MC, I wonder about this too, especially when people talk about the bass response of headphones. Duke is a great guy. One of the best and most honest people in the audio business.
Springs under turntable
I picked up a set of springs for $35 on Amazon. I intended to use them under a preamp but one thing led to another and I tried them under the turntable. Now, this is no mean feat. It’s a Garrard 401 in a 60pound 50mm slate plinth. The spring device is interesting. It’s sold under the Nobsound brand and is made up of two 45mm wide solid billets of aluminum endcaps with recesses to fit up to seven small springs. It’s very well made. You can add or remove springs depending on the weight distribution. I had to do this with a level and it only took a few minutes. They look good. I did not fit them for floor isolation as I have concrete. I played a few tracks before fitting, and played the same tracks after fitting. Improvement in bass definition, speed, air, inner detail, more space around instruments, nicer timbre and color. Pleasant surprise for little money.
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Duke explained this some 2 years ago (that I saw, and probably before that) and it was one of the many facts that helped convince me to build my DBA. Audio is full of complex concepts and this is a big one: human beings DO NOT hear all frequencies the same. Not at all. Not even close. Therefore we need to think differently- in some cases like this one very radically differently- depending on what part or aspect of the sound we are talking about. Its not like we don't perceive all kinds of detail that we ascribe to bass. I say ascribe to bass because it seems impossible for these things to actually be "in the bass". For example it has been noted by myself, Tim, and others with multiple subs that the subs disappear while the bass appears to be very localizable in terms of being totally integrated into the sound stage. Yet there is no way that information is coming from the bass. It has to be coming from higher frequencies. Our brains map out or create the image of bass in a location, probably same as they create the image of a singer in between the speakers. The result we hear is stable 3D localizable bass, even though in reality the bass is pure volume, the location of the subs has nothing to do with it. This is easily proven. Everyone with a DBA has moved them around trying to find better and better locations. Everyone who has done this talks about how even the frequency response is. Frequency response is volume. Nothing else. Volume. Not a one of us ever said we moved a sub and the location of the bass changed. Not a one. Because there is no location information in bass that low. So if there's no location information, and moving the subs around by feet all over the room never alters any bass detail, how can it possibly affect (nonexistent) bass detail if a spring lets a sub move a millimeter? Rhetorical question. It can't. |
MC, You wrote, "Audio is full of complex concepts and this is a big one: human beings DO NOT hear all frequencies the same." Yes, that's right; it's called the "Fletcher-Munson Curve", and you didn't invent it. It's why once upon a time a conventional receiver or integrated amplifier had a "Loudness" contour knob on its front panel. Then you wrote, "So if there's no location information, and moving the subs around by feet all over the room never alters any bass detail, how can it possibly affect (nonexistent) bass detail if a spring lets a sub move a millimeter? Rhetorical question. It can't." Here you are conflating location information with distortion. If the sub moves in response to a low frequency audio signal, that means that some of the energy in the signal was lost in doing the work necessary to move the speaker. This could cause an aberrant presentation of the musical signal at certain frequencies, due to loss of energy at certain frequencies. That phenomenon is a form of distortion. So, in my opinion, it is best to anchor a subwoofer as firmly as possible in the listening environment. You can argue the other side of that question, but not using the rationale presented in your last post. You'll have to do better. I don't disagree with your bit about bass location. But I will turn your conclusion around; if the springs do nothing to affect bass detail or a sense of bass location, then why use springs at all? |
Spikes vs. Springs They are obviously selling something but bring up some interesting observations. https//youtu.be/dW9-r83IvhI |
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