Do equipment stands have an impact on electronics?

They cannot answer the question, They never will be able to answer the question. All they can do is insult us, and call us names, and accuse of having an agenda. But the one thing that would put us in our place, and shut us up for good, is forever beyond their grasp. :->)

Obviously its not a big deal.  if it were it would have been made apparent by now.

"accuse of having an agenda." Truth can hurt.

"A common example is the capacitor placed on the reference input to an ADC. The circuit may work fine in the lab, where it isn’t being shaken vigorously. Once it is installed in an environment with vibration, significant errors in the ADC readings might appear. Power supply designers are also aware of the converse piezoelectric effect, where the ripple voltage across the capacitor causes it to “sing” or vibrate."

You owe atmasphere $100, Ethan. Pay up or shut up.

Dave

Geofkait alone going on and on and fear mongering about esoteric theoretical things does not make them a big deal. Just because something can happen does not mean it will. He needs some disciples to help spread his gospel. Also maybe do something besides talk and repackage others stuff to try to sell here.

Not impressed with Ethan’s attitude methods conclusions or approach either.

Guess that leaves us where? No better or worse off than when we started.

At least Atmasphere, though operating on/offering a different paradigm than most, presents useful information in a reasonable manner with no condescending attitude normally so people can decide and digest on their own to what extent it really matters to them. Plus he has years of experience actually testing out and making things that clearly back up what he says whereas Ethan is still measuring away trying to figure out how things really work and seems bent on convincing others that he has figured it all out better than all the rest already somehow. He too could use a few disciples to help spread the gospel. Atmasphere has plenty of those.

Ralph, I can’t tell if you’re being disingenuous or you really believe what you write. For now I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and address your points. You’re in quotes below, and I’m not:

"When you say ’0.01’ are you referring to THD? When one looks at digital specs, one is lucky to find the distortion spec listed at all; if it is its usually in terms of db and at that also as a composite figure representing THD and noise together (which seems a reasonable way to express the value). However its the inharmonic distortions that are the larger amount of distortion that has shown up in a lot of digital gear over time, but that number is not included in the spec, in fact I don’t see it on websites anywhere."

I was quoting typical specs. When I assess gear I often use the FFT display in Sound Forge because it shows all artifacts. I’ve done this dozens of times, and FFT screens are included in my two AES videos and in my Audio Expert book. If there was some mysterious type of "inharmonic" distortion, other than IMD or jitter or aliasing which are all known and understood, I’d have seen it by now in an FFT. There is no such thing. If you believe otherwise, please post an FFT showing that distortion, and explain how you created it.

The GIF linked below displays a series of FFT screen caps showing the THD and IMD and spectral noise of an original Wave file, a copy played out and back in through a 16 year old Delta 66 sound card, and again out and in through a $25 SoundBlaster X-Fi sound card:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/misc-content/sound_card_distortion_corrected.gif

I generated the source file in Sound Forge, so I imagine it’s as clean as a 16-bit digital source can be. The record level meters said -1 for both sound cards for all frequencies:

20 Hz
1 KHz
10 KHz
19 + 20 KHz

Clearly the Delta 66 is extremely clean even when recorded at -1 dB. This proves beyond all doubt that a halfway decent sound card - even a very old one - does not generate "inharmonic distortions" at a level that’s even audible let alone intrusive. And before you claim that people can hear artifacts that are 110 dB down, this section of my AES Audio myths video plays a pair of recordings made simultaneously through the same $25 SoundBlaster sound card and a very high-end Apogee converter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ&t=41m15s

Even with the higher level of artifacts in the SB card, the sound quality is still very similar to an expensive converter. And before you accuse YouTube compressed audio of masking the differences, here are the original Wave files:

http://ethanwiner.com/aes/sound_cards1.wav
http://ethanwiner.com/aes/sound_cards2.wav

"Since the collection of data from a CD is an analog process, its reasonable to assume that reducing vibration in the transport will improve data recovery. Its not uncommon to see damping applied to high end CD transports."

Wow, talk about circular logic! First, the makers of "high end" CD players do whatever they think is needed to convince people to pay handsomely for their stuff. That they "isolate" their transports means nothing. They probably claim to use some BS over-designed power supply too. More important, if you believe normal amounts of vibration can affect audio quality, why don’t you test it for yourself? I’ve done that, which is why I know isolation for CD players is BS. It’s not a difficult test! If you design audio gear, surely you have a sine wave generator, a CD burner, and a way to record the player’s output as you shake it around while playing your test tone CD. Or just watch the output on a ’scope as you shake it. Or just listen. Sheesh!