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
I do suspect some cartridges with higher compliance (stiffer) styli might be more naturally immune to picking up low end noise due to record warping or irregularities in the way the record grooves were cut (off center, etc.).
Bob#2 - as much as I don't like to say it, because it might hurt some feelings and because we all know the size of our system reflects the size of our audio-manhood :-), I have to agree with you.

The subsonic problems I seem to have now were not there in the past. The resolution of my system has improved greatly with a better phono stage, better arm, teflon caps in my preamp, etc. Yes, the music got better, yes the sound is better, and yes I now seem to have a new problem caused by this increase in resolution.

Bob #1
acoustat6 you must be reading a diferent post then i am. ptmconsulting posted a question based on his analog equipment with hiss tt and it's set up. also seeing that no normal human can hear below 20hz and that sound at that level is felt and he descibes the problem coming from his "speakers" and not sub. i own no vinyl music that i believe goes below 20hz. i do not listen to organ or classical music. although i listen last nite to stealy dan's "gaucho" and that could be definatly felt. l believe the rumbling he is descibing has to do with the tt set up, either in the bearing or platter or plinth with those steal screw feet and definitly is not something inherant in vinyl and that one has to settle for or mask. one of my first tt's had a similar problem. over a certain volume the tt would resinate. OH and my system sounds STELLAR, thank you very much!
04rdking,

YEs, I got it backwards I think.

I did mean "stiffer" which I believe is in fact lower compliance.