Is There a Way to Lessen Vibration On Cables From Powered Speakers

@gaukus

@millercarbon is right, those kinds of bands would be far from ideal.

Once again, its your experiment and your money but if you can't tweak your Audioengine speakers to vibrate less for very, very little money, you will be throwing good money after bad. After checking to see if they can be tightened properly in the right ways and appropriately damped in the right ways to avoid killing the liveness of the presentation then you will likely need to recognize that you are potentially exceeding the speaker's capabilities regarding vibration control at given volume levels.

Getting a speaker to scale is tough...and its tougher still when its a small box, built to a price point and houses all the amplification as well, which was also built to a pricepoint. The Audioengine speakers are really nice for the money...but spending hundreds of dollars on tweaks might initiate the law of diminishing returns quickly and could lead to the law of absolutely no returns kicking in.

@Millercarbon 

Indeed.  I should move along..... ;)

@ghasley

Well, the interesting thing is, folks would say that my spending 10 times the value of the speaker system on cables and power distributors was ill-advisable, but these speakers wouldn't sound as good without them. *shrug*

So the only time diminishing returns are a factor is when spending money on tweaks that don't work.

Therefore, I am prone to determine whether or not rubber bands and putty make a difference for school-lunch money amounts, versus investing in $300+ in premium risers. :)

The salient point is stretch. Spring. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that spring. 

The tried and true method is to test for cheap or free. When I first heard about vibration control the idea seemed preposterous. But if there is anything to it then a phone book or bag of sugar on a component would make a difference you could hear. It did. Not much. Hardly any. Not the point. It proved the concept valid. However preposterous it seemed, nevertheless it did in fact work.  

One of the many advantages in doing things this way is you become a seriously good listener. Straining first to hear and then identify and evaluate the microscopically minor influence of a phone book means when you hear something really good you are not straining at all. You know it is really good. And right away, too!  

So the only time diminishing returns are a factor is when spending money on tweaks that don't work. 

Winner winner chicken dinner! Diminishing returns is a canard, a red herring, close enough for horseshoes and government work at best.  

When spent on tweaks that work there are things like Nobsound springs that are a huge improvement, and when you can significantly improve a $3k component with $30 springs that is hardly diminishing returns. The reason that lame old cliche is around is people try stuff that costs ten times Nobsound but are only slightly better. But then Townshend Pods are only slightly more than that and yet so much better they shatter the whole idea of diminishing returns. Moab on Podium outperforms Ulfberht on floor, and for less. That is hardly diminishing returns.  

The dealer who first started teaching me about all this, Stewart Marcantoni, once let me hear a system with twice the money in wire as components. Say again, the speaker cables, interconnects, and power conditioner all together cost twice the speakers, amp, pre-amp, and source. Twice. Not 50%. Not a little more. Twice. It was the best system I heard at that point in time, and for a good many years thereafter.  

@millercarbon

Yup. I lucked out in that I had the financial option to explore my idea.  I used to be relegated to only being able to afford a $300 dollar cable, maximum.  Which did improve sound, but only by small steps, but a step none the less. I finally decided to go as big as I could and for this application, Kimber Kable's Summit Palladian was as high as one can go with a C7 connection. The return on investment was immediate and light years what I had been using before, Audioquest NRG Z2.

I have since spoken to Synergistic Research, who claim they can make a cable as high up as they can go with a C7 connection, but since I am unable to find any example of a C7 connector on any of their cables, I am left a bit skeptical. Even Shunyata won't go very far in their cable line with a C7 connection.

It's eventually going to give me trouble in the future because I do plan on upgrading to Audioengine's HD6 speaker system, which still uses C7 connection, albeit directly and not through a power brick. The Kimber Kable Palladian likely won't do well dangling from any height.  It was clearly designed to remain horizontal. If I want to maintain this level of power clarity, I am going to have to test Synergistic's claim of using a C7 connection at a higher tier. 

I had looked into Nordost, but it's confusing.  Some power cables have a C7 option and some don't.  The Cable Company's list of options for some of those cables are contradictory. They offer the Frey 2 with a C7 connection, but Nordost's website does not. *Shrug*

The struggle continues....:)

UPDATE:

I found a successful solution!

Remember those foam pads?  They came from some electrical component shipping packing.  They're like EVA craft foam sheets.

Anyway, I discovered that if I sandwiched the cables between two sheets and used a rubber band to tightly apply pressure to the sheets, the cable that comes after that had significantly reduced vibration.  You could touch the cable before it and the cable after it and easily sense the loss of vibration.

I am going to experiment further :)