Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Geoffkait: So far, regarding your latest response, involving the Arcici stand, is not really, in all due respect, relevant in this discussion (that has been described by two of us, who have posted our own individual projects based on our (own) results), then our ultimate findings. I hope you can see/accept the difference. I'd love to hear more in detail, any projects you've accomplished vs. manufacturers end products,.. not manufacturers products vs. other manufacturers products. If you feel that my statement above, slighted you in any way, please let us know and accept my apologies.

Ct0517: Turns out, I have quite a bit to say. I can see this thread going into another subject, altogether. Should I/we start another thread, based upon the association with the one you started?

I'll leave you all with this "simple test". If you have a component shelf, that, upon your touching it, is vibrating, then you apply pressure...

This makes the vibration go way? To an extent. Where does it go? It has to go back into from where it came, right? I can think of no other option.

"Food For Thought"

I lined the entire subwoofer with epoxy'd lead shot. Another lining of felt was applied to the lead shot.

A couple of thoughts:

Slaw, vibrations are not necessarily reflected back to the components as in the case of your sand boxes. The energy turns to heat and is dissipated as such; perhaps no all of it, but I would imagine a substantial amount of it does. The issue of wether vibrations are reflected back, drained, stored or dissipated and how each possibility affects the sound of our systems is still, I think, not fully understood. Richarkrebs' comment about using the correct epoxy to glue lead is fascinating and goes to my contention that wether we want to admit it or not, a lot of what we do with "vibration control" and how it's effects are perceived is completely system dependent and often no more than a type of "tone control". While I can understand how vibrations can affect the performance of transducers in absolute terms, it seems to me that as concerns electronics and cables it is NOT possible to "overdamp"; other than in the context of a given system. When the perceived effect of damping (or of not damping) is negative it's an indication of tonal inaccuracy in that component or somewhere else in the system. How can eliminating spurious vibrations be a bad thing? I addition, tonal issues affect how we perceive rhythm and timing and even soundstaging. As great as our audio systems sound, they are still far from truly accurate; as in the sound of live music which is why these perceived effects are relevant.

Frogman.

I agree 100%. IMO it is impossible to over damp, if our objective is to keep the piece of gear or part "still" and there are very few pieces of the audio chain that aren't meant to be still.
It is however very easy to incorrectly apply materials in an attempt to damp that just shift the movement signature of the piece, often making it move for longer after the initial excitation.

The method of bonding the damping material to the structure is critical in this. I experimented with hardener and adhesive ratios on my TT build to find the best hardness of the epoxy. It appears that the optimum is when the adhesive is more or less equal in hardness to the parent material AND when the absolute minimum amount of glue is used.