Miracles in Audio, by luck, by good choices,by design or by tweaking...
You might be interested to know I bought a prototype David Berning amp, if I recall it was EA- 230 some 40 years ago. Berning lived just down the street in MD from Bruce Wenger, (now BWS Consulting in Arlington, VA), another high end amp designer, whose high power Class A tube mono-blocks and power supplies tip the scales at 600 lbs, shipping weight. - Your humble scribe and audio insider from the future. |
Since I am unable to go back that far in time, IIRC the Berning amp sounded quite good (why wouldn’t it? 😬), even when he was starting out. If memory serves I sold the Berning EA-230 and got a modified Fisher 500c receiver from Bruce Wenger, remember, Berning’s neighbor. The Fisher 500c was outfitted with aircraft output tubes, a more robust PS and other niceties. That is all ancient history, and crystals, intelligent chips, spooky clocks and springy things were not yet a gleam in my eye 👁 |
It seems my idea for cheap isolation platform for my speakers, amplifier and dac was good... "Sorbothane sandwiches": quartz feet, granite plate, sorbothane sheet, cork plate, granite plate, quartz feet, bamboo plate, sorbothane, speakers..... My idea was precisely coupling- and decoupling the resonance and breaking it using different property of different resonant densities materials... It was audibly good for my ears and the cost all in all for my 4 platforms around 100 dollars for all of them ... read that design idea from a polish company : « The FOS-70SXL platform is based on the FOS-7SXL model. It consists of two separate bases. The lower one is made of multi-layer MDF, veneered with ebony wood colored black. It is decoupled from the ground with double carbon steel spikes. The upper section is a metamorphic stone with a specific, irregular structure, enclosed in a wooden box, combined with MDF (upper layer) veneered with ebony in the same black color. This part is decoupled from the bottom platform with spikes. The idea behind this model, as well as other designs of my firm, is isolating from external and internal vibrations by breaking them in many directions from side to side, along with simultaneous absorption by appropriately selected materials.» http://highfidelity.pl/@main-970&lang=en I dont doubt that they are good, but: The price for 2 would be 750 dollars x 2 = 1,500 dollars I need only 4 of them.... Then 3000 dollars versus my 100 dollars :) I dont think that their platform is thirty times better than mine tough...The problem is also they would takes way too more space than mine on my desk... :) Someday I will try the springs idea of Geoffkait and a bed of quartz sand....And compare that to these platforms of mine... |
