Right. Not only turntables, all our components have to contend with a plethora of vibration sources.
There are, at a minimum:
1. Vibrations generated within the component itself. Even zero moving parts components like amps and DACs generate a lot of vibration. With turntables there is at minimum motor, bearing, arm and cartridge. The cartridge alone generates so much vibration you can hear music coming right off the cartridge.
2. Mechanical environmental structural vibrations. This is everything from traffic outside, wind acting on trees and structures, that all adds together into seismic vibrations, mixed into which we have speakers mechanically transmitting vibration into the floor, and from there to walls, ceiling, rack, combining with seismic and into components.
3. Acoustic, the air, what we call sound. All the noise in the room. Hopefully mostly music but for this purpose it really does not matter it is all noise.
This is actually the least of the three, something you will appreciate if you ever put your speakers on Podiums and feel the difference. But acoustic energy being air affects different structures differently. Sound waves vary in length by frequency. A tweeter can be small, because the wavelength is very short. Tweeters will move at lower frequencies of course, you just won’t hear it. What happens is the pressure wave instead of being driven forward dissipates around the sides. A speaker cabinet is basically a means of preventing this. Without it, speaker in open air, loses all lower frequencies.
Now we have what we need to know to answer your question. The tone arm is so small the only frequencies that even "see" it are ultrasonic. Everything else goes right around it. Plus it is curved, makes it even harder for acoustic energy to go into the arm.
Turntable, bigger, is easier. Now it should be clear why a dust cover is so bad, great big thing practically designed to collect acoustic energy and channel it into the turntable.
Springs under turntables and other components don’t have much to do with acoustic energy. Mostly they isolate from environmental seismic vibrations. The biggest source usually being the component itself. Springs allow vibrations generated within the component to be dissipated within the component. This might not seem so great but it is a lot better than the alternative, which is vibrations travel beyond the component creating ringing in the rack and exciting all the other components until every component is causing every other component to ring in a great big smeary mess. This is the real reason springs work so well. They break that whole messy cycle.
There are, at a minimum:
1. Vibrations generated within the component itself. Even zero moving parts components like amps and DACs generate a lot of vibration. With turntables there is at minimum motor, bearing, arm and cartridge. The cartridge alone generates so much vibration you can hear music coming right off the cartridge.
2. Mechanical environmental structural vibrations. This is everything from traffic outside, wind acting on trees and structures, that all adds together into seismic vibrations, mixed into which we have speakers mechanically transmitting vibration into the floor, and from there to walls, ceiling, rack, combining with seismic and into components.
3. Acoustic, the air, what we call sound. All the noise in the room. Hopefully mostly music but for this purpose it really does not matter it is all noise.
This is actually the least of the three, something you will appreciate if you ever put your speakers on Podiums and feel the difference. But acoustic energy being air affects different structures differently. Sound waves vary in length by frequency. A tweeter can be small, because the wavelength is very short. Tweeters will move at lower frequencies of course, you just won’t hear it. What happens is the pressure wave instead of being driven forward dissipates around the sides. A speaker cabinet is basically a means of preventing this. Without it, speaker in open air, loses all lower frequencies.
Now we have what we need to know to answer your question. The tone arm is so small the only frequencies that even "see" it are ultrasonic. Everything else goes right around it. Plus it is curved, makes it even harder for acoustic energy to go into the arm.
Turntable, bigger, is easier. Now it should be clear why a dust cover is so bad, great big thing practically designed to collect acoustic energy and channel it into the turntable.
Springs under turntables and other components don’t have much to do with acoustic energy. Mostly they isolate from environmental seismic vibrations. The biggest source usually being the component itself. Springs allow vibrations generated within the component to be dissipated within the component. This might not seem so great but it is a lot better than the alternative, which is vibrations travel beyond the component creating ringing in the rack and exciting all the other components until every component is causing every other component to ring in a great big smeary mess. This is the real reason springs work so well. They break that whole messy cycle.