WAF Alert: McCormack DNA .5 on Vandersteen 2W sub?

Hey Jon- I got more music for you to listen to.....glad to hear the Vandy's are working out and good to see you postin' here. What, ain't they given you enough to do downtown!? You can see by my number of posts here that I'm just sittin' on my hands waitin' for the phones to ring. Dean, my friend, you and Jon are going to get me in trouble with my wife..........again! Gunbei, or the slanted-head green man, as he is known round these parts, stares at naked ladies all day while figuring out ways to embellish their blossoming womanhood into gravity-defying jugs of wonderment for the likes of the great bullshit factory down in southern Cal known as L.A.

Don't give into the WAF J.J.!! Keep up the good fight for truth, justice and a big-ass soundstage!!! Actually, I NEVER put my amps on my speakers......well, it was only perhaps a week or two.....I built a shelf that goes over the top of the Scala's with some marble and inexpensive spikes. That and the sandbox did the trick. Don't know how tall your sub is, but you could do a similar treatment. Sandboxes are a snap to make, very inexpensive, and work very well. You can finish em' in all kinds of fancy plastic fruitwood veneers like they have inlaid on the dashboards of 78' Gremlins. It can match the side of your minivan! I also know a good place to buy inexpensive custom sized butcher blocks, but I have to look that one up if you want it. Play sand is cheap, but the purists are gonna tell you you've gotta get that silicone stuff they use for sandblasting that costs about 10 times the price of play sand. Don't listen to them, you've got mouths to feed. The play sand works just fine. You can hide that spare quad of Siemens Falcons for the Audible Illusions from Mindy if you make the sand deep enough. Just keep Otis away from it or you may end up recreating that scene Jorge used to describe with the cat and the Nye strobes.....remember that one?! I surely would not put an amp on a subwoofer, your just asking for trouble, as well as plenty of ridicule from folks round these parts, man they'll heap some shit on you here that is so foul you will wish you never heard of the Internet! Just kidding, they're a good bunch. Now over there on the Asylum....jeez, those folks are just WAY too serious about this stuff. KeeeRyst, it's just stereo gear! Right guys? Right....am I right? Hey.......where's everyone going........hey, wait......No, I didn't mean it that way..........Hey, guys, c'mon! I've got a bootleg Patricia Barber from Jazz Alley that got smuggled out by the sound engineer.......Aw, c'mon...I didn't mean what I said...I used to own a VPI Brick!

Marco

PS Jon (Bibasset) is the very individual who got me addicted to this insane hobby some twenty years ago or more! He's the man who exposed me to those wonderful old Quad speakers playing with his modified Dynaco and AA pre. That was the tube sound I could never shake off that I wrote about in my system profile. They'd have to boot me out of their ground-floor Park Slope apartment cause I didn't want to leave those wonderful sounds coming from his speakers through those glowing tubes behind the cage.....like being kicked out into the cold away from a warm fire! I don't know whether to thank him, or curse the day he dropped the needle into the first groove on Jazz at the Pawnshop. Once the needle goes in, it never comes out! I'm hooked! Thanks Jon!

Wow! So Jon, you're the one that got Marco started on his downward spiral into Audiophile Hades? Personally, I think a highly creative goofball like Jax2 would have found another insanely expensive outlet for his creativity even if you hadn't let him listen to your system in the early days. He's the resident Audiogon kook and comedian!

Years ago, I had one of those wooden 240 disc CD spinners sitting on top of my subwoofer. I never heard any CDs rattling during scenes like the T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus battle to the death, maybe because my whole building was shaking too, but I did notice a few had gotten shaken out of their slots.

You're probably right about the amp case shaking from both physical contact and airborn vibrations. I was listening to my system last week and noticed a slightly hooty sound in the upper bass and lower midrange. It turned out it was caused by an empty box sitting at my feet. When I picked up the box with the music still playing I could feel the vibration in the sides and flaps of the box. Even when I moved it to the back of the room, I could feel it humming along to the tune. I put some stuff in the box and the noticeable vibes had stopped.

Since audio gear is all exposed to airborn vibrations, my guess is the only thing you can do to reduce the buzzing if your wife insists you place the DNA on the Vandie, is to create isolation between the two units. Granite or a two inch thick piece of hardwood with the kneaded eraser tweak I mentioned might help a bit.

And, since you're an old friend of Marco, maybe he'll lend you some sand or even let you in the sandbox. But don't go digging around for those nudie girl playing cards, who knows what else he's got hiding under there.

Good luck,
Dean

Goonbah- Yep, it's out in the open, Jon's the one who popped my cherry sending me into the dark netherworld of hi-end never to return to to 'normal' life again!

C'mon now, there is no question an amp on a sub is going to be detrimental to the sonics (not our basketball team Jon)...the question is only how bad does it get. Keeerist, MY amps are vibrating here in Seattle when Jon plays his sub and he lives across the sound on a friggen Island! I was wondering why my CD's were all falling out of their jewel cases....turn the level down on that sub will'ya Jon?! The magnetic question is a good point though. I had FedexGround deliver a Velodyne ULD15 years ago in several pieces, evil primates that they are, and MAN that magnet is huge and heavy! I got too near a 21 inch sub once and had to get three strong guys to help me break free. I had to leave my belt and watch there with the sub, but I was just happy to get away with my life!

Kneeded eraser tweak?! Hey Gunbei, I would've thought you had the Blockheads squished underneath your components for isolation? Or just hack off a few clay toes or sumthin'? Don't they just grow back instantly?

Ain't no nudie cards in my sandboxs. I rented it out to my relatives on the Lower East side. They pay me handsomely each month. They're keeping parts of Jimmy Hoffa in each of three sandboxes I have. Told me the dude was an audiophile and would have wanted it that way. Who am I to ask questions...my toes don't grow back!

Marco

Of course I can blame Marco for re-infecting me with this audiophile fever. I was happily minding my own business, content with my modest system while distracted by raising three kids. Then he tells me about Audiogon (my wife probably curses that day...) and here we go again...different speakers, an inexplicable exploration of solid state amplification, the search for new cables, and damn I'm sure the digital front end can be improved.. I need to fire up the Goldmund Studio..it's been too long in hiatus. So I wonder,regarding the magnetic fields issue with the sub: do I also need a slab of 2" thick lead ? Perhaps a big sandwich of maple, lead and sand. Or I could just take the damn thing off of there..of course switching to some nice quicksilver mono amps back and off to both sides would be all zenlike and fengshui too...

I have my BPT 3.5 power conditioner on my Paradigm sub with inverted polycrystal cones inbetween with the noticeable difference of the bass tightening up and cleaner, less booming.