It takes 3 elements for vibrations to invade, effect and degrade all our equipment ... none are exempt
First you need a SOURCE creating the vibration .. Second you need a CONDUIT to transmit the vibration to a DESTINATION TARGET and Third you need a TARGET to receive and be effected by the vibrations
Vibrations can attack all your equipment from three different sources and each attacker must be treated completely differently from each other
The three sources of attacks are ..
#1 .. EQUIPMENT GENERATED vibrations that occur from the normal operation of our equipment .. spinning motors in our CD players and Turn Tables .. Transformers and any and all circuits or chips that turn on and off can inject vibrations into our equipment by their normal mode of operation ... to reduce the degrading effects they can have ... you must directly couple the component to higher mass such as a rack or heavy platform ... here the vibrations will migrate from the lighter (less mass component) to the heaver (more massive) rack or platform
#2 .. AIR BORN vibes caused by your speakers and Subs pressurizing the room ... here the pressure from the speakers can actually push your equipment around causing the vibrations to be generated inside your components ... to defend against this perpetrator you must MASS LOAD your component by adding extra weight to them to make the component appear much heavier than it is to the pressurizing waves being generated by your speakers
The pressures generated by the speakers will have a harder time pushing around a 15 pound CD player or Dac with 20 to 40 pounds resting on top of it ... instead of trying to push the 15 pound component ... the pressure wave sees a 55 pound component instead of a 15 pound component and has a much harder time pushing it around creating less vibrations
Have you ever sat in someone's HT and had your pants leg wave when the Sub went off ... AIR BORN PRESSURIZATION cause this
#3 FLOOR and RACK born vibrations ... anything that shakes you houses structure will create vibrations in the structure that will be transmitted from the floor to your rack and from your rack to your component ... Cars and trucks that pass by your house ... the Earths low frequency Geo Seismic shudder which is low in frequency but high in amplitude ... HVCA and washing machines that are running and even foot steps on a unsuspended floor can create vibration in the houses structure which eventually end up in our components
To defeat this attacker you must DECOUPLE the component or rack from the floor ... this isnt a easy task and has been the topic of much discussion Pro and Con on which is better COUPLING or DECOUPLING
The answer is you need both to work correctly ... the trick is you must directly couple your component to a higher mass platform or rack to drain the vibrations generated by the components normal mode of operation .. (lower mass component drains to higher mass platform or rack) .. and now you must DECOUPLE that platform the component is draining into from the rack it is sitting on or if your components sit directly on your rack ... you must decouple the rack and components sitting on it from the floor
The action here is to eliminate the CONDUIT (the RACK and or PLATFORM) through DECOUPLING it and not allowing the floor born vibrations to migrate up it .. because youve DECOUPLING the Rack or Platform from the floor ... youve broken the pathway ( or CONDUIT) the floor born vibrations travel along greatly reducing or eliminating them
To do the job correctly and completely you must employ both COUPLING and DECOUPLING and then MASS load the components
Now you should understand how and where Vibrations occur .. AIR BORN ... EQUIPMENT GENERATED and FLOOR BORN ... and how they are transmitted from SOURCE through a CONDUIT to a DESTINATION TARGET (your component)
You should also see that you must use a variety of technics (MASS LOADING .. COUPLING and DECOUPLING) to effectively reduce all forms of vibrations
But that doesnt quite solve the mystery of how a Mechanical/Physical vibration can degrade all of our components ...
Im sure we can all visualize how vibrations generated by our environment can effect a Laser or Stylus by shaking them ... but what effects can physical vibrations have on a Pre Amp .. Amp .. Dac or even a Power Conditioner that does not have a moving assemble like a CD player/Transport or Turn Table
Heres how the interference gets in these components and is converted from from a Physical Vibration to Electrical interference ...
All our components have circuits that have conductors to connect and transmit signals along ... these conductors are surrounded by magnetic fields that carry the signal from point A to point B ... as long as no new or extra voltage is added to the original signal ... everything is fine
But when a circuit or conductor is shaken or vibrated it is physically moved through the magnetic field that surrounds the conductor that transmits the signal to the next stage
Anytime you pass a conductor through a magnetic field you create voltage ... its called a Generator and we all have them in our cars
Think about it ... you spin a armature in a magnetic field and you create voltage for your car to run on ... its the same thing when you shake a conductor in its magnetic field .. as it moves back and forth through the magnetic field it creates extra voltage that couples to the original signal
This extra voltage that is created by the conductor being waved through its magnetic field is then added to the original signal and presented a noise riding on the line and that is how a physical vibration gets converted to electrical noise that invades our equipment .. HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Hopefully this will clear up some questions and dispel some myths ... vibration control is not complicated ... its basic math and physics but the topic can be a complex one with many different facets to be addressed in a variety of ways
First you need a SOURCE creating the vibration .. Second you need a CONDUIT to transmit the vibration to a DESTINATION TARGET and Third you need a TARGET to receive and be effected by the vibrations
Vibrations can attack all your equipment from three different sources and each attacker must be treated completely differently from each other
The three sources of attacks are ..
#1 .. EQUIPMENT GENERATED vibrations that occur from the normal operation of our equipment .. spinning motors in our CD players and Turn Tables .. Transformers and any and all circuits or chips that turn on and off can inject vibrations into our equipment by their normal mode of operation ... to reduce the degrading effects they can have ... you must directly couple the component to higher mass such as a rack or heavy platform ... here the vibrations will migrate from the lighter (less mass component) to the heaver (more massive) rack or platform
#2 .. AIR BORN vibes caused by your speakers and Subs pressurizing the room ... here the pressure from the speakers can actually push your equipment around causing the vibrations to be generated inside your components ... to defend against this perpetrator you must MASS LOAD your component by adding extra weight to them to make the component appear much heavier than it is to the pressurizing waves being generated by your speakers
The pressures generated by the speakers will have a harder time pushing around a 15 pound CD player or Dac with 20 to 40 pounds resting on top of it ... instead of trying to push the 15 pound component ... the pressure wave sees a 55 pound component instead of a 15 pound component and has a much harder time pushing it around creating less vibrations
Have you ever sat in someone's HT and had your pants leg wave when the Sub went off ... AIR BORN PRESSURIZATION cause this
#3 FLOOR and RACK born vibrations ... anything that shakes you houses structure will create vibrations in the structure that will be transmitted from the floor to your rack and from your rack to your component ... Cars and trucks that pass by your house ... the Earths low frequency Geo Seismic shudder which is low in frequency but high in amplitude ... HVCA and washing machines that are running and even foot steps on a unsuspended floor can create vibration in the houses structure which eventually end up in our components
To defeat this attacker you must DECOUPLE the component or rack from the floor ... this isnt a easy task and has been the topic of much discussion Pro and Con on which is better COUPLING or DECOUPLING
The answer is you need both to work correctly ... the trick is you must directly couple your component to a higher mass platform or rack to drain the vibrations generated by the components normal mode of operation .. (lower mass component drains to higher mass platform or rack) .. and now you must DECOUPLE that platform the component is draining into from the rack it is sitting on or if your components sit directly on your rack ... you must decouple the rack and components sitting on it from the floor
The action here is to eliminate the CONDUIT (the RACK and or PLATFORM) through DECOUPLING it and not allowing the floor born vibrations to migrate up it .. because youve DECOUPLING the Rack or Platform from the floor ... youve broken the pathway ( or CONDUIT) the floor born vibrations travel along greatly reducing or eliminating them
To do the job correctly and completely you must employ both COUPLING and DECOUPLING and then MASS load the components
Now you should understand how and where Vibrations occur .. AIR BORN ... EQUIPMENT GENERATED and FLOOR BORN ... and how they are transmitted from SOURCE through a CONDUIT to a DESTINATION TARGET (your component)
You should also see that you must use a variety of technics (MASS LOADING .. COUPLING and DECOUPLING) to effectively reduce all forms of vibrations
But that doesnt quite solve the mystery of how a Mechanical/Physical vibration can degrade all of our components ...
Im sure we can all visualize how vibrations generated by our environment can effect a Laser or Stylus by shaking them ... but what effects can physical vibrations have on a Pre Amp .. Amp .. Dac or even a Power Conditioner that does not have a moving assemble like a CD player/Transport or Turn Table
Heres how the interference gets in these components and is converted from from a Physical Vibration to Electrical interference ...
All our components have circuits that have conductors to connect and transmit signals along ... these conductors are surrounded by magnetic fields that carry the signal from point A to point B ... as long as no new or extra voltage is added to the original signal ... everything is fine
But when a circuit or conductor is shaken or vibrated it is physically moved through the magnetic field that surrounds the conductor that transmits the signal to the next stage
Anytime you pass a conductor through a magnetic field you create voltage ... its called a Generator and we all have them in our cars
Think about it ... you spin a armature in a magnetic field and you create voltage for your car to run on ... its the same thing when you shake a conductor in its magnetic field .. as it moves back and forth through the magnetic field it creates extra voltage that couples to the original signal
This extra voltage that is created by the conductor being waved through its magnetic field is then added to the original signal and presented a noise riding on the line and that is how a physical vibration gets converted to electrical noise that invades our equipment .. HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Hopefully this will clear up some questions and dispel some myths ... vibration control is not complicated ... its basic math and physics but the topic can be a complex one with many different facets to be addressed in a variety of ways