Vibration, isolation and electronics...

[Phelonious Ponk]

Says who?? If that statement were true, high fidelity could never exist. I refer back to my Muhammad Ali/Howard Cosell comment I made once before in another of your posts sometime back.

Wasn't it you who talked me into putting Frank on "ignore?" (maybe not...mighta been someone else) Now I have to see his science fiction in one of your posts.

Tim

 

[mep]

Wasn't it you who talked me into putting Frank on "ignore?" (maybe not...mighta been someone else) Now I have to see his science fiction in one of your posts.

Tim

I don't know. I did tell you that I was going to put him on ignore and he kind of disappeared for awhile and I forgot about it. Now he's back with a vengeance and serving up heaping helpings of bovine excreta.

 

[fas42]

As a general reponse to all, I appreciate that what I'm saying in general is a bit disturbing to a number of people. And that some would just like me to disappear, so that they can just remain in their comfort zones in terms of their beliefs about, and attitudes towards audio and equipment. However, there is definitely a need to move forward in this hobby/industry and I'm just playing a small part in attempting to create some real progress and improvements in what can be achieved in home music playback.

Tom, as I mentioned before, "proof" is not a word that should be used in audio: ultimately nothing can be proved. (Whaddaya mean: this $100,000 instrument just proved it! Well, I claim that the $100,000 test gear is defective or measuring the wrong thing; prove to me it is actually measuring what it/the manufacturer claims it tests, etc, etc ...). Strong evidence is a better phrase to use.

The example you gave for being sensitive to vibration is a bad one; look inside most gear, there are connectors galore just relying on simple insertion to maintain good contact, cables running hither and thither in bundles, floating in the air, lightly touching sensitive components at random places, bigger discrete components just supported by by a couple of copper legs. A circuit board is probably the most stable place in the box, unless it is not supported in enough places, say only in the corners, trampoline anyone? As regards electrical signals derived from physical movement, there is a whole body of literature describing a number of second order effects that can cause these, I used capacitance variation as a simple example, though it is not likely a major contributor.

As a nod to Steve's system, the literature about the Lamm gear mentions that the maker is paranoid, extremely fussy about every tiny detail of its construction. Why? Is he a neatness freak? No, he's learnt that being obsessive about the small things makes all the difference ...

As a last thought, and just to irritate some people here a bit more, I'm finally, finally getting to the point where my setup is maintaining a good standard (for me!) over a solid listening session -- I'll put up a detailed rundown soon of where it's at on my members' system thread.

Frank

 

[mep]

Tom, as I mentioned before, "proof" is not a word that should be used in audio: ultimately nothing can be proved. (Whaddaya mean: this $100,000 instrument just proved it! Well, I claim that the $100,000 test gear is defective or measuring the wrong thing; prove to me it is actually measuring what it/the manufacturer claims it tests, etc, etc ...). Frank

Say what? Are you saying now that premium test gear doesn't measure what the manufacture says it does? I live in the world of high tech test gear and rely on it for extremely important measurements. Of course it does what the manufacture says it does. We prove it every day.

 

[fas42]

Say what? Are you saying now that premium test gear doesn't measure what the manufacture says it does? I live in the world of high tech test gear and rely on it for extremely important measurements. Of course it does what the manufacture says it does. We prove it every day.

Mark, I was just taking the concept that people have of the word "proof", implying that it is an iron clad, God guaranteed certification of "truth", to the limit. People use very expensive measuring devices, but there are no ultimate guarantees by anyone that on a particular day, at a crucial moment, it hasn't gone faulty; that is, it may give you a reading but that reading is totally wrong. Which is why scientists use the bundle of evidence approach: if someone comes up with a new discovery and claims he has "proof" by virtue of using very sophisticated and pricey equipment, he would be laughed at. Other scientists, using their own approaches and equipment have to replicate that person's findings over and over again before it is taken seriously in the community of scientists ...

Check out your history of science: when Einstein published his famous papers they were completely ignored, firstly because they were so radical, and secondly because there was no easy way of testing his concepts. It took decades for his ideas to slowly gain some sort of acceptance and then real evidence slowly came forward. No Einstein stuff here, of course, but just pointing out that if you go against the stream of conventional thinking everyone, irrespective of their capabilities and situation, can have a pretty rough time of it ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Once you're no longer in the middle of it, it's kinda fun to watch. Reminds me of scenes in Shutter Island.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Hey hey Tim, not that you don't spend a lot of time in the middle...and I do enjoy your posts and they do help keep the anchor tied to the boat, atleast for some of us.

Tom

Oh God knows I spend time in the middle, Tom. But currently I'm enjoying watching the Frank show from the balcony.

Tim

 

[fas42]

if you say vegimite brand x is the best, how the hell do we know until we taste it ourselves...or in the case of your experiment, some actual test equipment results...an easy one is THD, no matter what you do, if that number did not come down you just fiddled with your tone control my man.

Tom

Gee, I didn't know you blokes in the rest of the world were into Vegemite, a spreading disease perhaps! Note the capitalisation, there is only one Vegie product, like there is only one Jeep ...

but if you are really doing all this research then put up some facts...

Facts don't mean Schiit! (apologies to that company ...). What counts is what it sounds like, which is how I got onto this road, after all! But seriously, I'm thinking about doing something meaningful, like getting a decent microphone setup into the room while my system is blasting away, and record what it sounds like, with a bit of commentary from people in the room, to give a sense of loudness scale. Trouble is, that's a recording of the playback of a recording, but at least with headphones(!!) you should get an idea; and at the moment I have lousy recording capability. Is that going to turn any of you lot on??

THD, no matter what you do, if that number did not come down you just fiddled with your tone control my man.

Oh dear, we have just mentioned that bad word! Yes, I believe it is lower, much lower, but only where it counts: as seen by a very accurate mic in front of the speaker cones, while playing musical signals, not sine waves. A very hard thing to set up and meaningfully measure ...

It is intersting your concept of making your less expensice system with all your tweaks into something that can beat a much more costly system as a goal for study and learning and good luck to you there.

There are a lot of folks on this forum with deep knowledge of audio and also, speaking for myself, a pretty good understanding of how limited my hearing abilities are verses hearing stuff 90 db down and all that. Also, given that the recording as you recieve it is nothing like the reality, you start out with plain old stereo (flawed....now to advance the art we need to get away from plain old stereo to start with not tinker about with a flawed system as you seem to think the answer is) that is somehow trying to be like the live event when it can not , in no way, but only simulate it with a great deal of the simulation going on in your brain, thus everyone hears things differently.

Right on the money with the first comment. As regards the second, it is all about recreating the vitality and energy of the live event with sufficient accuracy for the brain to say, "Good enough for me". The people who have experienced this know what it's about, like putting on your best tape playback through a top notch, big headroom system. Basspig comes to mind here, he's got about 25db extra acoustic headroom over me.

Frank

 

[Orb]

Seperate to the distortion and the additional signal, one factor that seems not to be mentioned so far is resonance generated by the component, which IMO is more likely to be audible in SS gear than the additional signal and possibly the distortion affect on a signal.

This relies more on mechanical engineering, and is quite plausible that the resonance of the chassis (or any part of the gear really but more likely with the casing) will cause a type of ringing at certain frequencies also depending upon the energy of the fundamental.
Resonance has been studied but the paper I am thinking of by Toole was more focused with speakers than the other components, however it was noted resonance can have an effect on the sound.

This may be another reason why some products like the Stillpoints (just using them as an example) may seem to improve the sound quality for some gear, as it is actually reducing the resonance-ringing type effect that is coming off the component in relation to mechanical engineering - instead of electrical.
The more over-engineered and well built the product, the less this should be an issue (another consideration would also be how the feet are connected or mounted to the component and in this not all products are equal).
The resonance-ringing would also be compounded if components are on same rack as say a CD-DVD player/turntable/etc, which is another source seperate to those caused by soundwaves.
Not saying this is actually causing audible effects in components (is known to for speakers and that makes sense), just throwing it out there as a potential alternative to just the focus on electrical engineering vibration and microphonics.

Cheers
Orb

 

[hifitommy]

it seems to me

that vibration can be a problem with ss OR tubes. why else did some speaker manufacturers (whose names escape me) build the speakers with outboard crossovers.

and i dont know that counterpoint had ss phono sections or not but those sections had their own isolation from the rest of the chassis.

it may be better to be safer than sorrier. i once attended a demo in a persons house where aurios were placed-not under the transport of the CD system but-under the wadia convertor. my jaw dropped with the resulting deeper bass by about a half an octave.

it certainly wasnt what i expected. go figure.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

i once attended a demo in a persons house where aurios were placed-not under the transport of the CD system but-under the wadia convertor. my jaw dropped with the resulting deeper bass by about a half an octave.

OK...lemme make sure I understand what you just said. Placing isolation feet under a DAC added a half octave of bass extension?

Tim

 

[mep]

Aurios or Oreos? As for Counterpoint, they never had a SS phono section to my knowledge. And none of their tube phono sections that were part of their preamps had their own isolation from the rest of the chassis. You might be thinking of the SA-5000 which had a floating circuit board. And if so, the phono stage and line stage are built on the same circuit board which did float from the chassis.

 

[DonH50]

Note the inductors in crossovers are somewhat vibration-sensitive. Audibility is always the debate.