A Copernican View of the Turntable System

..."in normal careful use, the great mass of the armpod impedes any disposition and restrains it to a soft activity." Geoch, that is beautiful English, worthy of an erudite 19th century scientific journal entry. But what is "soft activity"? Any activity, if activity means movement or motion, is a bad thing if the platter does not move precisely in concert.

Dear Lewm, sorry about my English it is obvious that I'm using the dictionary mercilessly. This is what I meant :
The forces created by the cartridge and the tonearm during play, cannot cause any motion to the armpod, as they are received & collected like resonances & not like forces that can cause a displacement.
When we push accidentally an armpod that uses spikes as footers, the disposition even if it is slight, it is also permanent. When the footers in use are these Rollerblocks JR, the displacement of the armpod is quickly self-corrected and the whole moving mass is coming back again to it's exact position by smooth & progressively reduced circular move.
This activity is taking place from the moment that we release the arm lift and continues decreasingly so, as the arm tube is falling to LP. But it comes to an end before the cartridge reach the vinyl surface. Any further remaining activity that left, are only the resonances that caused by the usual suspects during the listening session & not by the Rollerblock JR which is way more gifted than spikes in draining these resonances.

Dear Lew, you are very difficult to satisfy or please. Even
the 'soft activity' is refused on theoretical grounds alone despite this saying about the pudding. Only the argument is changed from 'galleons' to a movement in concert with the platter. As I suggested (03-20-11) in relation to an brass cylinder you will be able to afford
the most exotic 'spikes' imaginable and those Rollerblocks
JR look to me very appealing. You can eventualy also use them to 'soft absorber' those tube amps of yours.
Regards,

I needed to think about this over night.

I took the soft activity to be any and all the movement that occurs outside of the normal cartridge/stylus retrieval of the signal that needs to occur for us to hear the sound. The tonearm (any type) moves up and down and side to side in normal – use. The actual physical movement of the tonearm is itself a soft activity and necessary. Likewise at the other end (arm pod) movement is happening in the armpod with the resonances – we just cant see it in the material as the vibrations are either absorbed or passed on. With the symposium jr. you are able to see it more clearly.

The footers of an armpod are like the foundation of the house. They however need to be such that they support the structure but also provide for passing of resonances into the platform below not to return up again or absorption of some of those resonances thereby dissipated. This can be done at least in two different ways from what I have learned.

Hard spikes/disks that allow the resonances to pass through and not go back up. Or they can be of a design “soft” and “hard” to absorb some or all of the energy / heat of the resonances and also allow for the remainder of the resonances to pass through. It sounds like the Jrs use this principle.

I have to admit the first time Geoch described this I had visions of a tower shaking during an earthquake. But then if you think about it – as it moves – as long as returns to position in time – before the stylus is on the groove it should be fine. We accept the toearm movement as part of the normal movement – why any different at the other end ?

A personal experience (not audio related) but that relates I believe to this – bear with me. I have a contractor doing renovations to an old property that uses a large copper drain pipe. Whenever hot water is used it would go down the pipe putting energy into it from the heated water expanding it (causing noise) then when the water was stopped, the pipe would again (make noise) as it went back to its cold form form. We were able to cure this by cutting a couple of inches from a section of the pipe and replacing it with a rubber clamp. Now when the hot water is run the energy does the same thing and goes down the drain pipe but the energy makes its way to the rubber clamp (like the Symposium Jrs.) where the energy is absorbed. Drastically reduced noise. For our hobby this energy in the pipe is like those vibrations and the Jrs. are absorbing and passing it onward.
Thoughts ?

Dear Lewn - you can have the most precise and accurate platter/motor assembly - but once you put that crude piece of vinyl on top with all its imperfections - all bets are off.

I have found through this approach that all you want the platter/motor to do is maintain correct speed and drain its own resonances.

Once the isolated (armpod, tonearm, cartridge, stylus) picks up that signal from the vinyl - its on its own merry way and says bye bye to the platter in a continuing cycle.

If your tonearm is mounted on the same platform as your platter/motor, you need to ensure your system is able to deal with the returning vibrations/resonances from the tonearm. Hence we have some very elaborate systems as a ways of doing this.

This is too complicated and cumbersome and $$$ for me – and the reason I like the simple isolated armpod approach. Once my armpod gets rid of resonances, the last thing I want is the resonances returning to play havoc.

Sorry for not presenting this in a more scientific way for some of the members here but this is what I understand to be happening.

We break that resonance loop with the isolated armpod.

The members here using this approach have heard the difference between the two.