Vibration Management
- Thread starter PeterA
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stehno said:
The wire will have 2-way potential, but in case of DC that same wire is strictly 1-way, + towards -, no way back, laws of nature. For vibrations, there isn’t a cop just because you may have implied that, there is a cop when laws of nature put one there: that cop is called impedance mismatch at the interface, laws of nature, once again. Mechanical energy such as vibration chooses the road with the least resistance, until it comes to an interface of two bodies and there laws of nature determine, in this case acoustic impedances of the two bodies, where the least resistance will be, further down the road or back to where you came from. There is nothing natural such as movement from source to ground just because it looks intuitively good, with impedance mismatch you will get reflection, not only transmission. Your best of knowledge clearly is not up to date.
In you case, did you ask yourself why the vibration energy does not simply transmits into air instead of making the journey via the rack structure towards the ground? IOW, why can’t you simply redirect that energy towards the air, directly from the housing of the component? Air, there’s plenty of it, air comes for free, no sophisticated and costly rack designs and hours in the workshop with expensive CNC machines needed? The answer is simple: the impedance of e.g. aluminium is about 40,000 times greater than that of air, so you will get 100% reflection and no transmission at all, so vibrations are trapped. You can’t bend laws of nature, not even for audiophile purposes!
Klaus
I'm well aware of mechanical energy choosing the path of least resistance. In fact, everything about my design is a reflection of that behavior. But unlike you, I didn't learn it by reading it in a science textbook. As for its behavior when encountering an interface, there are various means of creating an interface as well as various qualities, both inferior and superior. If I settled for a half-assed or token interface, perhaps like the ones you read in your science textbooks, I would agree. But in my book I intentionally create superior and extreme interfaces and as a result, there is something quite natural about energy seeking to travel away from its source interface after interface. Hence, the components become the new source of energy once the unwanted energy is captured there, just as in the case of the lightning rod with a single strike of lightning seeks to travel via a grounding wire to spike.
Klaus, you're asking silly questions in my opinion. But I'll play.
1. I already have one fabulous solution that works better than you'll ever know or design. And since I'm continually refining it I've no desire nor the time for other potential solutions. She ain't cheap and maybe someday if a really smart feller like yourself gathers enough info there may come a day for an equally fabulous solution at a lesser cost. But I doubt it.
2. To the best of my knowledge, to convert to air, which is essentially what our speakers do for electrical energy would require a sufficient transducer that converts mechanincal energy to air, perhaps not too unlike some music instruments. But it could get noisy. Perhaps this is an opportunity for you stop playing scientist and actually design a working model to convert mechanical energy to air to minimize the distortions induced by mechancial energy. Maybe you could even name it something like the Klaus Flatulator.
3. As for bending laws of physics or nature, you've already done so numerous times in your comments and suggestions here and elsewhere pertaining to my design and I can prove it with a working model. You on the other hand, without a working model, are unable to prove any of your comments here and elsewhere, at least pertaining to the principles I apply and adhere to. This leads me to believe you're little more than a paper tiger.
stehno said:
In physics an interface is the boundary between two spatial regions occupied by different matter, or by matter in different physical states: room air - room wall, component housing - shelf of audio rack.
There is no such thing like a natural tendency for energy to travel away from its source across interfaces. If this was the case, then there would be no room modes, no early reflections, no reverberation, to give just one example. The only effect you are able to obtain with your clamping is to increase the contact surface, the interface as such is still the same: component housing - shelf of audio rack. The acoustic impedances don’t change just because you apply pressure, an impedance mismatch remains an impedance mismatch, regardless of the amount of pressure you apply. You can’t bend laws of nature!
Where exactly did I bend which law of nature? You are proving that I bend laws of nature with your working model? By means of uncontrolled listening tests perhaps? If I wanted to build a rack that drains energy away from components’ housings, I would start by verifying that components' housing do indeed vibrate, using Doppler vibrometer, I would then chose materials of the same or very similar acoustic impedance as the housings, and I would use controlled listening tests to see whether or not it makes an audible difference. In your case, what materials are components’ housings made from and what materials did you choose for your rack or shelfs?
Oh yes, please think twice before sending posts which contain merely ad hominem stuff, doesn’t do your credibility much good. Violence, verbal or physical, is the last resort of those who run out of arguments.
Klaus, I understand that air vibrations would move through the floor, ceiling and walls if energy simply passed through these boundaries, and that most of their energy would not be reflected back to cause room modes, reflections and reverberations. That is a good example of reflected energy. However, can you explain what is happening when someone steps in front of an audio rack (containing audio gear and a turntable on the top shelf) causing the stylus to skip in the groove? I always thought that this is an example of energy traveling away from its source across interfaces - floor, rack support, turntable footers, plinth, platter to stylus and/or armboard, tonearm, to stylus. What about a loudspeaker causing vibrations in a floor, either through cabinet vibrations or airborne vibrations, which travel up to the stylus and then cause acoustical feedback or airwaves hitting the rack, turntable and cartridge directly and causing feedback.
I think that Magico has just developed their MPod speaker footers precisely to deal with the vibrational energy caused by their drivers and cabinets by breaking the tendency for this energy to travel across interfaces. In the case of my class A Pass Labs amplifiers, the transformers vibrate and I can sense that energy effecting the component casework and the heat energy certainly travels through the heat sinks making them hot and then into the surrounding air, making it rather warm - a distinct issue in the summer months in New England. Are my amplifiers not also an example of energy tending to travel across interfaces and boundaries, both in the form of heat and vibration ?
Fellow member Mike L. noticed that only when he successfully broke the transmission of energy from his new massive speakers to his turntable by placing the latter on a Herzan isolation platform did the acoustical feedback issue diminish. It seems to me that there are all sorts of examples of energy traveling away from its source across interfaces.
Don't hold your breath Klaus. Stehno keeps talking about a "working model" and to the best of my knowledge despite several requests on my part, has refused to post a picture of that model. But apparently he can prove you are wrong (bending laws of physics or nature) with said working model. Perhaps we have another example of a man who is a "legend in his own mind".
And as a former teacher, there is no such thing as a "silly" or stupid question. To say so is clearly condescending and arrogant.
Peace.
I'm never really sure why some people insist that they are absolute masters on any part of this. We have had some great input from people with a whole lot of experience in designing and engineering commercially proven vibration management systems and whose designs have had reasonable external validation.
Unfortunately we are now getting left in the wake of another theoretical discussion that threatens to turn into another cage fight of my ideas are better than yours.
Absolutism is generally unhelpful. Hope it's just temporary and we return to getting a bit more signal and a little less distortion. There is much we can learn off the people who have actually put all the theory into action and through continuos development have produced a range of gear that has been evaluated outside long term within the marketplace... science is good, theoretical products could also be potentially great, but actual proven performance as evidenced by a range of users is much more valuable here.
As usual when a debate degenerates into long, long posts, hubris and to and fro spats of unveiled contempt it just drives understanding back into the bunker and also understandably experienced contributors from industry leave the debate and we lose valuable ground on input that could help us in bettering our understanding. As usual our loss, nobody's gain.
Unfortunately we are now getting left in the wake of another theoretical discussion that threatens to turn into another cage fight of my ideas are better than yours.
Absolutism is generally unhelpful. Hope it's just temporary and we return to getting a bit more signal and a little less distortion. There is much we can learn off the people who have actually put all the theory into action and through continuos development have produced a range of gear that has been evaluated outside long term within the marketplace... science is good, theoretical products could also be potentially great, but actual proven performance as evidenced by a range of users is much more valuable here.
As usual when a debate degenerates into long, long posts, hubris and to and fro spats of unveiled contempt it just drives understanding back into the bunker and also understandably experienced contributors from industry leave the debate and we lose valuable ground on input that could help us in bettering our understanding. As usual our loss, nobody's gain.
There's a discussion going on over on ASR where someone who does vibration analysis for a living is measuring the differences in speaker movement with various types of mounting - rigid vs compliant.
ASR is Audio Science Review.
After a few pages of discussion, the measurements start here:
http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-shape-material-of-speaker-footers-impact-their-effectivness.1477/page-5#post-39365
For isolation, I've been getting good results with Synergistic's MiG 2.0s. Did a better job than my Nordost Sort Kones.
Great demo of the Doppler effect, thanks Don!
We listen-tested (no measurements) two speaker pairs so far on our platforms. Here are some pics
from the McIntosh system tests: https://www.facebook.com/stacoreant...2630639898041/702630329898072/?type=3&theater
There was a clear audible effect. Basically it was the same increase of resolution we have been consistently observing,
but not to such a degree as with e.g. a source.
Cheers,
Pretty basic in my simple mind.
Three of wisdom's key essentials: Know when to speak, when to listen, and when to stay silent.
Three of wisdom's key essentials: Know when to speak, when to listen, and when to stay silent.
Peter,
I don’t think that this is transmission of vibration, because in this case the stylus would also skip when the person is at a distance from the rack. I think that when stomping right in front of the rack you are simply moving the whole rack rather than transmitting vibration across interfaces. Whether such stomping has an effect on the stylus further would depend on the type of floor. In my case it’s concrete with tiles, the TT is placed on top of a large piece of wooden furniture, on a wooden shelf which is placed on Teflon gliders, and when I jump up and down directly in front of the TT nothing happens.
Cabinet vibrations have been investigated, in both cases scanning laser doppler vibrometer was used:
Bastyr et al., “On the acoustic radiation from a loudspeaker’s cabinet”, J. of the Audio Engineering Society 2003, p.234
Behler et al., „Investigation on the cabinet vibration of a subwoofer” (in German), 31st Annual Conference of the German Society of Acoustics, 2005
Bastyr tested a commercial speaker, the NHT 2.9, and found
Behler tested a 35 l subwoofer with 12” driver and housing thickness of 8, 12, 19 mm. Cabinet vibrations could be confirmed, sound radiation from the cabinet itself was present only for the 8 mm thickness, for 12 and 19 radiation was substantially non-existent. If interested in reading the papers, send me a PM.
Airwaves hitting TT and causing feedback: many moons ago I did some tests to investigate the effect of the dustcover. I played a tune from CD with the TT playing a silent groove at the same time, and recorded the whole to MD, with playback level set to different values, at the time the speakers were at the long wall, TT was to the side of the speakers on the short wall, distance about 1.30 m . With normal listening levels almost nothing and with increasing level more and more could be heard. Would be interesting to see what the effect of an isolation platform is. I did not repeat the test with the actual set-up (same components, differently placed in the room).
This issue had been investigated in Wireless World 1979: "James Moir et al., Acoustic breakthrough in record players: Part 1 : Measurements; Part 2: Listening tests. If interested I can scan the article and send a copy.
If the transformers are directly coupled by e.g. bolting to the casework the casework would vibrate as well, but does a vibrating casework cause any harm? Heat is a similar issue, whether heat travels across interfaces depends on the thermal conductivity of the materials concerned. The fact that there is an interface does not automatically mean that heat travels away from the source across that interface into the adjoining body, it will go the path of least resistance and the resistance in this case is the conductivity.
Klaus
PeterA said:
I don’t think that this is transmission of vibration, because in this case the stylus would also skip when the person is at a distance from the rack. I think that when stomping right in front of the rack you are simply moving the whole rack rather than transmitting vibration across interfaces. Whether such stomping has an effect on the stylus further would depend on the type of floor. In my case it’s concrete with tiles, the TT is placed on top of a large piece of wooden furniture, on a wooden shelf which is placed on Teflon gliders, and when I jump up and down directly in front of the TT nothing happens.
Cabinet vibrations have been investigated, in both cases scanning laser doppler vibrometer was used:
Bastyr et al., “On the acoustic radiation from a loudspeaker’s cabinet”, J. of the Audio Engineering Society 2003, p.234
Behler et al., „Investigation on the cabinet vibration of a subwoofer” (in German), 31st Annual Conference of the German Society of Acoustics, 2005
Bastyr tested a commercial speaker, the NHT 2.9, and found
Behler tested a 35 l subwoofer with 12” driver and housing thickness of 8, 12, 19 mm. Cabinet vibrations could be confirmed, sound radiation from the cabinet itself was present only for the 8 mm thickness, for 12 and 19 radiation was substantially non-existent. If interested in reading the papers, send me a PM.
Airwaves hitting TT and causing feedback: many moons ago I did some tests to investigate the effect of the dustcover. I played a tune from CD with the TT playing a silent groove at the same time, and recorded the whole to MD, with playback level set to different values, at the time the speakers were at the long wall, TT was to the side of the speakers on the short wall, distance about 1.30 m . With normal listening levels almost nothing and with increasing level more and more could be heard. Would be interesting to see what the effect of an isolation platform is. I did not repeat the test with the actual set-up (same components, differently placed in the room).
This issue had been investigated in Wireless World 1979: "James Moir et al., Acoustic breakthrough in record players: Part 1 : Measurements; Part 2: Listening tests. If interested I can scan the article and send a copy.
If the transformers are directly coupled by e.g. bolting to the casework the casework would vibrate as well, but does a vibrating casework cause any harm? Heat is a similar issue, whether heat travels across interfaces depends on the thermal conductivity of the materials concerned. The fact that there is an interface does not automatically mean that heat travels away from the source across that interface into the adjoining body, it will go the path of least resistance and the resistance in this case is the conductivity.
Klaus
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Here you go, buddy. Wouldn't want you to think I was ignoring you, which I often times do. I shared these earlier when somebody else asked for pictures.
Behold. A working model. A working model that not only disproves but stomps all over and crushes most anything Klaus reguritates from his imagination, Mr. Google, or his dusty science books.
Oh,yeah. Of course you do realize that Klaus freely admits that all cables sound the same, that he cannot interpret what he hears, and uses stock cables and "pro" gear (Crown I think) in his high-end playback system, don't you?
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stehno said:
In order to disprove something one needs to provide proof. Sofar I haven't seen the slightest shred of the kind that actually PROVES that your working model words as claimed. As far as laws of nature are concerned, these are as old as nature itself, so dusty they are, I'll give you that, but valid and applied nevertheless, you like it or not. You cannot argue against laws of nature.
I don't admit anything of the kind, all I say is that so far I have not seen any proof that cables sound different.
But you can? Now go on, what do I hear? I'm all ears!
You can read, can you? If so, what does my signature say? Does it say "Crown"?
Klaus, a few years ago I met A.J. Conti, the designer of Basis turntables and tonearms, importer of my MSL cartridge, and designer of his own lesser known line of cables. He showed me graphs of square waves of seven leading IC cables. The corners of these square waves were magnified hundred of times to reveal differences in the shapes,. He then went on to explain to me specifically how the various cables sounded different from each other and that their sounds corresponded with the particular characteristics in the corners of those square wave: MIT, Nordost, Cardas, etc. He could identify the brand of cable simply by looking at the detailed enlargement of their square wave measurement. I asked him if he could correlate the sound of a particular cable by the shape of that corner. He said yes he could.
I don't know if one could conclude that the cables sound different simply because some aspect of their electrical behavior looks different in a reading of their measurements, but when combined with actual listening tests, I think it can make for a pretty convincing argument that these particular cables sounded different from each other. Anyone who met A. J. and had a tour of his work space would conclude that he was a man of science, first and foremost. He also loved music and had a great system at the back of his shop. He was convinced that cables can sound different. He measured differences, saw differences, and heard differences.
I think you might have found going on that tour with me and talking to A. J. about differences in cables very interesting.
Peter,
Certainly cables measure differently in one or several of their parameters, but the ultimate judge is the listening test. It should have become clear by now that sighted listening tests in my book are no proof. Were Conti’s tests done blind/controlled or did he know what cable he was listening to?
When I was shopping for a new turntable 18 years ago I completely was unaware of this particular topic: “The Great Debate: Subjective Evaluation”. My first encounter with blind tests. It’s not that differences disappear, it’s that knowing the identity of the DUT (device under test) has an effect of the test result, as shown by Floyd Toole:
“Hearing is Believing vs. Believing is Hearing: Blind vs. Sighted Listening Tests, and Other Interesting Things”
Talking about cables and technical differences is one thing, talking about audible effects another. Yes, talking to industry people and asking those questions would certainly be very educational.
PeterA said:
Certainly cables measure differently in one or several of their parameters, but the ultimate judge is the listening test. It should have become clear by now that sighted listening tests in my book are no proof. Were Conti’s tests done blind/controlled or did he know what cable he was listening to?
When I was shopping for a new turntable 18 years ago I completely was unaware of this particular topic: “The Great Debate: Subjective Evaluation”. My first encounter with blind tests. It’s not that differences disappear, it’s that knowing the identity of the DUT (device under test) has an effect of the test result, as shown by Floyd Toole:
“Hearing is Believing vs. Believing is Hearing: Blind vs. Sighted Listening Tests, and Other Interesting Things”
PeterA said:
Talking about cables and technical differences is one thing, talking about audible effects another. Yes, talking to industry people and asking those questions would certainly be very educational.
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