I picked up a set of springs for $35 on Amazon. I intended to use them under a preamp but one thing led to another and I tried them under the turntable. Now, this is no mean feat. It’s a Garrard 401 in a 60pound 50mm slate plinth. The spring device is interesting. It’s sold under the Nobsound brand and is made up of two 45mm wide solid billets of aluminum endcaps with recesses to fit up to seven small springs. It’s very well made. You can add or remove springs depending on the weight distribution. I had to do this with a level and it only took a few minutes. They look good. I did not fit them for floor isolation as I have concrete. I played a few tracks before fitting, and played the same tracks after fitting. Improvement in bass definition, speed, air, inner detail, more space around instruments, nicer timbre and color. Pleasant surprise for little money.
indranilsen, the devise that has to be level to prevent skating forces is the tonearm. So the best place to put your bubble level is on the tonearm board or plinth right at the base of the tonearm. If the platter is a tiny bit off it won't matter. It is absolutely possible to completely eliminate footfall sensitivity. It just requires careful engineering. Any of the suspended Sota's, SME's and Basis turntables will do this. I can take a Sota Sapphire put it on a collapsible card table on a wooden floor, jump up and down in front of it and absolutely nothing will happen other than the suspension bobbing just a little. If you put a MinusK platform under your turntable you will get the same result. Can you make a suspension that will work as well? Absolutely. But, you will have some work to do and you will have to spend some money. I have a design for a suspended platform in my head. The form is easy. It is getting the right spring rates for a given weight and applying damping that are the difficult part. I would use a quartz solid surface material laminated to MDF. This makes a very well damped panel for the base and platform. The spring hangers would be 1" aluminum laser cut to shape, drilled and tapped then anodized. These would be mounted on the base at the corners and the platform hung from them with the springs. On the bottom of the platform I would mount paddles at each corner which extend into cups mounted on the base. These cups would be filled with a viscous oil to provide damping. Soft rubber boots hung from the platform extending over the cups will provide a seal to keep dust out of the oil. There you have it. I should think it could be built for $500 in materials.
Platter and top surface of plinth should both be level, or both should be on the same plane even if not perfectly level. Otherwise, you might have an issue with the tonearm mount not being on the same parallel plane with the platter, which would mess up your alignment for sure. Ideally it should not matter where you put the level on the platter, unless you have a deliberately dished platter, in which case yes put it in the center of the platter.
I use the level on the turntable plinth. Left to right, front to back -both sides. If the platter is not level and the table is level, something may be amiss. Can you reinforce the floor beneath your room? Lally columns will help.
Folks, Another basic turntable question.... Where do you put the level on the turntable to balance it? Is it at the center of the platter or on the body which hosts the platter? The level position at the center of the platter for my turntable is not the same as it is on the body.
Those who are leveling at the center of the platter, how do you level it after putting a record on the platter? The center of any record is not flat and hence this question. This is more of an issue for those who are balancing a turntable over a set of springs or some float-based isolation tools.
By the way I have tried a Vibraplane platform, incredibly heavy, to isolate my turntable from the footfall noise but it didn't work to my satisfaction. So far the combination of CSC springs that I designed along with Ingress roller bearings gave me the max isolation from the footfall issue. It doesn't completely eliminate it but reduces it to a great extent, requires a very big hit on the floor/amplitude to move the woofers in the speakers. I think that audiom3 has also experienced something similar.
It appears to me that a complete footfall isolation for my turntable placed on a wooden suspended floor would be very difficult to achieve if not impossible. I am now going to experiment with the next option of wall mounting the turntable and also use some sort of isolation (Spring or HRS Platform) to get to the desired level of seismic isolation.... Thanks.
It is indeed! I spent a very pleasant weeks vacation there as I figured it was the best location of a decent size town for exploring Yellowstone but it turned out to be very nice town in its own right! Then onwards from there up and across to Washington state for a road trip
I've been using these springs under my maple block/VPI deck for several weeks now. My Classic TT is coupled to the block with EdenSound footers. Although I won't make any claims of new found audio nirvana, the isolation provided by these springs is legit. I'm sure there were changes but I've made a lot of upgrades over the last 60 days (including new Ayre and Pass Labs electronics). I was using anti-vibration pads under my maple block before adding the springs. When the needle was in the groove, I could whack the shelf below and hear audible thumping. Didn't take much at all for this vibration to make it's way up into the turntable. With the springs, I can hear a very faint thump but I have to hit the shelf HARD and the volume has to be up very loud. Much harder and louder than the setup will ever see under normal listening circumstances.
mitch22, Sorry I did not respond to you earlier. This is just in regards to bass. Low frequencies in air are more powerful than most people think. Get a set of test tones, a test record, CD or download. Play a 30 Hz test tone and turn it up. You will hear everything in your house rattle. Go to the room farthest from your system and that room will also be rattling! My point is that putting you sub woofers on spring is not isolating anything from the bass. Springs or no springs the house rattles just the same. It would be difficult to AB a spring situation correctly. So it is difficult to prove or disprove to yourself or anyone that springs improve the sound of a system. Just changing the height of the main speakers is enough to change the sound. Putting springs under your amplifiers will do absolutely nothing. You may be able to prove this to yourself by listening to your system with and without springs under just the amps. You should be able to set and reset them quickly enough. When you do this you have to be very honest with yourself. Never believe just what someone hears. Human hearing is way to variable to be trustworthy. You even have to be careful with groups of people. You can't even trust yourself so you have to be very careful when you do these experiments. Not to mention that all those springs look butte ugly. Cheers, Mike
indranil, you are using the isolation in a room with a peer and beam substrate or joists? If so, please also consider the amplitude of which such a floor can itself move. Just like a car can only do so much to smooth out the hills of a road, it can smooth out the undulations of the road, but not the higher amplitudes.
Do you have an approximate weight of the TT and the preferred shelf you are using? Obviously I am guessing, it might be the amplitude of the floor movement that might need to be addressed also?
Lewm, not at all but, people do funny things. Reducing the spring rate would be tough. You would have to replace all four springs with springs exactly the same size and length under tension. Some people may have added damping to the springs by stuffing them with foam. If you look at the link in my last post in the middle of that article is a plexiglass model of a Sota. The springs are hung from the top plate. Shims would just lower the sub chassis dropping the plater and tonearm relative to the motor.
Anyway, my resonance frequency is low enough that I can count it. With a record on it will take 7 bounces before it stops and I would have to say that it takes about 2 seconds but I have not tried to time it accurately. The idea is to get it below record warp frequency so they do not interact. Tonearm above, turntable below. I can play a severely warped record without difficulty.
The Sota's are not easy turntables to take apart and I would not want to risk damaging the wooden plinth. IMHE the suspensions are tuned just fine as nothing in a normal environment bothers them. I have never felt the need to take one apart which is unusual for a guy who took his Divas apart to install new ribbons.
Delmonte? During WW2 my deceased uncle made a fortune packing fruit which he sold to the military. That company was called the East Indies Fruit Packing Company. You know that company now as Delmonte. In the late 60's my uncle retired from his position as CEO and handed the Baton to his nephew, the nastiest SOB I have ever met. I banned Delmonte products until he passed. They do have the best Pineapples. In the mean while my uncle took his fortune and opened up Flagler Dog Track in Miami, FL and made another fortune. He gave at least 75% of it away mostly to educational institutions and Israel. In 1974 he started getting chest pains. His cardiologist begged him to go to the hospital. Instead, he flew to LA for a meeting. At the end of the meeting he stood up and died on the spot. Age 60. I would think the spring rate of a Delmonte mandarin orange can would be just a little high:)
Mijo, I owned a Star Sapphire for 10 years, and I’ve had some experience with a Cosmos too. Based on my memory of these products only, I would have thought that the spring rate is certainly a bit higher than 3 Hz. In fact, I am now remembering that there was a modification to the springs that was performed by many owners, so as to reduce the spring rate. I can’t remember, but it had something to do with shimming the springs. Do you know anything about that?
This is why I use Delmonte Mandarin orange slices in water, in small cans, as my turntable isolation devices. I use three of them to support a slate slab containing a turntable chassis, either Denon DP80 or Lenco. I support the weight of the slate on the outer rim of the unopened can, and I support the base of the can at its center using a black diamond racing cone, away from the outer rim, so the outer rim never touches the shelf. The springiness comes from the flexing of the top of the can inside its stable outer structure. Someone gave me the black diamond racing cones, and I paid two dollars each for the cans of mandarin orange slices in water.
Nice work Indranilsen, That is about as far as the Sota springs will compress before the chassis hits its stop. Remember the Sota subchassis hangs from its springs. This is the best picture I could find of it https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/vinyl/turntables/sota-nova-turntable/. If you hung a platform with springs you could put your turntable on it. If the springs themselves were hung from a threaded rod you could adjust them for turntable level and any mass configuration of the turntable.
Hello, I was thinking of sharing the spreadsheet that I put together to design a spring with a targeted natural frequency with this group. You might already be doing it but just thought of sharing...
Item- Clearaudio Turntable
Total Load (3 Springs) = 23.79 lbs
Item No (Century Spring)-S942
Spring Rate (Lbs/Inch) = 2.75
Spring Rate (N/M) (k)= 612.94
Spring Outer Dia = 1.39 inch
Spring Wire Dia = 0.07 inch
Spring Total Coil = 5.75
Spring Free Length = 2.75 inch
Spring solid Height = 0.40 inch
Load (m)= 7.93 lbs
Spring height at the load 7.93 lbs = 0.48 inch
Spring Natural Frequency = 2.077 hz by using the below formula
Formula = 1/(2*Pi)*SqRt(k/m)
Excel Formula = =((0.5*(1/PI()))*SQRT(k/(CONVERT(m,”lbm","g")/1000)))
Another point that I wanted to highlight here is the importance of load and spring rate to get a spring natural frequency, something like 3hz. In this example, I needed to load each of the three springs to a compressed height of 0.48 inch leaving only (0.48-0.40) = 0.8 inch from the base to get a natural frequency of 2.1 hz. This also shows the degree of difficulty in arranging these springs under the turntable such that each one has a compressed height of only 0.8 inch from the base platform, something @mijostyn has pointed out earlier.
Apologies for dumping a lot of numbers here but I thought this might be interesting to this audience.
@rixthetric- Yes I tried using rubber band on the footer which was at the top point in a triangular configuration to increase the spring rate. This indeed help me with balancing the turntable better w/o hitting the bottom but it didn’t resolve the footfall issue. In fact adding spring rate led to more frequent bouncing of the spring as I anticipated and that was counterproductive when isolating vibrations in the sub sonic domain... @mijostyn- None of the footers including Solid Tech as I experienced could bring the natural frequency down to 3hz. I initially thought that these footers were isolating footfalls but I was wrong. I had a low pass filter on the Luxman phono pre amplifier which was turned on by mistake... When the flipped the switch back to no filter the woofers started moving...
Lewm, You put a record on the turntable with any record weight type device you use then press the turntable down evenly to stretch or compress the springs equally then let go and count. 3 hz is very slow and should be fairly easy to count. If the turntable bounces so fast you can't count it then you need to use springs with a lower rate or add mass to the turntable. When I hit my Sota with a hammer I am not hitting the suspended part of the turntable. That is inside the plinth. If I abruptly jerk the outside of the turntable (moving it say 1/4") the suspended section will start bouncing at 3 Hz. The tonearm will not skip. If I jerk it hard enough to bottom out the suspension in any direction then the tonearm will skip in a major way.
Uberwaltz, if you put the resonance frequency anywhere within the range of 20 to 150 Hz you are likely to make a change in the way you perceive bass. If everything else is set up correctly and of reasonable quality it is hard to believe that would make an improvement in overall balance or "tightness." If the resonance frequency of the suspension is down where a whole bunch of turntable designers think it belongs it should not change the tonal quality of the music but rather improve signal to noise ratio and and response to physical insults. The main purpose of a suspension is to limit interaction with the environment.
Congratulations uberwaltz, seems you're making promising advances mate. Keep us posted.
Indranil, have you tried the rubber bands thing we discussed? If it works, then yeah I would seriously consider the uprated springs. I was also thinking, have you tried a little mass of something dense to level the whole suspended mass by moving it on the outer rim of the shelf?
13,125 posts09-16-2020 6:23pmTo get back to the actual subject of this thread......
I experimented a little more with the pods under my 401 as it was still a little off balance to my eyes.
Now have 3 springs in left rear and 2 springs in the other 3 corners. Had to go back to 4 pods as where the rear center needed to be was right where the motor cutout is.
Bass is still nice and tight and very detailed all round.
Tomic I agree and have tried to direct it back to springs under turntable a few times, most recent was about 15 posts back last night. But it keeps getting buried by unrelated topics.
The absolute finest systems have flaws directed signal processing can correct. Even Michael Fremer admits that processing done at 192/24 or faster is invisible. The central possessor in the Tact operates at 192/48. There are processors now that operate even faster. The Trinnov operates in 64 bits which will give it the power to correct problems more severe than even the TacT can handle. These processors do not excuse you from proper room and system setup. All that has to be done in conjunction. In the very best systems you would think the tolerances would be much higher and thus the speaker's outputs would be closer to identical and given close attention to room symmetry the advantage of a processor would diminish at least until you tried to add subwoofers. Without this type of capability you would not be able to make bad recordings more listenable and you would have no way of dealing with loudness issues other than playing the recording at the right volume.
UBERWALTZ, that was not at all what I was saying!!! I was saying a proper DSP system. I was not reflecting at all on anyone else system in any way shape or form so please calm down.
In the mean while, isolating your turntable will improve your signal to noise ratio and if properly done protect it from nuisance issues like foot fall skipping. If your turntable is on a solid rack planted on a concrete floor the improvement will be less obvious. For those with wood joist floor construction a suspended turntable is the only way to go.
Uberwaltz, if you could hear a proper system it would be the first thing you would be pursuing.
Mijo That is right where you lose my attention. The implications of that statement are that neither myself or anybody else here has a "proper system". And to put it bluntly, I find that insulting and degrading.
Mijo, Re your response to Indra, how would you delivered energy to the equipment on an isolation device such that you could then “count” it’s resulting oscillations? Seems to me you’d want to replicate the natural state where hitting the TT with a hammer is irrelevant.
You see cleeds, you have no idea either. Of course I am assuming wrongly or rightly, that all of you know what you are listening to. And cleeds, if there is no music by subwoofer cones are frozen dead.
Uberwaltz, if you could hear a proper system it would be the first thing you would be pursuing.
Radomir Bozevic was a genius. His problem and downfall was that he thought everyone else was up to his level of thinking. He direct marketed his equipment, his instruction manuals were awful and he was not able to provide adequate phone in support although he tried. The TacT 2.2x and it's theater version he TCS remain the most powerful DSP preamplifiers on the market. The only units that are close are those made by Trinnov. Companies like Anthem and DEQX make units that are relatively easy to use but not near as powerful. They are however very useful in mid Fi situations. In Top systems only TacT and Trinnov need apply at least for the time being. I will take photos of the program in operation to try and give everyone an idea of what is going on.
Just to be fair to equalisation control here, our sadly departed Al was a proponent of the same and used some form of DBX control and he was very satisfied with it. I do not remember the exact details of what he used but he did post about it numerous times. So I would never say never and write it off entirely, just that at this time it is not something I will be pursuing.
Cleeds, yes I read tea leaves but most importantly systems like mine are obviously very rare at this point ...
I'm not sure your system is that rare - I've seen lots of systems like yours that included the flapping woofers that you think is inherent to LP playback. But if you're happy with your system, that's all that counts.
indranilsen, 3 Hz is slow enough you can just count. In poorly dampened systems the turntable will keep bouncing for a while. If it does not bounce that would mean the frequency is way too high.
Hello, It appears that this thread has gradually started moving away from the central discussion point, isolation... In order to get it back to the track let me solicit feedback on another aspect related to the vibration isolation. After putting springs, inner tube, magnet or what have you in that space how do you measure the effectiveness of the tool beside listening? How do you know that it is isolating in the range of 3-4 cycles and there is no more room to improve? I tried using a few free andriod apps measuring vibration but they don't seem to be accurate. Curious to know about your thoughts/experience on this. Thanks.
Mahgister, Ron Carter is not in your room. You have no where near the power and the wrong kind of loudspeakers to image a full size acoustic bass. The best you can do is come up with a miniature version.
I cannot argue against what you just said.... Probably true if i compare my modest system to yours...
But the point is for me that does not sound miniature Ron Carter but like the real thing... I dont doubt that compared to your system it is the miniature version but to me that does not sound so drastically far off of what is yours...
By the way in my small room my amplifier is very good and the Mission speakers fills all the room....
The room is more important than the number of watts and in my small room big Magnepans will not do anything better because they need space to breathe....
Room controls is more important than any amplifier and more important than the speakers.... I am sure you know already that....You know already what room controls reveal....
But Room controls can be made by any humble ears trust me .... The only impediment is the amount of time it will take in months (2 years for me to figure it out)...
I cannot afford your computerized control and i dont feel the need for it....I dont doubt that it can be very useful at all....But most people would never think or be able to afford one.... And i cannot stay silent and i must say my experience and truth also.... So some need computerized room control and it is useful for sure, but ALL people, not only the happy few, need a "kind" of room control....An ears created one or a computerized one.... I dont underestimated your computer at all , but dont underestimate the ears workings with time....
A system is completed when you listen the music no more the sound, at any price.....I will listen "miniature" life real version of Ron Carter this evening ..... :)
It is not so much me that will be astonished by your top system,( i dont doubt it is better than mine at all) it is you who will be astonished by the sound of a low cost system in a room like the lair of a mad scientist ..... :)
My price/ quality S.Q. is very good.....Impossible to beat in fact, i think really so..... :)
My system cost around 500 dollars, dac+amplifier+speakers.... A few times more for the cost of the things necessary for my homemade devices....
Anybody can afford Hi-fi, it is my experience and conclusion of my experiments.... Controls of the 3 embeddings gives H-Fi experience, a"miniature" Hi-Fi experience but a real one..... :)
My best to you and thanks for your patience with me....
Mahgister, Ron Carter is not in your room. You have no where near the power and the wrong kind of loudspeakers to image a full size acoustic bass. The best you can do is come up with a miniature version. But, do not feel bad. That is the best most systems can do. If you want to head in the right direction buy a pair of Magneplanar 3.7i's and the biggest amp you can afford over 200 watts/ch.
Cleeds, yes I read tea leaves but most importantly systems like mine are obviously very rare at this point. Few understand the basic issues involved so I am left waving the flag by myself. Which is ok by me. Anyone can ridicule me all they want. Until they have lived with a system like mine they have no idea. Now, people are always bragging about how great their systems are. La De Da. I could give two hoots about what people think about me or my system. I am only trying to give our members an idea about what is possible. But I'll also have to live with the fact that most people still think the earth is flat
Now cleeds, you seem to be confusing two issues. Good suspended turntables are immune to external factors. Like I said I can hit my turntable with a hammer with no ill effect as long as I don't hit it hard enough to cause a dent. Do not confuse this with the low frequency information that is on the disc in the form of warps and surface irregularities which a good system will try to reproduce blindly. If you have a system like mine which is dead flat at the listening position down to 18 Hz with 2000 watts driving each of four subwoofer drivers this spurious information will loosen the fillings in your teeth before it destroys your drivers. Blocking this information is I would think obviously critical in this situation. The only way this can be done without affecting the audio range is with a steep digital filter which I am fortunate enough to be able to program in my system. I hope this explained it adequately.
To get back to the actual subject of this thread......
I experimented a little more with the pods under my 401 as it was still a little off balance to my eyes.
Now have 3 springs in left rear and 2 springs in the other 3 corners. Had to go back to 4 pods as where the rear center needed to be was right where the motor cutout is.
Bass is still nice and tight and very detailed all round.
Lewm, you and none of those other people obviously have not heard a system like this.
Impressive. Do you also read tea leaves, tarot cards and perform remote viewing?
... A good suspended table should be immune to everything
up to an elephant stepping on it ...
I'm inclined to mostly agree. And yet, in another thread, you claimed this:
If I delete the subsonic filter from the program it ia mass pandemonium.
It looks like the drivers want to jump right out of the cabinet. It is
just inherent in vinyl if you have a good system capable of reproducing
deep bass.
As I've mentioned, and as many have demonstrated, such
a problem is not at all inherent in LP playback.
indranilsen, The MinusK platform is not that hard to use. You move the turntable around on it until each corner of the platform compresses the same distance. It takes about 15 minutes to get it right. When you order the platform it is made for the specific weight of your turntable. You do not have to deal with spring rates at all. My feeling on the subject is straight forward. I will not use a turntable that is not isolated. I would rather buy a well engineered turntable, suspension built in than have to mess around with MinusK platforms and such. There are many excellent suspended turntables from the Sota Sapphire all the way to the Dohmann Helix and Air Force Tables. I think Thorens makes a few at a lower price point. A good suspended table should be immune to everything up to an elephant stepping on it. I can bang the side of my Sota with a hammer and it will not skip and you won't even hear it through the system.
Ron Carter is already in my room.... Imaging is so good the sound exist independantly of the speakers....
And "liveliness" is a quality in acoustic linked to among many factors with the reverberation time and synchronisation and participate among at least 5 others characteristics to define the mysterious fact of "timbre" in acoustic...
I dont know if a computer program can modify the reverberation time in a specific room with a specific varied content ....Playing with frequencies he can compensate to a certain degree but using it positively for a set of ears in particular in the perception of timbre, i think that it cannot....
The " liveliness" of my sound result from my playing and work among other factors with this reverberation timing....The guide was my ears.....Ordinary ears by the way.... The myth of bat ears is a bad joke by some to discredit the use of our "biased" ears in audio, ears with which i listen to music without being able to de-biased them to this day...I know that computer formulas can make the room perfect for non biased and perfect ears tough....But not for mine Alas! :)
If someone designed a big void room especially and only for music and for a crowd, a set of law applies very well and straightforwardly...
If someone want to accomodate a small Room with an already disparate acoustical content (furnitures, coofins, books etc) for a pair of specific ears, using these biased ears is for me necessary.....Laws under the guise of computer algorithm will lack something and will miss some fact to work with like reverberation time for a particular set of ears(mine) in a small ordinary room and not for the crowd in a big musical hall....Reverberation time for example cannot play the same role in these 2 different locations....
Liveliness is not reducible to transparency for example....
By the way i am not a scientist, only a nut without money who create his own heaven by homemade device only.....
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