Vibration control inside a cabinet


For placing an amp and a CD player inside a built in cabinet, what would be the best way to control vibrations:  do I want some kind of isolation platform (actual brand suggestions would be appreciated), or something more like Herbie's Tenderfeet?  Or both?

Thanks!

mcanaday
Roller bearings can be had from Ingress Engineering in Canada for as little as $85 for a set of three. If you use only one of the two bearing cups at each location instead of two (look at them to understand what that means!), with the ball bearing directly in contact with the bottom of the component being isolated instead of the top cup, buy three more ball bearings and that set of three becomes two sets of three. Much cheaper than some other high end isolators, and not much more than Sorbothane half-spheres.
FWIW, I recently received an email from The Cable Company offering Symposium Acoustics Isolation Platforms starting at $199.00.

N
Actually the high carbon chrome steel bearings require the extremely hard surface of the top thingies that are provided to perform properly. The underneath surface of the component doesn’t quite cut it, it’s not hard enough and tends to flex. The other problem is without the two upper pieces the component will tend to roll. All three bearings need their top constraining pieces. This constraint forces the bearings to move very slightly up the concave inside of the bottom cup when forced by external uh, forces. All three bearings must be free to move freely in their bottom cups. Otherwise you lose all the isolation. The component must obviously be leveled precisely on the roller bearings and the roller bearing just be in located precisely such that mass is uniformly distributed.

Todd, what Barry Diament (long-term roller bearing proponent, and audiophile recording engineer) suggests is a roller bearing comprised of only one cup (the bowl facing upward, of course), the ball bearing sitting in it, and a hard ceramic floor tile put on the bottom of the component at the locations where the three ball bearings touch, the ball bearing then rolling smoothly against the tile. The original Symposium Roller Block itself had only a single cup, with another of their products recommended for the bottom of the component. The Roller Block Jr. (the $199/3 model nutty mentioned) is a pair of cups, the bowl in each facing each other, the ball bearing between them and riding in both. Barry theorizes that a single bowl provides isolation to a lower frequency; a ball bearing on a flat bottom surface would provide even more lateral (horizontal) isolation, but would then be free to roll right off your rack! The shallower the bowl (the larger it’s diameter), the lower the roller bearing’s resonant frequency.

The Ingress $85 model and the Symposium Roller Blocks have bowls of about the same diameter; the new Ingress model has a bowl machined to Barry’s suggested larger diameter (Ingress’ is 1-1/2"), and is made from Alcoa 7075 aluminum, harder than the 6061 of the original, and polished to a smoother finish, for lower rolling resistance. The new model is also a single bowl design, not a double like the original. But like I said, there is nothing to stop you from turning one set of double-bowl bearings into two sets---just buy three more ball bearings and some ceramic tiles! There are also different grades of ball bearings themselves---Symposium sells them at a couple of price points, but they are also available from ball bearing vendors on the 'net.