Thiel Owners

Hi Jafant et al.  I have been reading about isolation on other threads and watching some videos online.  I became intrigued and wanted to isolate my Thiel CS6 speakers with springs but not spend $1000's doing it.  Last weekend I came up with an idea to use butcher blocks and coil springs as stands for the speakers.  Easy enough to calculate the spring rate needed to keep the resonance point of the speaker stands at 3 Hz. I ordered the springs I needed from McMaster Carr.  Reference my system page for a picture and a couple of paragraphs with details.  I drilled pockets into the butcher blocks to hold the springs and keep the travel down to about 0.100" so the speakers are fairly stable.  I downloaded a vibration analysis app onto my iPad.  Here is the interesting part which I also saw demonstrated online.  With the iPad sitting on top of the speaker and the speaker coupled to the floor with the spikes, I tap on the speaker cabinet with a steel ball and I can see not just the impulse on the screen but I also see the cabinet ringing for a few moments.  I can tap the steel ball on the floor and see the exact same impulse and ringing on the iPad app still sitting on top of the speaker.  But when I placed the speaker on the spring platform and tap the speaker cabinet with the steel ball, the impulse appears but the ringing is gone.  I tap the steel ball on the floor and see no impulse at all on the iPad.  The speaker is completely isolated from the floor.  I think the ringing is caused by the vibration energy going into the floor and being reflected back into the speaker cabinet spikes or no.  By the speaker being completely isolated the reflections are eliminated.  As expected the imaging became even more focused.  Clarity improved greatly.  Drum beats are tight and clear.  I just isolated my amplifiers using the same design and springs.  Since my amps weigh 100 lbs apiece the same springs work out with only a few tenths of a Hz increase in resonance frequency.  There is good and bad to all this.  The good is that it sounds great and I hear much more detail.  On digital material the music now decays forever.  I hear low level background noise on more digital files now.  The bad is that I hear more detail to the point of distraction.  On an acoustic recording this evening I heard a low level buzz off to the right.  Immediately I thought I had a buzzing tweeter.  My anxiety went through the roof.  I jumped up and put my ear close to the speaker and I could hear the buzz.  It was apparently a bad cable in the recording.  Next song was ok.  Whew!  I heard a sound in another song but this time I switched my preamp to mono and the noise moved to center so speakers are fine.  Spring isolation works just be careful what you wish for.

tonywinga
Good to see you as always. Thank You for sharing your latest System upgrade.
Happy Listening!

Happy Friday! All

Tony - what a beautiful system!And thank you for your isolation update. Might you tell us what app you use for vibration analysis? Was there a particular magic about 3Hz? I find this stuff fascinating.

I just used the spring mass formula.  Fn= 1/2Pi * (k/M)^0.5
So my 165 lbs speakers needed 4, 57 lbs/in springs for a 3.3 Hz resonance. That particular spring was available on the McMaster Carr website.