Turntable Isolation Journey
Nearing the end of my journey to solve footfall & feedback issues in my small-room "home office" system with very bouncy floor and flexible walls. Turntable is the only source here -- and it’s a Clearaudio Innovation Compact with no suspension or special isolation feet. This system always sounded good, but was rendered nearly unusable at higher volumes due to turntable isolation that was inadequate relative to this room’s challenges. The worst artifact was when structure-borne feedback from the speakers would cause amp clipping on bass-heavy tracks. This clipping would manifest as an extremely loud singular POP sound, especially hitting the tweeters. It only occurred during the loudest parts of track with bass-heavy elements, and was so loud it was still significantly above the level of the music -- much louder than a POP you would hear from vinyl surface defects. The POP sound was startling, and clearly very bad for tweeters (fortunately my Tannoys seem to have survived several of these incidents). For a time I thought these POPs were from static electricity discharge, but they were NOT. In my quest I tried many solutions and tweaks over a few months, and I’d like to share a rundown of what worked versus what didn’t.
What Helped (MVP products & tweaks):
What Underperformed:
What Was Worthless (Don’t waste your money like I did):
I’m not going to bother expanding upon these; suffice to say they had no discernible positive effect.
Since the structure-borne energy has been addressed, airborne energy doesn't seem have been be a big problem. The rack with turntable is located several feet down the left side wall. And I don't want a digital source lol. |
@mulveling I can't recollect when I first started to consider room treatments as a subject to be better understood. I have been to numerous Trade Events and have seen plenty of Commercial Products and Room Treatments utilised in Demo' Rooms. In the early days visits to Commercial Events were more about learning how the Audio Devices were creating a signal and how the Speaker was able to produce a sound. It was these experiences that steered me to become a advocate of and remain loyal to the Vinyl Source as a sole source for more than 25 years. A digital Source is quite a new addition in my system. As I learnt about Vinyl, the interest in the Mechanics of the devices used become quite developed and I met with many to learn how they were addressing the need to be creating interfaces that are crucial to attempt for an unadulterated sound being produced. This is a interest that is still strong today, there are plateaus that are camped on, but the getting to the Summit is still the climb to be undertaken. Room Treatments have come into the equation when I was quite interested and practicing methods to improve mechanical interfaces. The curiosity was is the works undertaken due to the listening environment, hence, supporting structures and room treatments evolved as an interest and educational experience. I highly recommend room treatments, there is extensive information on how to do DIY Absorption Panels and Diffusers. If this does not suit, there are also off the Shelf Absorption / Diffusers that will be quite suitable and not necessarily expensive. There is the trade off if a room is to be a main living area, as the method to conceal the treatments and blend them in as decor' might mean a little extra thought is needed for the aesthetics and if buying off the shelf this can be with increased costs. As stated before, if these subjects are addressed, support structure, and room acoustics, revisiting simple to exchange interfaces on the Signal Path, i.e, Cables, Valves, SUT, will shine a new light on some of the earlier choices made. The Link is not a recommended site to purchase from, but it will give a consolidated overview of how aesthetics can be considered.
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Well thanks for the tip about spikes into hockey pucks for speaker footers! I’m amazed at what it did for a pair of Pure Audio Project speakers on a sprung floor. Just snapped everything into focus and took the goo out of the midrange. Much better than the stock feet. I am very surprised by this as I had long ago decided that rubber was a bad material in audio systems. I guess mental rigidity is bad too.
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@jollytinker Yep -- I hopped on amazon this week, and now I’ve got pucks under the tube amps and speakers (spiked) too. Sounds GREAT! Agreed, it’s funny how much of the recent audiophile vibration philosophy abhors the idea of rubber because it will supposedly "store energy and release it later, blurring the music". We’re told it’s better to dispose of the energy by heat conversion. Well, sure! But what % of the energy can really be converted in this way? Especially without a LOT of lossy material acting over a very large area - certainly much more than the amount of "magic" material in these audiophile feet. Some of these companies will patent their own blend of polymer (which must be very easy to spec & outsource now) and sandwich layers. Is this really better than a fat rubber puck constrained between hard surfaces (e.g. spikes and floor)? And how stable are these polymers going to be over time? The pucks last forever and can be replaced at a buck and change per pop. Maybe the pucks work so well in some scenarios (like ours) because they’re more effective at managing the energy -- including reflecting it back away from the component -- even if they don’t convert as much of it to heat. Or maybe they just work better because there’s more mass of stuff there than in the stingy audiophile feet (at 10x - 50x the cost or more). There’s much more of the "active" material in a puck than in a Herbie’s glider, or a Gaia III, or Orea (a lot of which appears to just be an impressive looking metal shell). |
