Has anyone heard the new North American products preamp and amp?

Roger wrote,

geoffkait, I will be the first to admit you guys have a better grip on the physical vibration issues. I'm still learning. But I do have a grip on electronic signals and how they behave in amplifier circuits. That has been my life's work. My obsession with accuracy has taken me down to the "tiny" world of analog errors. I wanted to see the first [velocity error] happen before it manifests itself as full blown distortion. That's the place to clobber it before it gets out of hand. I can force the phase of fundamental to stay within fractions of a degree of dead true.

The equivalent physical vibration would be extremely high to cause the fundamental to move a full octave or more away from true producing harmonic distortion. That is a serious shift in velocity."

Unfortunately it's all part of the same thing.  It is probably wishful thinking to sweep structureborne vibration, acoustic vibration and vibration induced by motors and transformers under the table.  I don't care how obsessed or how long anyone has toiled in some subject or another. If hard work was all that mattered we'd all be rich.

The trick is not to waste your hard work on the wrong idea.

I once had two Halcyonics active isolation units. They were very expensive units and focused on low frequencies and thought that under my turntable and under my amp. This company ultimately raised prices greatly and was slow in delivery, but I never had an entire system isolated on these platforms.

At about that time I experienced the Stillpoints ESS rack and asked for a review sample. Everything on the ESS was better than two things on the active isolation platform.

The Stillpoints has a innovative method of turning vertical vibrations into horizontal vibrations and hence into heat. Ultimately, I had everything isolated on their Ultras and ESS racks. 

Along came the Star Sound Tech Apprentice platforms. Under my amps it was more dynamic with a sharp leading edge and great high end to go with the benefits of HFC cables. I now use both companies products, each with its own benefits. I have a friend who needs real isolation for his experiments. He bought Halcyonics and showed no interest in Stillpoints. 

Long ago, I learned that using a Goldmund single hard point under the transformer and two soft points elsewhere was a nice improvement.

My overall conclusion is that we need more science focusing on vibrations. Is it better to try to absorb them or to drain them away to mass. Meanwhile I go with what I hear.

Roger wrote,

"The trick is not to waste your hard work on the wrong idea."

eggs ackly! I couldn't have said it better.

geoff kait
machina dynamica
advanced audio concepts

Tbg wrote,

"My overall conclusion is that we need more science focusing on vibrations."

What’s wrong with the science we already have? Vibration isolation is one of the most researched and best documented sciences around. The groundbreaking article Bad Vibes by Shannon Dickson twenty years ago (count em) in Stereophile opened (many) people’s eyes to this relatively new audio concept. Vibraplane had just made the scene and Seismic Sink from Townshend had been around a year or two already and mine followed on the heels of Vibraplane, but mine addressed all six directions of motion, whereas up to that point the devices that were out there addressed only the vertical. That was the advantage of a single air spring over everything else that employed three or one large one if you wish to count bicycle inner tube DIY. And with LIGOs recent announcement on the detection and observation of those rascally gravity waves we now have confirmation of the efficacy and necessity and the SCIENCE of vibration isolation. And of course the other advantage of a single airspring is that spring rate is greatly reduced, and sub Hertz resonant frequencies can then be achieved. As I mentioned somewhere along the line two of my iso platforms borrow from both Shannon Dickson’s idea, I met him at CES in 1997 when I was invited by Pierre Sprey to be part of Mapleshade’s exhibit, and LIGO’s ideas, but I’m not telling which ones. Lol

g. kait
machina dynamica
we do artificial atoms right