Lifters ForGetting Cables Off The Floor, Worth It Or Snake Oil

One need look no further than the LIGO project to detect gravity waves to see what the big boys do (and don’t do) to acheive very high isolation effectiveness. The reason LIGO was forced to develop the world’s best isolation systems is because the gravity waves in question, the ones produced by collisions of black holes and even by the Big Bang are very minuscule, their amplitudes are on the order of the diameter of an atomic nucleus. In fact, the first LIGO detection occurred last year and the gravity waves detected were produced by the ancient collision and merging of two giant black holes. But I digress.

When one examines what LIGO developed in the way of isolation system to get the sensitivity of the experiment sufficietly high for the gravity waves to be detected it’s based on springs and other advanced techniques, including active isolation, but not (rpt not) on spikes or cones any such thing. Now I’m not (rpt not) saying spikes won’t do anything or that cones won’t do anything. What I am saying is that spring based systems are the most common, the most effective and the easiest methodology to implement. Having said that there are many ways to skin a cat: air springs, steel springs, damped springs, air bladders, bicycle inner tubes, bungee cords, what have you, both passive and active types.

There is really no (rpt no) other way to obtain resonant frequencies well below 2 Hz or even below 1 Hz. Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that since spring based systems behave like mechanical low pass filters and Earth crust motion (microseisms) have peak energy circa 0-3 Hz, one must obtain sub Hertz performance if one is to have a snowball’s chance of significantly isolating against Earth crust motion and other generators of extremely low frequency vibration.

Sure, spikes may have their place. But isolation is not one of them.

Geoff Kait
machina dynamica
give me a stiff enough spring and I’ll isolate the world

@audiopoint if you take a look at my virtual system https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/5707#&gid=1&pid=31 (the V trace in the set of the graph traces from the accelerometers in my Herzan platform) you will see clear and compelling evidence of seismic activity (in this case most likely road noise and construction) and the effect of eliminating it. In this instance the benefit is felt for the turntable but I have all of my equipment isolated in a manner that addresses this insidious (and readily noticeable once you hear it’s absence) source of interference.

I have no particular axe to grind as to what method you use to address low frequency interference but denying it exists, or that its impact is audible is just plain wrong

Addendum: there are many reason why isolation is effective for audio systems. The reasons that are perhaps the most obvious are, in no particular order, (1) mechanical feedback from speakers transmitted via the floor, the resonant frequency of tonearm, cartridge and platter is around 10-12 Hz, well below the lowest frequency of speakers but not (rpt not) below that of seismic low frequency vibration, therefore vulnerable to it, (3) the tiny lateral spring system that is part of the elaborate servo system that allows the laser to track the data spiral has a resonate frequency around 8 Hz that is subject to being excited by low frequency seismic vibration.

If you're actually worried about seismic frequencies worming their way into your rig, you possibly need to increase your meds or get another hobby (Balsa wood ship modeling? Needle point? Live concert sound mixing?). I know, to geoffkait my silly Pro Audio/musician background renders my opinions as irrelevant as a bag of crystals, but even with that handicap I try to get by.

Speaking of worms how did you manage to worm your way into this thread? 🐍