Millercarbon's Mega Vibration Control Journey


Vibration control is such a huge, and hugely important, topic it deserves a thread of its own. There was a time I thought it nuts to say such a thing. In fact I wrote a letter to the editor excoriating them for wasting my time on the goofy idea that clamping components between shelves could have any effect on sound at all, let alone be worth spending good money on a rack designed to do just that. This was the Michael Green rack, and thanks to my closed mind and dismissive attitude I never did bother to try and find out for myself if there was anything to it.  

Important Lesson Number One: Don't be so quick to dismiss things just because you can't understand how they could work. 

Couple years later unpacking a McCormack DNA1 amp the Owner's Manual says the included spike can be used to improve sound quality. Well now. As crazy as it still sounded this time its Steve McCormack, and he's already given me the spike, so what do I have to lose? Much to my surprise it did indeed improve the sound. Not a lot. But definitely more detail, clarity.  

This is very early 1990's. There is no internet. I know precisely zero audiophiles. Until stumbling upon this one guy at work who says oh yeah and put your CDP on a phone book, and another one on top. Which sounded even crazier but the guy was serious and this being the 90's we all had phone books laying around so I gave it a shot. This time it was only the most barely perceptible improvement, but it was there. If you really listened for it. So not much. Then again, free. Wrapped some fabric around it, ran the CDP like this for quite some time. 

Around this time I'm shopping for components for my new listening room when this guy is more excited about something called Black Diamond Racing Cones than the amp or whatever he was trying to sell me. So I get 3 of these things and they're so much better than the phone book its hard to believe! Well, okay, it was a phone book. Got to compare against something, right? 

These Cones are so good I take them to this Seattle audiophile club and show them around all excited and.... nobody cares. Except this one guy who goes on and on about how he has tried phone books, tennis balls, racquet balls, styrofoam, cones, spikes, on and on everything under the sun, he's tried it all there's just no way he's gonna be impressed- he makes this very clear to me- but okay you're the new guy let me borrow em why not. But they're not gonna work. No way. 

Next day this guy calls me up gushing going on and on how great these are what are they again where did you find em how many can I get? I actually wind up becoming the Washington State distributor for Black Diamond Racing selling Cones, Shelf, all of it. This guy winds up like me, pretty much everything on BDR.  https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367  

A lot of what I knew about vibration control back then was based on my own experience with BDR, and learning from owner DJ Casser. This resulted in what became my guiding principles of vibration control: Mass, Stiffness, and Damping.
128x128millercarbon
I'm a bit late to the game with isolation having only tried Herbie's products. They used to work for me and after a few rounds of component changes, the magic just wasn't there. In fact, those footers were having a negative effect so I stopped completely with isolation and relied on my solid maple media stand and rack, allowing the mass of it to do the trick.

After reading about Isocacoustic's Oreas, I gave them a try and boy did they make a difference. With just my integrated, everything came into shaper focus. Then with my SACD player, the sounds now went out in all directions, kind of like the reverse of what and how a microphone picks up the sound. It wasn't quite holographic as the layering remained the same but the sounds that emanate from their sources are much more convincing.

Now being a convert, I tried what I had on my power conditioner and using just one Les Davis constrained layer damping pad at each end of my conditioner, as it stands on its side, was all that was needed to change what sounded like a tonal shift, more than anything else, for the better. Any added layer lowered the dominant tone and using none increased it. Kind of like finding the right key to play the music.

To a lessor extent, but still an extent, my cables are all elevated on 49¢ glass candle holders from Ikea. They were cheap enough to try and do the job.

No one's system needs any negative waves to ruin the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9Lm4Y886k

All the best,
Nonoise
That's a big part of what I'm trying to get across with all these stories: no one thing is perfect, but we can hear the effects and use what works. The same is true for all our components. So as our systems change something that once worked well for what we had then might not work so well with what we have now.  

MC-This is the 2nd thing that people have accused you for promoting/selling. We all know what the other product is.
There are so many devices out there that handle your subject of vibrations. Currently, the better products are not cones or spikes at all and they can cost a few bucks. The better products for example are the magic mpods and the isoacoustics devices. There is a lot going on within these devices then simply transferring vibrations using a solid cone/spike.
You should have a good quality system before spending this kind of money because you won't get all the benefits that these devices can achieve on lesser equipment.
millercarbon wrote:
That's a big part of what I'm trying to get across with all these stories: no one thing is perfect, but we can hear the effects and use what works. The same is true for all our components. So as our systems change something that once worked well for what we had then might not work so well with what we have now.   

I believe it’s MC’s theory that there is no system regardless of how poor and unresolving, not to materially benefit from better isolation/vibration control and better cabling. I disagree. While these elements are important they truly only move the needle when the speakers, amplification and source components are of high quality. Putting high octane fuel in a Yugo isn’t really going to make a difference.