonality to instruments, now I am pondering whether its beneficial or not to get a set of Townshend Audio "Corner" Seismic Pods to put under the feet of the rack, I mentioned this to the owner of the company and this is what he said (translated by google from Portuguese) :

TIMELESS AUDIO
"But be careful with these accessories they can work well or not (worth some testing before) isolation is not always better than coupling Mainly when the rack works with the principle of coupling to dissipate vibration and energy, I don't know if you noticed but the Rack uses spheres Zirconia (these white ones) not by chance, but precisely coupled to the floor in order to dissipate the vibration coming from the air and from the equipment itself. This vibration is discharged onto the floor. the floor even transmitting vibration
.. normally it is more stable than any other surface. We have already tested some types of decoupling and we still prefer the rack attached to the floor. But it's worth the test if you can tell me the result"

My floor is comprised of Porcelain tiles on Cement.

Alternatively I have also been thinking of using sets of Isolation feet on the individual shelfs of the rack for each component, after a decent amount of research I have concluded that "Finite Elements Cerball Universal" feet appear to offer great value and have been very well received, of course Center Stage2 are for many the Rolls Royce / Patek Phillipe of the Isolation world but beyond what i want to spend, and there are other interesting newcomers such as "Revopods" and "Hifistay" feet, which appear to be well thought out and designed and gaining traction in the audiophile world, but to reiterate, I want to keep it simple and cost effective.

Curious to hear peoples experiences and what they choose to do and use and please if possible a brief explantion of why and the difference it made for them.

Thanks and Cheers to all.

 

[orange55]

I Recently purchased a Timeless Audio Unlimited Rack, which along with being extremely well made and aesthetically beautiful, certainly to my ears made a notable sonic difference with my components for the better, mainly better articulation and a more natural tonality to instruments, now I am pondering whether its beneficial or not to get a set of Townshend Audio "Corner" Seismic Pods to put under the feet of the rack, I mentioned this to the owner of the company and this is what he said (translated by google from Portuguese) :

TIMELESS AUDIO
"But be careful with these accessories they can work well or not (worth some testing before) isolation is not always better than coupling Mainly when the rack works with the principle of coupling to dissipate vibration and energy, I don't know if you noticed but the Rack uses spheres Zirconia (these white ones) not by chance, but precisely coupled to the floor in order to dissipate the vibration coming from the air and from the equipment itself. This vibration is discharged onto the floor. the floor even transmitting vibration
.. normally it is more stable than any other surface. We have already tested some types of decoupling and we still prefer the rack attached to the floor. But it's worth the test if you can tell me the result"

My floor is comprised of Porcelain tiles on Cement.

Alternatively I have also been thinking of using sets of Isolation feet on the individual shelfs of the rack for each component, after a decent amount of research I have concluded that "Finite Elements Cerball Universal" feet appear to offer great value and have been very well received, of course Center Stage2 are for many the Rolls Royce / Patek Phillipe of the Isolation world but beyond what i want to spend, and there are other interesting newcomers such as "Revopods" and "Hifistay" feet, which appear to be well thought out and designed and gaining traction in the audiophile world, but to reiterate, I want to keep it simple and cost effective.

Curious to hear peoples experiences and what they choose to do and use and please if possible a brief explantion of why and the difference it made for them.

Thanks and Cheers to all.

Personally I found moving from supports that dissipate in the floor to isolation, made a big improvement and I have never looked back. All spikes are now gone, all components and speakers float rather than being fixed. Spatial information and naturalness took a big jump up.

Alongside Townsend, check out IsoAcoustics GAIA's, they are also very effective and well priced. When I added the GAIA's to mu subwoofers it stopped the bass interacting with the room and gave the bass more punch. That was moving from the manufacturer supplied spikes, sat on top of granite, which was on top of concrete floor.

Under your equipment, including switches, power supplies etc; I would highly recommend "Black Ravioli Pad's", they do two sizes and are very effective and bring out real naturalness and spatial information.

Hope that helps.

 

[orange55]

Sorry should add to answer the question in the title, both!

 

[rgmd11]

Personally I found moving from supports that dissipate in the floor to isolation, made a big improvement and I have never looked back. All spikes are now gone, all components and speakers float rather than being fixed. Spatial information and naturalness took a big jump up.

Alongside Townsend, check out IsoAcoustics GAIA's, they are also very effective and well priced. When I added the GAIA's to mu subwoofers it stopped the bass interacting with the room and gave the bass more punch. That was moving from the manufacturer supplied spikes, sat on top of granite, which was on top of concrete floor.

Under your equipment, including switches, power supplies etc; I would highly recommend "Black Ravioli Pad's", they do two sizes and are very effective and bring out real naturalness and spatial information.

Hope that helps.

Hello Orange55

Thanks for your reply, I have actually since posting my post, decided on and purchased a set of RevoPods from Arya Audio Labs after having a few chats with the owner Arthur who is a very nice chap to deal with, he has a MSc in Engineering Acoustics from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research/ISVR in Southampton and a BEng in Electrical Engineering from DHBW University Stuttgart (both 1st class with honours), and there is a fair amount of user feedback from other people who give them glowing praise.

Presently away from home at the moment visiting family but after next week when I will be on holiday with my wife I will install these first on my Aqua Linq and then in on turn my Aqua LaScala Dac and see how they fair, if as I suspect their is a positive and substantial effect I will in turn buy a few more sets and use them on the rest of my system.

I will report back later, with any notes and impressions.

Cheers

 

[Cellcbern]

For optimal system performance you need isolation from external vibrations which requires decoupling from the floor, and transfer/absorption/tuning/dissipation of internal component resonances - two different things that require two different solutions/devices. Many devices do both to some extent however I have never encountered a single device that does both very well. Decoupling you can do between rack and floor or between shelf and rack (or both). Any device that addresses internal component resonances must be in direct contact with the chassis bottom. Townshend Pods are great at decoupling, not nearly as effective when it comes to internal component resonances.

Examples in photos from my system - Townshend Seismic Sink air platform "floats" SACD player, while Wellfloat (pendulum technology) platform (2nd photo) "floats" power supply - decoupling them from rack and floor respectively. Dalby Audio and ASI Top Line Feet between components and decoupling platforms absorb/tune/dissipate internal component resonances.

 

[Cellcbern]

Note this combining of different types of "isolation" devices in the attached photo from Audio Exotics. In the photo Arya Revopods are used between speaker and Wellfloat Delta pendulum based footers, and between component and SRA platform.

 

[Verdier]

Note this combining of different types of "isolation" devices in the attached photo from Audio Exotics. In the photo Arya Revopods are used between speaker and Wellfloat Delta pendulum based footers, and between component and SRA platform.

@Cellcbern

Do you understand AE's approach? I'm not sure if it's the same as what you described above and showed on your system:

In your system, you are diverting vibrations of the device into a base. This base in turn rests on a wellfloat base. Wellfloat keeps out or transforms the vibrations or seismic forces that might come from outside towards the device. Right?

AE shows Arya Feets under the speaker, resting on Wellfloat Base. Here again the Wellfloat keep influences from the outside away - but at the same time they will make sure that low-frequency interferences (o.k., with this speaker this problem will be small ....) can't get to other devices. But what do the Arya Feets do in this case. These also work like an insulator, they are soft internally. From my point of view, this means that they cannot dissipate vibrations from the speaker. Well, maybe they are designed to process these vibrations directly themselves and convert them into heat. I don't know.

But then with the amp shown in the picture, it is really difficult for me to understand the approach. What do we see there? An amp that stands on Arya Feets. These are soft, so they may already destroy the vibration energy themselves - but I can't imagine that they can pass it on to the fat SRA base underneath. What is this base supposed to do then? Is it simply a try and error approach or do you think that there are meaningful considerations (and their results) behind it? I do not know and cannot explain it to myself.

I think a lot of what is being tried at ae and some of the equipment I have listened to and found to be very good. It is really very interesting what is being done there. But on the subject of resonances, I just can't always understand the way the material is used. But I don't discount that I'm misunderstanding or overlooking any of it.

 

[Cellcbern]

The Arya Rev-O-Pod appears from the write-up and cut-away to be designed to both decouple (with soft polymers) and transfer/absorb/dissipate internal component resonances (with hard ball bearings). I have posted previously that I have never encountered a single device that is outstanding at both, and I suspect that is why AE uses the Arya and Wellfloat devices together. The Rev-O-Pod provides for some movement based decoupling but not at the level of the Wellfloat devices which freely float whatever they are under. The Wellfloat devices provide some micro-deflection in response to airborne vibrations hitting a component, but can't "drain" internal component resonances to the extent the Arya's hard metal surface/ball bearing combo against the chassis bottom can. Used together you get the strengths of both. Don't see why the same wouldn't apply with the Arya/SRA combo. Similar approach with my footer/platform combo but of course the Dalby and ASI feet use a different mechanism than the Arya. I am of course making educated guesses - haven't talked to anyone at AE about why they use both together.

 

[David Hyman]

Greetings all, I'm the U.S. importer of Wellfloat at metavoxaudio.com - I'll concur with Cellcerbern's approach. I use Babel under source components and Delta Extreme under my Alsyvox speakers. Decoupling I'd argue is more important (especially with speakers), than damping the internal resonances. That latter is somewhat of an art form and different with different components in house they resonate from airbourne vibrations. I use shun mook mpingo discs on top and bottom. combak harmonix, dalby and many other approaches. Ideally you don't want the metal chasis vibrating.