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Turntable placement

Hi,

The reason for my post is that I want to share what I discovered about turntable placement that has made a huge difference in the quality of the music I'm able to get out of my system.
My listening room is relatively narrow and long. For years I had my TT and other electronics up against the back wall between my speakers. My speakers were about 3 feet in front of my rack.
A few months ago I upgraded my tonearm wand to the new VPI 3d arm. I thought it sounded great on most recordings but started to notice that if I crank up the volume it would start generating a low hum which would get progressively louder. I quickly understood that this was a feedback loop between my speakers and the higher sensitivity of the 3d arm to external sources of vibration.
Anyway, it occurred to me that we spend so much money on top of the line racks and isolation footers and platforms but most pictures I see of peoples systems has the turntable sitting between the speakers which I assume has an effect on vibrations hitting the tonearm, especially unipivot arms.
It was obvious to me that I needed to get some distance between my TT and my speakers. I was using 8 feet of Clear Day double shotgun cables which I really enjoy and decided to call Paul from Clear Day. Anyone who's ever dealt with Paul can attest to the fact that he's just a great guy and a real pleasure to deal with. Anyway, I discussed my issue with him and asked him about getting a long run (18 feet) of the double shotguns. Instead of selling me the new cables, he suggested I first go and purchase some cheap wire at Home Depot and make sure the new placement of my TT eliminate the issue. I have no affiliation with Clear Day or Paul other than having purchased his cables but I have to say that it’s rare these days for a vendor to really put their customer's interest ahead of their own.
I followed Paul's suggestion and I was totally blown away by the improvement in clarity I obtained by moving my TT away from my speakers even with the long run of cheap wire.
I placed my order for the longer cable run (Paul also took my existing 8 foot cables as a trade in towards the new cables) and I can honestly say that moving my rack away from my speakers was one of the best system changes I've ever made.
andarilu
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Of course the best place is in another room INSIDE A VACUUM CHAMBER, but this is impractical for some.
Fixed it for you!
pryso
1,928 posts
 
Effischer, turntables/arms/cartridges are subject to two types of vibrational energy - structural and airborne.

WHAT we place our tables on affects the structural element, WHERE we place them if affected by the airborne. My comment above only attempted to address the airborne element.
andarilu OP
23 posts
 
Precisely my point Pryso. I spent a lot of effort and money on structural isolation but neglected to address airborne isolation until it presented itself as an obvious problem and when I did address it, the improvement was not subtle.
lewm
13,044 posts
 
For most amplifiers vis a vis most speakers, short runs of speaker cable are desirable when possible. On the other hand, one also does not want long runs of phono cable. Faced with a dilemma similar to yours, I chose to use rather long ICs between my line stage and my amplifiers. The amplifiers are sitting on isolation platforms in between my ESLs, which, being ESLs, do not have much radiation in their lateral plane, anyway. (A possible world record for the use of commas.) Thus I can use 4-foot lengths of speaker wire but need 20 feet of IC between preamplifier and amplifier. That's well tolerated by my fully balanced output preamplifier and balanced input amplifiers. The net result is copacetic to say the least. My turntables are sitting less than 3 feet from the phono/line preamp on the wall behind my listening seat.
effischer
560 posts
 
@ Pryso, I understood your post. I was merely offering comments on my personal experiences with tables picking up resonances, both airborne and structural.

The Rega picked up everything and the only thing I ever found that worked was moving it far enough away from the speakers that its arm and cartridge didn't pick up airborne resonances and putting it on a big enough stone to damp out the structural resonances.

The Sota is far less susceptible to picking up resonances of any kind, and all the less so with the fluid-damped Graham arm I installed a couple of years ago. The custom-built entertainment rack I have it in has an additional 1000 pounds of mass (sandstone slab hearth base, concrete faux-rock fascia and Formica over a 3/4 inch thick, 18 ply marine grade plywood substructure).

My hearing isn't what it once was, but I can't detect the rig picking up anything in any frequency range no matter where I have the attenuation set, not even when there is a train going past on the spur line about 1500 yards away from my front door and I'm in a no-signal segment on the vinyl. I can hear the train and feel the vibration through the floor of my home, but none of that makes it to the cartridge as far as I can tell.

My solution isn't for everyone, but it did work for me and ticked a number of my aesthetic boxes as well. Like I said, sooner or later I'll get photos appended to my system and you can check it out.
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