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.
In the US there is the added advantage that Ice Hockey is a popular sport. Asking for spent pucks to be put to one side to be picked up when a batch are available, will offer an experience with a valued footer that has a difference to its elasticity through the usage it has incurred. As stated previously, I used Squash Balls in a Spent condition to experience their influence with a noticeable change to the elasticity. |
@pindac Yup, that is why none of us Americans have any teeth. Canadians fight dirty. |
OP,
Absolutely. SRA is for micro vibrations, not foot falls. It is for top notch turntables, not to make up for bad environments or substandard tables. This string is too long to re-read every time I run into it again. For excellent tables that already have good isolation SRA will raise performance another level. |
@mulveling -- this thread and your excellent research could not be more timely! I recently changed turntables and arms, moving to a Kuzma Stabi R and the new Safir 9 tonearm. The change is significant, however I immediately began suffering from footfall inducted skips. I never had this with my Palmer, but they are entirely different systems, so I am on my own journey. I added the Kuzma isolation feet and that has helped, but not completely. My next step is to try the bracing you describe, although I can't get my rack as close to the wall as yours. My dealer suggested this bracing and so we will see. I am now going to order some hockey pucks for my rack and will see how that goes. From there, I had looked at the isolation platform you suggested, so that could be next. I am also thinking of a Vibraplane, but hoping not to spend the extra dollars right now after the Safir... Thank you for the research and for sharing your experiences. I will post back how it goes for me. |
Bracing a rack against a wall could certainly be a good idea, IF the wall itself is not prone to pick up airborne energy from the speakers or vibrate in tune to some local appliance, like maybe a refrigerator if kitchen is next door. In cases such as those, you are deliberately coupling to another source of spurious energy and then hoping the Auralex (sp?) is protecting you from the deleterious effects. Best not to use such a wall as a brace in the first place. My equipment rack backs up to a wall that supports the stairs leading to the second floor of my house; I am quite sure it reacts to footsteps on the stairs, and I would not use that wall as a brace. |
