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System building 101A
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| N1ck |
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MW- I am guessing you have a full on room all to yourself? lol
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| JanVigne |
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"Are we moving on to room adjustments now Jan? Or what is next do you think?"
I don't know, what do you think we need? I can only give ideas by what you tell me you are hearing or not hearing. I spent a lot of time with Dak on ecoustics and those are still very good suggestions for getting a system in order. Isolation of most components from both mechanical and air borne vibrations is always helpful but you may feel your system is at a good level there. Or what you do may not be perceived as helpful until the system gains a bit more transparency. With MW's system, he needed a good amount of isolation from his second story room's floppy floor joists and his dual voice coil subwoofers plus his preference for much louder volume levels than I play at. IMO most of what we did later wasn't going to be worth doing until his gear was well isolated from the environment. In his case, that meant a lot of 50 lb bags of sand.
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| dmitchell |
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Interesting thought about vibrations. I remember once when Nuck was over and we were listening to some tunes. He walked up to my rack (my audio rack, that is) while the music was playing and put his hand on the CD player and pushed down on the top of it. It sounded instantly better.
Ever since then I keep some 10 lb weight plates on top my CDP.
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| N1ck |
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Ahhh yes Isolation. I did make an isolation stand for my DAC. But thats where I left it. To me, the music is sounding wonderful right now. Never been so happy. There is one room/isolation? issue I need to address right away. Or at least as soon as I can. lol. That is right above the left speaker is duct work. Air intake for furnace and a line to back room. Its been painted to match drop ceiling so unless you look for it you wont physically notice it but its there. If I get the volume level loud enough (95 percent of my listening I do not get it loud enough to make it vibrate) I can make it vibrate a bit. Even when I do not hear the vibration, its there as if you place your hand on the duct work you can feel it vibrating. What sort of material can be stuck on it to help with that?
Dave makes a good point about the vibration caused in cdp's. With no moving parts this should not be an issue with DAC's or would it? Would placing weights on the front corners of each shelf in an audio rack help matters?
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| dmitchell |
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I wrapped all the duct work when I made my music room in Roxul. Pretty sure that would have dampened most vibrations.
I've seen pics of guys with 35-45 lb plates on their music racks. Certainly can't hurt... only problem is that iron plates are expensive. Almost like they sell them by them pound ;-)
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| N1ck |
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I wonder if they have Roxul pads that stick Dave? I think Red Ball have something like this, I will ask them.
I am going to keep an eye out for weights that look bad a$$. lol.
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| dmitchell |
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You can buy stuff called Dynamat at Futureshop. A lot of car audio guys use it to line the insides of their cars to dampen vibrations. I've also heard of people using it on the inside chassis of their CD players.
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| JanVigne |
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Well, first let's go through a few suggestions for improving your system. Remember, not all tweaks are readily apparent as improvements. You might try a tweak and find it does little to nothing in your system. Some tweaks are system dependent and not all systems present the same problems. Other times a tweak is only going to be apparent after the system has reached a higher level of transparency. If you try something and it doesn't seem to have changed anything, that doesn't mean the tweak is a failure. It might be simply that it will not be doing any harm if left in the system as other tweaks and system improvements are performed. As with other changes to a system sometimes it's better to keep a tweak in your system for a week or so and then remove the device to check for any perceived changes back to a better or worse system quality. As with equipment changes, don't get fooled by something different, different is not always better.
http://www.partsconnexion.com/
http://www.percyaudio.com/Catalog.pdf
Both of these catalogues offer damping materials and isolation devices of various types. Percy sells devices specifically meant to address the minimalization of EMI and RFI effects in the system. Highly regarded in most reviews, their benefits are obviously tied to the amount of pollution your system is subjected to. Do you have a wireless router or some sort of wireless device in the vicinity of your home? Then you have some amount of RFI pollution. I just had solar panels placed on my roof and the company which installed and warrants them wants me to put a wireless transceiver in my house which will monitor their performance over the web. Once that goes in my hard wired computer system, I'll have a bit more RF to deal with and a sending unit that will be located less than fifteen feet away from my system. So think about where you might have unintentional interferences creeping into your systems and consider what you might need to do to address a not always noticeable degradation of signal quality.
Actual damping devices - whether they are sheets of stick on material or weights or footers or wraps - need to be addressed on a case by case basis. Several of the materials introduced over the years have eventually fallen more out of favor as their effects on a gradually more transparent system have become more obvious. Sorbothane comes to mind and it can be both good and bad. I have a few Sorbothane footers I would gladly lend to anyone who wanted to try them. In the right application they can be a good tweak. In the wrong application they will tend to dull the sound. And that became the problem with Sorbothane, it was seen at first as a "wonder drug" which could do no harm. It became overused and too much of a good thing can turn the corner into just a bad thing. My frst CD player was taken apart as I filled virtually any space or surface that might resonate with Sorbothane and placed Sorbothane footers beneath it. I never reached a point where I felt the application had gone too far but, then, my system has become more transparent since I first bought a CD player. No moving parts in a CD player? The transport and the disc are spinning at 500 RPM. The clamping system for the disc is intimately tied to the transport. The optical system in the transport is trying to follow a track 1/60th the dimension of a human hair as it moves from the inner to the outer edge of the disc. Most discs are pressed slight off center so the optical system is constantly making small adjustments to follow the non-concentric track. The transformer of any electrical component is vibrating with each pulse of 60Hz AC voltage. Any flat open surface on the chassis of the payer will have a resonant frequency which will respond possibly to the vibration of the transfomer and transport - more than likely it will - and certainly to any airborne or mechanical stimulation from the perssure waves being created by your speakers. If your player is sitting on a rack, then the surafce supporting the player will be sucject to many of those same resonances and due to its dimensions will amplify the vibration which can easily enter your player. The legs/support of most stands/shelves will have resonances which can be picked up from the floor or wall plus the air borne pressure changes which will also amplify the degree to which a player will find itself moving in increments at least 1/60th the dimension of a human hair. These are the things which should be addressed when you think about a CD player. In the more oblique thought process, each circuit board will respresent a suspended surface which is tied to the chassis of the player which is translating each of the above mentioned vibrations and resonant frequencies into the board. While some believe solid state components are not subject to microphonics, others disagree.
Here's a relatively inexpensive tweak which has in most cases proven to be worth consideration;
http://www.audioprism.com/ The Audio Prism Ground Controls are a different take on grounding your components and speakers. Mapleshade retails a similar product.
If you haven't seen the photos of MW's system set up, take a look. He has the advantage of not requiring a fancily dressed up version for most of his tweaks, so plain 50 lb bags of sand are used in abundance. Sand serves to both damp any resonances which might be moving toward a component from a supporting surface plus it has sufficient density to act as a mechanical drain for vibrations which exist within a component when you can physically tie the component to the sand by way of, say, TipToes under the component.
Simple weights added to surfaces tend to change the resonant frequency and limit the duration of a specifc resonance. They can change their effectiveness when they are placed in different locations on top of a component. They do not really dampen the surface as much as they alter its resonsant structure by adding mass. High mass is both a good and a bad thing in an audio system. If you don't remember the good and bad aspects of mass, ask for an explanation. Weights are a useful addition to most systems however when they are used in conjunction with some sort of isolation device which does not become compressed by their mass. Any skin diving shop will sell lead diving weights in pound increments. You can buy lead shot by the ounce at most gun shops that sell reloading equipment. Many years ago VPI retailed what was known as the VPI Brick. It was meant to serve both as a weight to vibrating surfaces and as a magnetic field drain. Placed above the transformer of a component, the Brick not only added to the amount of mass the transformer would have to excite into resonance but also served to attract the expanding magnetic field which is created by a transformer as AC voltage pulses through it. Within each component you own, there is a magnetic field which is introducing EMI into each solder joint in every circuit board. Reduce the amount of EMI and you improve your system's performance - slightly. Once again this is system dependent and some designers have taken to account this transformer issue by using a torrodial tarnsformer or encasing their transformer within the confines of a Farady shield. But diy subsitutes for the Brick are fairly common. You want something heavy which has a permeable core material. What diy products commonly available can you think of that might fit those two criteria?
Regarding your AC vents, tell me what is happening with the sound. Are the vents being excited by a specific resonant frequency in the music? Or, are they simply vibrating more or less constantly? Does it make a difference in the amount of vibration heard when the system is running or not?
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| Dan |
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Harmonic Resolution Systems makes damping plates. They look great, but are a bit pricy.
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/hrs_nimbus_damping_plates_followup.htm
I have a set of three couplers and spacers. I'll probably try the damping plates at some point. I guess overall it's a small investment compared to the price you pay for a system, especially if it takes the sound up a notch. They should last your lifetime too. And you'd probably only use them on an amp and CD player, plus a phono preamp if you have one. Though I wonder how the couplers and spacers would work under a turntable.
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| Dan |
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Listened to the first Stereophile Test CD. There are some nice reference recordings on it, and the notes included help with understanding what the music should sound like. One piano piece, one with acoustic guitar and bass, and the other flute and piano. I have the other two test CDs, which I hope to listen to this weekend. Add to this one or two rock tracks and I think the basis for a good set of reference recordings is there.
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| N1ck |
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Thx Dave,Dan and Jan for the product suggestions.
Dave - Yup used Dynomat from FutureCrap many years ago in my ol Honda Civic back when I was into car audio. Its a good product, but not sure it would mean D's WAF approval. lol. The Roxul stuff can be made to look nice though.
Dan- Where does one get the Stereophile cd?
Jan - Definitely realize there is moving parts in CDP's. What my post meant was that there is no moving parts in a DAC, so would weighting a DAC or isolating the innards be as affective as doing so to a CDP?
I do have a wireless router in my home. I have built a small rack mount system in a closet in one of the spare bedrooms where it is mounted hidden away. Definitely throwing out lots of RF though. The grounding products make sense and I will be trying them. The VPI product sounds cool. If one were to try weighted product on their audio rack, but needed to keep "pretty" does it matter what product material is used? Or is the weight more important?
RIght now temperatures in Ontario are around 10 Celsius (50F) as a high right now so central air is not turned on of course. At low, to even moderately loud volumes I do not hear an issue. Its only when I get a tune with bass extension while being played at a loud volume (what I consider loud) then it will vibrate. So to answer you question Jan I guess it comes through on the bass if the bass hits low enough and loud enough to make the duct work vibrate to the point I can hear it through the music. However, at all volume levels, I may not be able to hear it over the music but if you go right above the left speaker and put your hand on it it is in fact vibrating. So I figured if I figure out a way to dampen it so it does not vibrate I can only improve on the systems performance. Here is the tricky part, I have to do it to meet WAF level. haha
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| Dan |
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Hey Nick,
I don't remember where I bought my set. Elusive Disc and Music Direct seem to have them in stock right now...and possibly other online music outlets as well.
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| Dan |
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On the second Stereophile CD, there is a drum solo that really helped me with toe in. I had to toe my speakers in slightly to help fill in the sound in the middle of the soundstage. It was there before, but is more fleshed out now.
There is also a "mapping the soundstage" track, where someone walks across the soundstage from left to right, and then front to back, and you are to follow the sound he makes (he claps while he walks). I find that my system doesn't really image beyond the loudspeakers (left and right). I'm not sure if it's the speakers or the room or what. It's not a huge deal, as music otherwise sounds fantastic. I noticed this with the speakers immediately once I put them into my system, and this particular track seemed to confirm it. My other set of speakers did seem to image better. Will swap those in again in the near future and I guess I'll confirm or reject that notion.
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| JanVigne |
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http://www.cognitivevent.com/sandbox.html
Before I begin, let me make it perfectly clear that I am a full on supporter of tweaks. I understand that the larger a manufacturer becomes and the broader the audience is they are aiming at, the less they can do to build the very best product out of their factory. Adding an item which some might see as "voodoo logic" will tend to kill sales of that product. Performing small tweaks which would be audible to a very narrow segment of their very broad market will increase costs expotentially for a negible benefit to most buyers. Selecting higher tolerance parts will mean more rejected parts which will ultimately increase production costs. And so on and so on ... That is at the heart of the diy community and, if none of you have visited the diy forums, it might be a worth while adventure. Though I find too many of the posters on too many of those forums to be uninformed aout the basics of how things work. And any change is too often perceived as an immediate improvement. How-so-ever, I find myself constantly befuddled by reviews such as the one linked to here by Dan. And, Dan, I'm not criticizing you or the footers you own. But I am just amazed at the poorly thought out reviewing process most of these products are subjected to and the hyperbole they have poured upon them in the final analysis. Time after time I see products employed which result in; "tighter bass", "improved detail resolution", "I could more easily hear the spittle" (and you all know that one drives me crazy - spittle?!), etc., etc., etc. My first reaction to such reviews is one of, if all of these products create even slightly noticeable improvements and these improvements have been occurring since the first tweak was used in an audio system waaaay back when, should not we be much further along the path of recreating a highly believable reality in even modest playback systems?
So I find many of these product reviews to be "dog chases its own tail" type of retellings of past stories without real resolution. Now, do not read that as me saying you shouldn't invest in tweaks. What I'm saying is two fold; first, many of the products out there are attempting to perform the same task other products, past and present, have attempted to address, and, secondly, and more importantly I would say, why do these products exist as they do? The first issue is a simple function of the market place I would say. People get bored or new people enter the market and they want something new and those who have been around the block a few times will probably have a closet full of past products to prove the point. The second issue is answered by any good diy'er who looks and reads, thinks and then acts. There are a few companies producing a few products in the tweak market which should really be worth their cost. Again, don't read that as me saying most tweaks are not worth their cost because worth is different for each individual. MW's room doesn't recquire a large investment is dressing things up to a high level of spousal approval where other's rooms might and will. A few of you are good with tools and you can build many of the basic items on your own. Others will have no capacity for building even simple items and therefore require someone else to do the cutting, assembly and the dressing up for them. But behind every tweak there is a common theme; someone saw a problem and thought about how to solve it. If you are the highly cynical type, you would read the phrase in a review, "Stacking Spacers and Couplers increases effectiveness, but it will also empty your wallet", and you would be amazed at the price some people will pay for a piece of aluminum with a ploymer attached. Again, Dan, don't take this as a criticism of you or your purchase, just a way of explaining how I tend to think about such items.
There was a story in one of the British audio magazines long ago which related one reviewer's "Come to Jesus" moment with audio. And I should tell you all that the British audio market has for decades been far more involved in tweaking what they own rather than simply trading on a constant schedule to a higher priced product. This was even more true during Brittan's last recession and is probably very true again today. The story related by the reviewer was how impessed he had been by the performance of a particular turntable - this is back in the 1980's when Linn absolutely ruled the high priced turntable market - and at the overall level of ingenuity the designer had employed in piecing together a product worthy of the Linn-like price. He had written glowing reviews praising the table design and performance and had recommended the table as a very good value in the market indeed! He had even purchased the table to use as his reference alternative to the then ubiquitous Linn LP12. Then his come to Jesus moment occurred one day when he was in the hardware shop looking for a part to fix his toilet. As he rummaged through the aisles and various bins, he came acrosds a piece of plumbing supply hardware which seemed to resemble a part used on the tonearm base of his now favorite turntable. As it was a reasonably inexpensive item, he purchased the part in order to check his suspicions. After removing the arm to get a better look at the piece he found it bore similar foundry markings to the part he had just purchased in the hardware shop for a few cents. Now he was in a quandry. Did he write another review of the table and say it was made from cheap plumbing parts and it no longer deserved his recommendation as it was highly overpriced when it had been assembled from inexpensive items? Or, did he write another review which stated how cleverly the designer had reserached the available market - knowing beforehand the cost a small start up company would face getting a similar part machined for his new entry into the highly competitive turntable market - and proclaiming the design even more ingenious for its use of relatively inexpensive components which resulted in a highly competitive final product? Possibly in doing either he would have had to deal with the issue of the original Linn LP12, the table to which every British and most American reviewers were giving unanimous acclaim at the time, really was a clone of another British table which had come a few years earlier but did not meet with sales success, and even more the Linn was a simple reworking of the original Edgar Vilchur designed AR turntable from the late 1950's - a twenty plus year old design.
So here is the morale of this post so far, some people see a problem and solve it and some people see what that person has done and copy it. Vilchur began his thinking with a mostly clean sheet of paper and he created a product which solved many problems occurring in turntables as AR began producing loudspeakers which had deep bass extension and which were - remember talking about "bookshelf loudspeakers"? - quite often placed on a shelf in the same cabinet which held the table. In the next twenty years other companies turned out similar suspended subchassis tables, each paying Vilchur a royalty for the priviledge of using his creation. AR updated the table over the years but the basic AR table was still recognizable to anyone who had ever seen an original. What Linn did that set them apart was Ivor Triefenbrun was the person who copied what Vilchur and others had done but he made a demonstration of how the turntable would influence every component's performance in the rest of the system. He shouted louder, longer and more often - not to mention more convicingly - than all the rest. This is not to downplay the importance of the LP12 in audio history but simply to say Linn was the dressed up marketing behind someone else's original thinking.
Here, for those interested, I would suggest you take a bit of time to do research into a few of the inventions we believe are commonly attributed to a particular person. Radio and TV transmission has always been an interesting story of competing ideas and how one vs another became the accepted norm and one person was creditted with inventing a life changing product while another was too often left in the dust bins of history. Try some reading about Edison and Nikola Tesla as they both tried to prove the validity of their concepts for a method of distributing electricity throughout a city and across the nation. Any school age child knows the name Edison while only a few grasp how important Tesla was to the way we think about energy and its related fields.
To bring this back to audio, looking at the review of the HRS couplers and spacers I see aluminum discs with attached polymers. Reading the review of the HRS isolation base I see a description which sounds as if the base is made from a piece of granite wrapped in an aluminum dressing with feet attached. Not ever having either product in my hand I can't say I completely understand what the products are made from or how they are intended to operate. But, would you pay the asking price of the HRS isolation base - $1345 to $1965 - for a single piece of granite 14" X 19" in size? Can you guess what you might pay for a piece of granite if you went to a shop which specializes in installing granite counter tops and asked how much they wanted for the scrap piece they cut out of the counter top to accommodate the installation of a sink? How much more effective would you suppose the spacers and couplers to be over a few standard washers from the hardware store with "polymer" (read; Nylon or, even on the high end, Sorbothane) washers or "spacers" in between? If you buy the HRS products, I am not trying to say you overspent or you shouldn't have. I'm saying look at what someone else has done and see how they did it. Audio tweaks are often pricey items because they are made in small quantities or because they have been dressed up to be aesthetically pleasing. If the look is what you want or need, they are a good value if they work in your system. If you can ignore the visual of a few washers and common hardware store spacers stacked underneath your CD player, use the money to buy more CD's. If you can dress the washers up to look more acceptable, good for you.
A few of us remember when Larry over at ecoustics made diy Herbie's Mats. Then he made diy carbon fibre mats (which were selling on line at the time for around $129). He sent them out to those who said they'd like to try his diy products. What were the resuts of his looking at what someone else was selling for more than he could afford? As with most tweaks, the results were mixed. Some people thought the products improved their systems while others thought they did nothing and, in a few cases, some thought they did both good and bad. Pretty much what you'd expect from a random sampling of those who used the "name brand" product, right? I had a Herbie's Mat and compared Larry's version to Herbies and found Herbie's to be slightly better in my system. But Herbie's had cost $20. Actually reading about Larry's manipulations of his mats was, IMO, somewhat comical as he worked hard to get the mat to the correct dimensions. Probably he was doing something similar to what Herbie had first done except Larry had Herbie's mat to use as a prototype. And, in the end, not counting Larry's time, he had saved about $10 to arrive at a product which was not quite as good as the one he was copying. But it did make an audible improvement in most CD's in most players. You decide whether it was worth Larry's time.
Some audio aftermarket companies do the research, which they can afford and the diy'er generally cannot. Those companies might turn out a basic copy of someone else's idea or come up with something completely new to the market. Back in the 1990's the first AC power conditioner meant for high wattage systems was introduced. It was a dressed up isolation transformer a "smarter" buyer could have found at a company selling to commercial interests. To be fair, it did more than just a standard isolation transformer but that was the starting point from which the design began. It sold for about four times the cost of a standard isolation transformer but looked far more impressive in your living room. In another story, after VPI ceased production of their Brick - a permeable material encased in an attractive wooden box - there was a void in the market for a number of years. Then another company came out with this; http://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/shakti_e.html
An improved version of "The Brick"? Well, you decide. There are scientific tests which have been run by independent testing facilities which indicate a change has occurred in the presence of the device. Certainly there are subjective testimonies to the validity of the manufacturer's claims. Has then this company taken VPI's idea and simply copied it? Or, have they actually improved upon it? Or, is this a totally new product unique in the market? I would only say there are a number of tweaks available which actually do have scientific proof of their claims of performance. These are not the sort of items a diy'er can typically accomplish on their own without a fair amount of understanding regarding what the original product is doing. The original Well Tempered Turntable began, once again, as a blank sheet of paper and was designed by a former Ford structural engineer who had an intrerest in audio. He understood the forces at play in a table and he had access to the testing facilities required to check out his theories. He used fairly common materials in entirely new ways of thinking. Most people could have copied the table with just a bit of thinking and effort, but he came up with the concept first. Often those proprietary forces and materials are kept as proprietary information. Can a diy'er make a brick of their own? Probably. Can a diy'er make a stone to call their own? Not as easily as a brick I would say.
So the point to all of this is you need to keep an open mind regarding tweaks. More importantly, keep an inquisitive mind when you read about tweaks. If a company claims to use a "polymer", what does that mean exactly? If a company claims to use "specially selected" materials, does that mean they are simply looking for the right size or color of a far more common item? Most importantly, IMO, keep a thoughtful mind. Can this be duplicated without special tools or knowledge. Is this just a part for a toilet that I can buy from a local shop for pennies on the dollar?
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| JanVigne |
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Stereophile sells their test discs.
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| JanVigne |
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"Definitely realize there is moving parts in CDP's. What my post meant was that there is no moving parts in a DAC, so would weighting a DAC or isolating the innards be as affective as doing so to a CDP?"
"The transformer of any electrical component is vibrating with each pulse of 60Hz AC voltage. Any flat open surface on the chassis of the player (DAC) will have a resonant frequency which will respond (probably) to the vibration of the transfomer ... - more than likely it will - and certainly to any airborne or mechanical stimulation from the pressure waves being created by your speakers. If your player (DAC) is sitting on a rack, then the surface supporting the player (DAC) will be subject to many of those same resonances and due to its dimensions will amplify the vibration which can easily enter your player (DAC). The legs/support of most stands/shelves will have resonances which can be picked up from the floor or wall plus the air borne pressure changes which will also amplify the degree to which a player (DAC) will find itself moving in increments at least 1/60th the dimension of a human hair. These are the things which should be addressed when you think about a CD player. In the more oblique thought process, each circuit board will represent a suspended surface which is tied to the chassis ... which is translating each of the above mentioned vibrations and resonant frequencies into the board. While some believe solid state components are not subject to microphonics, others disagree."
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| JanVigne |
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Nick, I can't really answer your question regarding your vents. This is something you will simply need to investigate on the spot. As to when it occurs, it would be helpful to have a cheap stethoscope to use when you are trying to decide what remedies would be appropriate. From your description I would assume this is a resonant frequency which is being excited at all times but only becomes noticeable above the music level at higher volumes. But whether this is a structural problem of a seam not being tight, a length of pipe being too long without a support or a piece of material striking another object, I can't tell over the forum. It's possible you simply need to place a soft spacer washer or a short standoff between the vent material and the surface it's attached to. About the only thing I can tell you over the forum is this sounds as if it is a resonance being excited by a specific frequency - sort of like pictures rattling on your wall when the bass hits a certainly note. People get all excited when they think their subwoofer is that powerful that it can move pictures on the wall. It isn't anything of the sort really, it's just a matter of the sub hitting the right frequency to excite a sympathetic vibration in an object with the correct resonant frequency and it occurs each time the frequency pressure wave is present in the room even at low volumes. Now, resonant frequency is a function of density, shape and dimensions. A HVAC vent is what amounts to a sort of Helmholtz resonator and it is responding to a certain frequency or frequency bandwidth. It's quite common for HVAC vents to cause noise from the ventilation system to enter the room and that will require a resizing of the vent to create a "muffler" on the pipe. If the noise you're hearing is there only when the HVAC system is operating, then you have a problem you can address in several ways. If the noise is there only when the audio system is running and hitting the right frequency, then you simply have to climb up there and investigate what is vibrating and what is making the noise. Sorry.
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| Dan |
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Interesting post, Jan. It illustrates nicely your point about remaining inquisitive about tweaks.
I agree about the review...I generally don't pay reviews much attention anymore. If I'm interested in an item then I know hearing it in my system and in my room is the real test. I linked to the HRS review because it was the first thing I came to that talked about the damping plates and the spacers and couplers all on one page.
I got the spacers and couplers as part of a trade in (for my old Quad 12L2 speakers). I had to find something to trade for and I decided to try this tweak (plus I got some Nordost ICs). In part it was for looks...I hate the look of footers that look too big under a component (for example, the Cardas wood blocks). The HRS solution is relatively low height and should look understated. Hopefully it sounds good. I don't doubt that one can achieve the same thing for less money with a diy tweak. That might be something to explore if I like the results. But what it will take for someone as un-handy as me is the question.
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| N1ck |
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Thanks everyone.
Dan - I will seek out the stereophile cd.
Jan-No problem, I understand its hard to imagine what is actually vibrating without seeing it. I am in talks today off and on with my dealer on a new product he is selling. Sort of like dynomat but more home pleasing and apparently much better.
Here is a video at a public school before Red Ball Radio did their treatments with these pads :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1VHPnn5sWM&feature=relmfu
Here is a video after they treated the gym with these new dampening pads :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6V4zAcPSUA
Huge difference. I will be trying these out.
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| N1ck |
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Ok so the panels my dealer sells has to be hung, which wont work for my issue. After doing some research it would appear the best stuff for me is indeed the Dyamax stuff Dave recommended. Issue is Best Pooh or Future Idiots only sells the hideous car pooh that looks like my daughter put it together at daycare. lol
Trying to source their in home mats which are nice and kill vibration. They actually have a demonstration of my issue exactly. Yoink!!
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