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Subsonic Rumble Solutions

I know many of you have tried to address this issue. Short of buying or building a subsonic filter (that will/may negatively affect your transparency) - what methods reduce subsonics (meaning the pumping of woofers and subs when a record is playing)?

My system:
I have a DIY VPI Aries clone with a 1" thick Corian plinth, a Moerch DP6 tonearm and Dynavector 20X-H cartridge. This sits on a maple shelf. The shelf sits on squash balls. The balls sit on another maple board floating in a 3" deep sand box. All this on a rack spiked to a cement floor. The phono stage is a Hagerman Trumpet (no built in subsonic filter and very wide bandwidth). I use the 1 piece Delrin clamp on the TT. Yes, I clean records thoroughly and there are no obvious warps, especially after being clamped.

So my isolation is very good - no thumps or thwacks on the rack coming through the speakers. But if I turn the sub on I get that extra low end pumping on some records that hurts my ears. Mostly I leave the sub off when playing vinyl, but I would like to use it if possible.

There was some brief discussion of this on Albert Porter's system thread. I'm hoping to get more answers here.

So ... what methods have you tried to reduce subsonics that you have found effective?

Thanks,
Bob
ptmconsulting
fap
32 posts
 
Bob, oh I forgot to mention I've noticed no audio degradation to any aspect of the audio quality with the use of the subsonic filter.

I was worried about that possibility, but it hasn't happened. I'm happy! Also there no no gain through the filter. The filter circuit is set for 'unity' gain. Regards, Fap.
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
I suspect you are not able to 'dampen' the vibrations from the wood block or corion table. Squash balls was the right idea. Spikes are a bad idea. Personally I'd try memory foam next or a different sized wood block and platter - to me they both look too thin and both would necessarily tend to vibrate/flex in the vertical plane over their surface.
dan_ed
2,451 posts
 
Of course you guys know that you could also do the filtering between the pre and the amp. I'm beginning to think about trying this sometime for exactly the reason Fap pointed out. If you cut those unwanted frequencies out so that the amp and driver doesn't have to work on trying to reach those lowest regions, it should clean up the bass. Hey, it works on the other drivers up the spectrum.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Most rumble is from vertical groove modulation. Horizontal modulation, which is a mono signal is much cleaner. A good rumble filter will blend the LF signal to mono, which many people do anyway when they connect a single subwoofer. Also, when records are cut the LF is often blended to mono right on the LP so that less-than-audiophile cartridges can stay in the groove. If the LP has been made this way all the LF you are getting off it in stereo is rumble.

Many LPs have rumble cut into the grooves and no amount of vibration isolation will help. Particularly in older recordings the air conditioning systems of recording halls were a big cause of rumble. It went unnoticed until newer playback systems with extended LF response came into being.
stefanl
296 posts
 
In his paper on resonances in turntables,Paoul Ladegaard of the air bearing tonearm fame,theorises that cartridge/tonearm resonance is by far the most important issue to be addressed here.Therefore matching your cartridge to the effective mass of your arm,so that you have a cartridge resonance of 11-12HZ is the most optimal adjustment you can make,coupled of course with good isolation.Ladegaard was sure rumble does not exist and you corrected this parameter.
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