Why do my bass drivers shake violently listening to vinyl


Hello Gon'ers,

Help needed. I took the grills off my new Vandersteen Treo CT's recently and noticed that when listening to vinyl, the bass drivers shake violently, meaning the amount and frequency in which they travel in and out. Then I played the same pieces of music from Tidal and they were relatively calm.

Is this some kind of feedback loop causing this? Has this happened to anyone else?

Thanks!
Joe
128x128audionoobie

@audionoobie , That should be fine. I do not think the "footers" will add much if anything. Better to have the table on a heavy solid platform. 

@atmasphere , should be and are are two separate issues. I have records the rumble from a poorly maintained lathe is obnoxious. 

The woofer flapping issue is prevalent among people with small woofers that are tuned to go as low as possible. They have to move a lot farther to produce the same results as a large woofer. I have never seen the owner of a 15" woofer complain of this. It is always 10" or below and always with turntables. With many amps going clear down to DC surface irregularities in the vinyl will cause the woofers to flap. They do so in rhythm with the spinning record. This is not necessarily will loud volumes either. But if you do turn it up the problem can become obnoxious. If subwoofers are used and boosted 5 dB like mine you can easily bottom the subwoofer out. Interesting sound for sure. Once digitized it is a simple matter to program in a subsonic filter with a very steep slope sidestepping the issue altogether. If you use subwoofers and play loud using your turntable as the source a subsonic filter is virtually mandatory.

@audionoobie If you're thinking about upgrading the feet, I recommend the feet from MNPCTECH - 

 

They're a little pricey, but it was probably the best upgrade I have made to my SL 1200 MK2.

"The woofer flapping issue is prevalent among people with small woofers that are tuned to go as low as possible. They have to move a lot farther to produce the same results as a large woofer." Only if the bass response is artificially boosted, as in your system. Otherwise, the smaller woofer will just roll off at a higher frequency than a bigger woofer. It’s even possible in some cases that the smaller woofer will be less likely to dance due to upstream perturbation, both because the smaller woofer can't respond and because of the enclosure damping, as in an acoustic suspension cabinet. This was mentioned earlier.

"Once digitized it is a simple matter to program in a subsonic filter with a very steep slope sidestepping the issue altogether." There is no free lunch in audio; fiddling with the signal in the digital domain will have a cost in SQ that some would not tolerate and others would find OK. Anyway, if one wants a subwoofer system, one can build an active low pass filter with a 24-db/octave slope out of discrete components that work in the analog domain, with potentially less of a sonic penalty. 24db/octave should be sufficient for cleaning up the higher frequencies.

 

Dear  @audionoobie  : " anyone know if there would be a compliance issue with my AT VM760SLC mounted on the stock Technics SL1200GR arm? ""

 

No, you have not is inside the normal resonance frequency range. You can improve the quality reproduced sound with better headshell wires connectors and you can try too a different headshell build material than the stock one but you are safe about cartridge/tonearm issues.

 

Good that the KAB filter works for you.

 

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

It is always 10" or below and always with turntables. With many amps going clear down to DC surface irregularities in the vinyl will cause the woofers to flap.

@mijostyn Back in the old days I used to run some Fried G2s which had a 10" IIRC and had no woofer issues. But you are correct- smaller drivers will flop about without much provocation.