mulveling,
Glad you found it useful.
Though after a conversation with another audiophile pal - who has long been into turntables - I’m unsure how useful the info is. He suggests that when I’m doing the tapping test around the turntable with the iPhone app, I would be creating resonances well below those that are actually important sonically. That is: they may tell me about how well the turntable can be isolated from lower frequency foot traffic or whatever getting into the table, but aside from being bad enough to skip a record, that’s generally not the vibration interference frequency range I need to be concerned with (especially if no one generally walks around the turntable when I’m listening).
Rather, we have to be more concerned with resonances more likely to infect the signal, e.g. those coming from the turntable operation itself, which manufacturers seek to diminish with various approaches (e.g. mass loading in the case of the Transrotor table).
So I’m not sure how I can use the iphone app to actually measure those types of vibrations.
BTW, I received a package I’d ordered of sorbathane pads (1/2" thick). Doing the same tests, the sorbothane didn’t seem to really decrease the vibrations showing up through the turntable, on the iphone app. But, again, not sure how to interpret that. Sorbothane surely does absorb vibrations as it is successfully used to do so in various industries. So maybe my iphone app just isn’t measuring the right frequencies where I’d see the difference.
I’m also caught somewhat between two worlds, when asking for advice on this. On one hand I’m a long time audiophile, very familiar with the audiophile world of Stereophile/Absolute sound etc. On the other, I’m a skeptic about lots of what goes on as "knowledge" in the audiophile world, because audiophiles generally don’t have a very reliable method of testing claims, so it’s something of a wild-west mix up of technical conjecture and subjective bias effects, mixed into whatever may really be happening. Researching isolation control in the audiophile community, with all the differing opinions that include IMO dubious claims doesn’t give me a lot of confidence I’ve bumped into someone who has really figured this out, in a reliable fashion.
Still, I do like to take in various viewpoints and advice to see which ones make sense to me.
Glad you found it useful.
Though after a conversation with another audiophile pal - who has long been into turntables - I’m unsure how useful the info is. He suggests that when I’m doing the tapping test around the turntable with the iPhone app, I would be creating resonances well below those that are actually important sonically. That is: they may tell me about how well the turntable can be isolated from lower frequency foot traffic or whatever getting into the table, but aside from being bad enough to skip a record, that’s generally not the vibration interference frequency range I need to be concerned with (especially if no one generally walks around the turntable when I’m listening).
Rather, we have to be more concerned with resonances more likely to infect the signal, e.g. those coming from the turntable operation itself, which manufacturers seek to diminish with various approaches (e.g. mass loading in the case of the Transrotor table).
So I’m not sure how I can use the iphone app to actually measure those types of vibrations.
BTW, I received a package I’d ordered of sorbathane pads (1/2" thick). Doing the same tests, the sorbothane didn’t seem to really decrease the vibrations showing up through the turntable, on the iphone app. But, again, not sure how to interpret that. Sorbothane surely does absorb vibrations as it is successfully used to do so in various industries. So maybe my iphone app just isn’t measuring the right frequencies where I’d see the difference.
I’m also caught somewhat between two worlds, when asking for advice on this. On one hand I’m a long time audiophile, very familiar with the audiophile world of Stereophile/Absolute sound etc. On the other, I’m a skeptic about lots of what goes on as "knowledge" in the audiophile world, because audiophiles generally don’t have a very reliable method of testing claims, so it’s something of a wild-west mix up of technical conjecture and subjective bias effects, mixed into whatever may really be happening. Researching isolation control in the audiophile community, with all the differing opinions that include IMO dubious claims doesn’t give me a lot of confidence I’ve bumped into someone who has really figured this out, in a reliable fashion.
Still, I do like to take in various viewpoints and advice to see which ones make sense to me.