Component isolation

Good questions and comments Terry. Damping the vibrations in a component, vibrations that the component may potentially add to the signal, is not "dampening (sic) part of the audio signal." Where in hell did THAT idea come from?! This idea that components themselves should be considered musical instruments, free to resonate, is SUCH an anti-high fidelity concept. Components should simply reproduce the sound of instruments (and voices) contained in recordings, having or adding no sound of their own. My God, that’s the first truth of hi-fi!

"Low mass frees the sound" and "High mass squeezes the sound" are just overly-simplistic bumper sticker slogans. Audio engineers don’t think in those terms. The high-mass VPI turntable platters (the purely stainless steel, the stainless steel/Delrin, and the aluminum/lead/Delrin) sound MUCH better than the low-mass acrylic platters. My Townshend Audio Elite Rock table has a plinth of a metal frame filled with bitumen pads and plaster-of-Paris, built that way so as to be non-resonant. Designer/engineer Frank Van Alstine suggests lining the inside surfaces of the wood bases of suspended subchassis designs (Linn Sondek, Acoustic Research, etc.) with modeling clay for the same reason. If high mass achieves low resonance, that’s a good thing. Of course, that too is an over-simplification, as there is the matter of resonant frequency, Q factor, etc.

Hi millercarbon, thanks!

When I got into the HEA part of this industry I did so with some good advice from the guys who I worked with in the studios and on the road. I was known among some for coming in, doing my thing and quietly staying off to the side while the sessions went on not getting involved in the debates, credits, money or theory building. The advice was "never change that rule of mine". It's served my goals well and has given me valued friendships and a clear understanding of what it takes to become a long term standard.

We have a wonderful industry and hobby, all the way from instruments to the ear, and I have tried to be in every position of "Doing" I could have so I can be a forever student of this passion. The only way I knew to do this was jump in, do, and learn for myself without being influenced by talk minus the doing. There's a completeness about doing something for ourselves and if we do so in time the truth makes it's way to us. It's a process that may happen in a moment or one that may take a lifetime but truth itself is never false, and the learning of it is truly a matter of doing.

So for me, when people say that's not the case, can't be true, he's full of it, wow that made an amazing difference or whatever suits their proclamation, I know if they have really done for themselves they know. And as important, if they haven't done for themselves they may never know what has been waiting for them to yet be discovered.

Audio is not a world of assumptions, neither is audio recording and playback. Audio is a science that we will either do or not do.

Again thanks, it means a lot to me. Not that I was right or wrong, but that you saw I was a student of sound just like you with the same goal and passion! all my best

mg

Hi Terry9

you said

"Michael, you say that," ... when you dampen vibrations you’re also dampening part of the audio signal." In my system, parasitic resonances (all resonances are a form of vibration) such as those excited in the tonearm, are not part of the audio signal. So I damp them out. Don't think you can have thought this through."

As I've said above, I'm a do it guy. If your ears have given you a different result of course you have to be true to your ears.

mg