Tungsten Grooves Audio vibration isolation feet

Lagonda

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Lagonda

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Bill, Stacore comparison is only a mute point in my specific situation. It took a Herculean effort to get them in my room, and no way can I repeat that. In any other circumstances I'd do a careful A/B against the TGs.

I'm only reporting what I hear, and what I hear is very dramatic and hugely musical. Nothing more nothing less.
Hire some strong piano movers, and support your local workers Marc. If you are lucky, they will mess up their backs, and voila you have new customers ;)
 

Lagonda

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Marc - I don’t think it is fair to compare the Stacore to these feet like that. The Stacore platform will be infinitely superior on its ability to protect gear from vibrations - it is just the basic physics of the matter. You can test this for us on a first live YouTube Spiritofmusic test by downloading one of the vibration apps for your phone and placing it on top of your CD player (or anything else for that matter), then just tap your foot on your suspended wood floor in immediate proximity and look at the output on your phone. Repeat with the footers. Guarantee you the ability of the footers to protect your gear from externally induced vibration is many orders of magnitude lower.

The footers might have some use *together* with Stacore as a means of channeling internally created vibration into the footer chamber converted to heat.

As for Daiza. Once again - Daiza is not for protecting gear from external vibration but for channeling out internally induced vibration.
Having Marc download a app, and make a youtube video ? What alternative universe are you living in Bill ? We have tried teaching him to upload pictures and post links, all in vain :rolleyes:
 
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bonzo75

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Having Marc download a app, and make a youtube video ?

Marc does have videos on youporn, there is a compilation of his multiple epiphanies. Zu audio dirty weekends
 

Lagonda

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Marc does have videos on youporn, there is a compilation of his multiple epiphanies. Zu audio dirty weekends
Is that in the category “downfiring” ?
Or “Zu/Zoo lovers “ ? :rolleyes:
 
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bonzo75

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Is that in the category “downfiring” ?
Or “Zu/Zoo lovers “ ? :rolleyes:

The older ones are not as good due to the room, but understand the later ones shot in the new room are supposed to be good, though I haven't seen. Too fetishy for me. I prefer dialogue, but here there is not much focus on the speaker

Scenes on various different platforms, various toys including a perphery ring. In one scene his tube blows up and pierces his thigh.
 

Lagonda

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The older ones are not as good due to the room, but understand the later ones shot in the new room are supposed to be good, though I haven't seen. Too fetishy for me. I prefer dialogue, but here there is not much focus on the speaker

Scenes on various different platforms, various toys including a perphery ring. In one scene his tube blows up and pierces his thigh.
Yes didn’t Marc hurt himself once while he was performing some serious “tweaking “? :rolleyes:
 

spiritofmusic

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You boys don't know the half of it
"50 Shades Of Epiphany"
 

bonzo75

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After installing the entreq, you had 50 shades of black background
 
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spiritofmusic

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50 shades of black...is grey? Great name for a movie.

Anyhow, in the staid world of footers, I'm hoping I've conveyed how excellently this product performs. Any Qs on SQ, I'll be happy to try and help.
 

Paul

Member
Vibration Sources Explained.

I just want to clarify several points here. There’s a lot vague and incorrect information flying around here so I hope everyone will bear with me as I try to explain a few things.

Vibration mainly comes from three distinct sources. Ground based, air-based aka pressure waves and internal vibration generated from electronics.

First, ground base vibration can be reduced through isolation. Springs, dampers, hydraulics, and magnets are all great mechanisms. Townsend Audio and Stacore have great videos demonstration this. I’m not going to labour the point here, great job guys!

Max Townsend of Townsend Audio:

Stacore:

Next is air born vibration generated through pressure waves. Here’s an excellent video demonstrating the principle. In fact, if you watch the Stacore video to the end their transducer picks up pressure waves from the tapping.

What Happens When You Put A Speaker In A Huge Vacuum Chamber? Can You Hear It?


Lastly internal vibration generated from electronics here is a nice white paper on the subject.

CONTROLLING RESONANCES IN PCB-CHASSIS STRUCTURES by Tim Williams.
http://elmac.co.uk/PCB_chassis_resonances.pdf

The conclusion of this white paper is interesting because the key is to shift the resonant frequency of the structure and the electronics is to dampen or shift the frequency so it becomes benign.

I’m the biggest sceptic here and I prefer not to make assumptions. Statements like lowering the acoustic noise floor are extremely hard to prove. I have a prisim sound dscope series 3 to measure noise in dacs etc and it’s extremely hard to get ‘real world’ measurements that back up this statement. At one stage I was hell bent on proving our isolation feet reduced the noise floor and they may do but without a proper anechoic chamber and the right lab equipment, no can do. When I started testing our feet I was expecting the noise floor to be cleaner but it wasn’t.

After a long conversation with the Graham Boswell at prism sound, the majority of these issues appear to be amplitude and phase modulation and has very little to do with nose floor. They have proved this with CD players. You can hear differences between two identical CDs in the same player and this is to do with slight imbalances in the discs themselves. The vibration differences then cause amplitude modulation in the laser circuit that can actually be heard.

With isolation devices, you hear a more detailed and clearer sounds because the phase and amplitude are more precise and cleaner. When you listen to a stereo pair of speakers you can really detect the phase and amplitude difference, you may only detect slight amplitude difference from a single speaker though. Our hearing is amazing, we can detect extremely low phase difference down to the nano second I believe, but don’t quote me on that, and why we can hear changes in sound stage for example.

Platforms will handle ground based vibration. But the material these platforms are made of are also crucial and that’s very much why the Panzerholz is so effective. That top plate is also susceptible to pressure waves. Steel is an awful material where vibrations are concerned. You may design the best isolation on the planet but a steel structure will transmit pressure waves through its structure very nicely. Nearly all our hifi component case are made of steel or aluminium which is very susceptible to these external pressure wave.

In summary you need a device that touches the case of your hifi component directly to address air born pressure waves and to make internal electrical resonance benign. Racks and platforms address just one piece of the puzzle and it’s very hard to get a rack home for A/B comparison. Finally, using the right materials is key, Material science is key, aka Tungsten.
 

Audiophile Bill

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Mar 23, 2015
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Vibration Sources Explained.

I just want to clarify several points here. There’s a lot vague and incorrect information flying around here so I hope everyone will bear with me as I try to explain a few things.

Vibration mainly comes from three distinct sources. Ground based, air-based aka pressure waves and internal vibration generated from electronics.

First, ground base vibration can be reduced through isolation. Springs, dampers, hydraulics, and magnets are all great mechanisms. Townsend Audio and Stacore have great videos demonstration this. I’m not going to labour the point here, great job guys!

Max Townsend of Townsend Audio:

Stacore:

Next is air born vibration generated through pressure waves. Here’s an excellent video demonstrating the principle. In fact, if you watch the Stacore video to the end their transducer picks up pressure waves from the tapping.

What Happens When You Put A Speaker In A Huge Vacuum Chamber? Can You Hear It?


Lastly internal vibration generated from electronics here is a nice white paper on the subject.

CONTROLLING RESONANCES IN PCB-CHASSIS STRUCTURES by Tim Williams.
http://elmac.co.uk/PCB_chassis_resonances.pdf

The conclusion of this white paper is interesting because the key is to shift the resonant frequency of the structure and the electronics is to dampen or shift the frequency so it becomes benign.

I’m the biggest sceptic here and I prefer not to make assumptions. Statements like lowering the acoustic noise floor are extremely hard to prove. I have a prisim sound dscope series 3 to measure noise in dacs etc and it’s extremely hard to get ‘real world’ measurements that back up this statement. At one stage I was hell bent on proving our isolation feet reduced the noise floor and they may do but without a proper anechoic chamber and the right lab equipment, no can do. When I started testing our feet I was expecting the noise floor to be cleaner but it wasn’t.

After a long conversation with the Graham Boswell at prism sound, the majority of these issues appear to be amplitude and phase modulation and has very little to do with nose floor. They have proved this with CD players. You can hear differences between two identical CDs in the same player and this is to do with slight imbalances in the discs themselves. The vibration differences then cause amplitude modulation in the laser circuit that can actually be heard.

With isolation devices, you hear a more detailed and clearer sounds because the phase and amplitude are more precise and cleaner. When you listen to a stereo pair of speakers you can really detect the phase and amplitude difference, you may only detect slight amplitude difference from a single speaker though. Our hearing is amazing, we can detect extremely low phase difference down to the nano second I believe, but don’t quote me on that, and why we can hear changes in sound stage for example.

Platforms will handle ground based vibration. But the material these platforms are made of are also crucial and that’s very much why the Panzerholz is so effective. That top plate is also susceptible to pressure waves. Steel is an awful material where vibrations are concerned. You may design the best isolation on the planet but a steel structure will transmit pressure waves through its structure very nicely. Nearly all our hifi component case are made of steel or aluminium which is very susceptible to these external pressure wave.

In summary you need a device that touches the case of your hifi component directly to address air born pressure waves and to make internal electrical resonance benign. Racks and platforms address just one piece of the puzzle and it’s very hard to get a rack home for A/B comparison. Finally, using the right materials is key, Material science is key, aka Tungsten.

How does putting your gear onto your footers prevent vibration in the air getting into your gear? Surely the most effective way to achieve this is to sandwich your gear between two very heavy objects assuming you can logistically. I would assume any air borne tactic would need something on top and bottom to mitigate the air borne vibration.

Do you have any measurements to demonstrate the pre / post effect of air induced vibration? Say placing an isolated subwoofer adjacent to the gear and measuring vibration?

Finally how important is air induced vibration versus footfall and internally induced? In the case of Mike Lavigne’s system producing extreme bass output, I can see how his active solution is critical. But for more normal systems where the rack isn’t near the woofers.
 

Paul

Member
Hi Bill, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Logistically. Putting gear between 2 heavy objects only gets you so far assuming that’s even possible and you can over dampen a chassis. The effects will vary based on the design of your component, room acoustics …

The feet absorb vibrations in the chassis. Its something only tungsten can do well, even then, particle impact dampening is key to handling the resonance across the frequency spectrum, a block or two of tungsten on its own isn’t enough. I guess the best description I can come up with is they create a sort of faraday cage effect with the case against vibration and the fact you can over dampen a chassis indicates there’s a sweet spot to be had.

I don’t like my system up loud and my DAC is placed behind the speakers in the centre. For my DAC I’d say internal vibration is more of a problem. My streamer on the other hand I’d say suffers from air and internal vibration problems. I guess I’m trying to highlight the problem is complex and a lot of consideration is required when addressing vibration, one solution doesn’t fit all and that’s why I’ve become slightly obsessed with this sort of stuff. I’m happy so share my thoughts experiences thought.
 
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spiritofmusic

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I think he liked them Lol.
 

jelt2359

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spiritofmusic

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I believe the prices are correct.
 

jelt2359

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Thanks, that's good to know. For reference, here are the prices in the article, the prices are per footer:
  • W50 H33 £350.00
  • W70 H33 £775.00
  • W70 H47 £995.00
  • W70 H47 Speaker Edition £1,025.00
 

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