What's the deal with placing amps directly on the floor?

Mike Lavigne

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Not sure why decoupling would matter for a SS amp but have not really thought about it. However, I prefer my amps off the floor mainly to reduce the chance of dust bunnies etc. getting into the cooling system. I would never set an amp (or any electronics) directly on carpet due to dirt, dust and fibers.

my floor is hardwood where my amp(s) are. and my darTZeel amps are sealed (and they are Swiss), so dust bunnies are not a problem. and none of my gear sits on carpet or sits directly on the floor.

p.s. High-resolution flight electronics are way more resolving than audio systems and include a high degree pf specialized mechanical isolation, SS or not...

or even just consider the modern Automobile. everything is ultra-engineered to be attached in an optimal way. one reason it costs 2-4 Billion dollars for a model change over. these are not trivial matters.

p.p.s. How did this thread end up under "Turntables"?

above my pay grade.
 

Bill Hart

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May 11, 2012
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I have my Lamm ML2's sitting on Grand Prix Monaco amp stands, with the carbon shelves and apex footers. I thought they were a vast improvement when I installed them a number of years ago, but have not tried other alternatives since then and probably won't until i move and set everything up anew. (I have a wooden floor at the top of the house, not exactly foundational, if you will). One highly regarded audiophile colleague (I will not name him to attribute views he may not want public) removed his amps from these stands because he thought they smeared the sound). Anybody else experimented with these under tube amps?
 

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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Aurios are decouplers, and darn good ones too. and understand i'm not saying anything you are doing is wrong, or it does not sound good. what i'm saying is that anything not a spike sitting on carpet is floating and picking up resonance. and you likely have some spikes laying around somewhere (we all have those drawers full of tweaks) you can put underneath those butcher blocks and then listen to see if there is a positive change. there might not be, but then again it might sound better. what have you got to lose?



i felt the same way. how could my 600 pound speakers (or your 800+ pound speakers) improve with decoupling? it's not logical!

Gary Koh, and my friend Tech came over and they convinced me to try the Kombak-Harmonix footers under the MM3's. these were Tech's and he was on the way to Singapore with these and i was just going to try them. i would not let him take them with him. after hearing what they did my eyes were openned.

it turns out that your speaker cabinet (all speaker cabinets) are energized both by the drivers, and the resonance in the floor. so every time the driver moves, the cabinet is also moving and the precison is smeared by all that energy. until you hear it reduced by the footer you will never appreciate what can be done.

the higher resolution your system is, the more the benefit since you have electronics and speaker that tell the whole story.

so i understand someone not being open to them. i was not either. my ears had to hear it.

Newton's Third Law. Gets you every time :)
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Aurios are decouplers, and darn good ones too. and understand i'm not saying anything you are doing is wrong, or it does not sound good. what i'm saying is that anything not a spike sitting on carpet is floating and picking up resonance. and you likely have some spikes laying around somewhere (we all have those drawers full of tweaks) you can put underneath those butcher blocks and then listen to see if there is a positive change. there might not be, but then again it might sound better. what have you got to lose?



i felt the same way. how could my 600 pound speakers (or your 800+ pound speakers) improve with decoupling? it's not logical!

Gary Koh, and my friend Tech came over and they convinced me to try the Kombak-Harmonix footers under the MM3's. these were Tech's and he was on the way to Singapore with these and i was just going to try them. i would not let him take them with him. after hearing what they did my eyes were openned.

it turns out that your speaker cabinet (all speaker cabinets) are energized both by the drivers, and the resonance in the floor. so every time the driver moves, the cabinet is also moving and the precison is smeared by all that energy. until you hear it reduced by the footer you will never appreciate what can be done.

the higher resolution your system is, the more the benefit since you have electronics and speaker that tell the whole story.

so i understand someone not being open to them. i was not either. my ears had to hear it.

Mike, I agree with everything you say. For my mind, doing such however is tantamount to having a vibraplane sitting on spikes
 

DonH50

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Jun 22, 2010
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Speaker decoupling, or stabilizing, makes sense. Tube amps, yes; SS amps, I can speculate but a proper design should not be that sensitive to vibrations, at least to the point where they are audible. However, it is pretty easy to do a quick gross check of sensitivity -- just bang on the amp!
 

JackD201

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Apr 20, 2010
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I wish I knew what it was Don but SS amps going microphonic don't sound like tubes going microphonic. The effect is an electronic haze on a hard floor and ill defined bass on a carpeted one. Some SS amps just sound dirty when not put on supports.
 

DonH50

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I have seen numerous vibration issues in SS electronics over the years, albeit mostly RF/mW systems, not audio. Vibration will expose any manufacturing defects (poor solder joints, poor wire dress, etc.) Transformers are particularly susceptible since the windings may not be all firmly bonded, or may come loose over time. Moving wires around can change the amount of coupling among them and to ground or whatever is around them. Flux llines/fields can be modulated... Vibration control often includes a lot of work to make sure everything moves together so nothing changes...

I suspect the generalizations are not all true vis a vie hardwood vs. carpet sonic effects, but I am now wondering about the impact of vibration on audio components, something I have not thought about in years. I set up a "rap" test once upon a time that yielded surprising results (mainly that some big SS amps were also fairly "microphonic", not just the tube amps).

I cannot talk to the audibility of such effects; they are usually pretty minor for SS gear for various reasons. I remain skeptical, but curious, as usual... - Don
 

JackD201

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Never mind.

Tim

I still saw your post in my email Tim....that's what you think ;)

Don,

I did say in another thread that some amps, and pres were less susceptible. I should have prefaced it with what I have experienced which while following a generality, shouldn't be a generalization. What the heck am I saying? I gotta hold back on the Mountain Dew!

It's one of those crazy things that you don't notice until you lose it. In my case when my amp stands were snagged and the snag-er left me his amp stands until I could re-order. My system stayed off for a month. I wasn't very happy.

My friend and neighbor who has Parkinson's disease ordered 16 levels from me. He was interested primarily because the modular nature allowed me to customize the heights so he could tuck his arm to his sides while he operated his 5 different turntables. He was also interested in the sheer mass of the support structures and the platforms themselves. Safe cantilevers even if you bump into them. He was extremely skeptical about the sound part. He changed his mind after 4 bars and ordered three more levels. The improvements, by the way, carried over to his digital and not just his analog.

I do hope someone figures out how to measure this. In the meantime, ain't nobody gonna be snagging any of my platforms ever again.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Apr 25, 2010
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Mike, I agree with everything you say. For my mind, doing such however is tantamount to having a vibraplane sitting on spikes

when the Active Vibraplane senses the shelf coming out of level, it will compensate by adjusting it back to level. this adjustment applies leverage to one side or corner of whatever the vibraplane is sitting on. if it was sitting on a butcher block shelf on carpet, the butcher block would slightly deflect from the leverage on it from the adjusting vibraplane. it would be like taking your hand or foot and pressing down on the butcher block sitting on the carpet, it would deflect slightly since it is not solid to the floor. OTOH if the butcher block was spiked to the subfloor thru the carpet, it would not deflect from that pressure (or would deflect to a considerably less degree depending on your floor type).

an easy test would be simply to press on the corner of the butcher block with your foot. if it moves at all, then it is floating, and will end up adding it's voice to the sound you hear. and you won't recognize it until it is gone.

in theory, carpet could act like a decoupler. however, it's so unpredictable and it compresses and therefore changes, so approaching it as a useful method of decoupling is not too reasonable.

so to answer your point directly, the vibraplane would always desire the most solid support to sit on to be the most effective, and therefore want a solid spiked rack or shelf. you would not want a vibraplane sitting on a decoupled shelf, it would compromise it's intended function. adding decoupling products together reduces the performance. it's why i sold my Grand Prix Audio racks when i started using the Wave Kinetics A10-U8's. the A10-U8's work much better on the Adona solid rack spiked to my floor.
 

cjfrbw

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Apr 20, 2010
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Tubes microphonic? yeah

Spinning devices reading data, vibration sensitive,? yeah

Speakers? maybe, but not so certain that isolation or anchoring will make any difference

Solid State devices? Gimme a break.

It should be easy for the measuring crowd to determine if vibrations add harmonics to an input signal compared to an output signal with a solid state device.

Until I see the graphs, I don't believe that solid state devices suffer from floor or moderate vibrations in any way.

Like one wag stated, if solid state devices and signal transfer were vibration sensitive, NASA would never have gotten a rocket off of the ground.

I will remain objectivist ostrich on this one, until I see real data. No testimonials need apply.
 

DonH50

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Jun 22, 2010
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Speakers move in response to the drivers, causing a sort of doppler distortion. I first measured it on planers.

Oscillators are typically sensitive to vibrations.

I no longer have convenient access to gov't vibration testing reports but many SS components exhibit some sensitivity to vibration. In audio systems? Audible? I don't know. However, you can put a 'scope on an output (amp/preamp), rap on the case, and see if there's a spike in the output. More common than one (I at least) might think. It would be interesting to test some audio components on a vibration table.

Like many other things discussed on these fora, I am more skeptical that the effect is audible than that it does not exist at all.
 
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Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
12,467
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Speakers move in response to the drivers, causing a sort of doppler distortion. I first measured it on planers.

Oscillators are typically sensitive to vibrations.

I no longer have convenient access to gov't vibration testing reports but many SS components exhibit some sensitivity to vibration. In audio systems? Audible? I don't know. However, you can put a 'scope on an output (amp/preamp), rap on the case, and see if there's a spike in the output. More common than one (at least) might think. It would be interesting to test some audio components on a vibration table.

Like many other things discussed on these fora, I am more skeptical that the effect is audible than that it does not exist at all.

read about how electron microscopes are optimized. this is science pure and simple. there are different levels of isolation that are required for different levels of microscopes to have optimal performance. some microscopes don't have the resolving power to fully appreciate or justify the best isolation.

no different with music reproduction systems. the most resolving systems can use the most effective isolation. and many systems maybe won't be able to get the full benefit of the best isolation. but for those that have highly resolving systems, everything matters. it just does.

i have no illusions nor do a care a whit that some don't believe.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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When I modified my Maggie's feet and stands I thought the sound improved. Certainly the measured impulse response did. I expect it was mental, but our minds are not always driven by logic, and like you did not care then (or now, for that matter, although currently my Maggie's are on carpet and not spiked or modified).
 

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