Right. Because you are listening. But not lucky. That's just the way it is. Far as I can tell anyway. Every single thing I ever tried was better than nothing, than just a record on the platter. When I first brought this up to DJ Casser in the early 90's he made me a carbon fiber disk with a hole in the middle, crudest thing he ever made I bet. But that's the way it is when you test, doesn't have to be pretty. It worked, and that was enough.
Since then I tried lots of things. Playing a record generates a tremendous amount of vibration. Never seen any measurements but I bet the stylus in the groove generates far more vibration than the bearing, motor, everything else all put together. This should by the way be obvious and uncontroversial. Play any record, you can hear the music clearly just from the cartridge body vibrating. Can't hear the motor, platter, bearing, plinth, anything else. Just the cartridge. Main source of vibration.
Mats, clamps and weights all help to control this vibration at least in the vinyl. Things like OL Cartridge Enabler or fO.q tape can help with the cartridge. All these things help. The challenge is these vibrations run across the whole audio spectrum and dynamic range. It is super easy to dampen some enough to hear improvement. That is basically what all the different things do. What is super challenging is to control equally well across the whole spectrum. This is harder to do and also a little harder to hear. When one or a few things are made better this stands out. When everything is improved equally well the full nature of the improvement can actually be a little less obvious and harder to hear. Or another way of saying it can take a while to appreciate. But these are worth the effort because they are exactly the sorts of things we appreciate more and more as time goes by.
Since then I tried lots of things. Playing a record generates a tremendous amount of vibration. Never seen any measurements but I bet the stylus in the groove generates far more vibration than the bearing, motor, everything else all put together. This should by the way be obvious and uncontroversial. Play any record, you can hear the music clearly just from the cartridge body vibrating. Can't hear the motor, platter, bearing, plinth, anything else. Just the cartridge. Main source of vibration.
Mats, clamps and weights all help to control this vibration at least in the vinyl. Things like OL Cartridge Enabler or fO.q tape can help with the cartridge. All these things help. The challenge is these vibrations run across the whole audio spectrum and dynamic range. It is super easy to dampen some enough to hear improvement. That is basically what all the different things do. What is super challenging is to control equally well across the whole spectrum. This is harder to do and also a little harder to hear. When one or a few things are made better this stands out. When everything is improved equally well the full nature of the improvement can actually be a little less obvious and harder to hear. Or another way of saying it can take a while to appreciate. But these are worth the effort because they are exactly the sorts of things we appreciate more and more as time goes by.