Stehno,
I congratulate you on the time and effort you put into the numerous and often extremely lengthy postings of your various assumptions on how isolation and resonance control works in context of audio systems in this and the Magico Stillpoints thread. You are engaging in an interesting and IMO important area of high end system performance tho you do seem to be rigorously combative at times (while initially polite) but also quite regularly aggressively disparage the understanding of other posters even that of leading industry figures who you claim are completely wrong in their understanding of how isolation control works including John Tverdik, Caelin Gabriel and John Curl.
That's all fine and part and parcel of constructive debate but so far the only outline of any explanation on your experience on your part or any other relevant qualification specific to resonance control is that you bought some inexpensive noname ceramic cable lifters from Italy, had a go at some DIY which outperformed Shunyata Dark Field V2. What ways better? What gear were you using, what's the rest of the system setup like?
You talk conceptually and theory often which is great but could you give us some explanation of your relevant qualifications or any prior learning or evidence of your more specific experiences in this and also details or pics of the system you used any other isolation and resonance control devices over the years and also give us your thoughts on what ways the various devices changed the sound in the context of your system outlining specifically what gear you were using at the time.
Most people here give some details of context to assist in explaining their position even on relatively short commentary. Given the considerable length of your treatise and scope of your assertions a bit of rigorous and open disclosure on your experience and the gear involved would be in order here.
Fair enough, Tao. Well, sort of.
Without trying to sound combative or defensive, just because you say I owe anybody here a rigorous and open disclosure doesn’t make it so. The only thing I owe anybody anywhere is that I speak truthfully. I’m also under no obligation to share everything I think I know about vibrations. I've spent 13 years part time performing R&D and well over $100k focusing on electrical and especially vibrational energy. It’s my prerogative and mine alone if I choose to give away the farm, so-to-speak.
That said, and at the risk of having the hounds of hell come down on me, I’ll give you the somewhat "short" version of my perspective.
1. As you know, some concepts and beliefs were solidified in stone decades or even centuries ago. Vibration "isolation" being one of them. As you can probably see from some of the interactions, offering an alternate view of something so basic as vibration control, is probably not a whole lot different than trying to convince someone they've been wearing their underwear backwards their entire life. I try to be polite but again, we're talking supposedly “scientific fact" where even physicists spend their entire lives trying to defy basic laws of physics. IOW, things are bound to get heated real quick but I do my best to maintain a reasonable demeanor. But I will not roll over and play dead as I suspect many "experts" would prefer.
Moreover, there are plenty of well-respected industry experts who over time start to believe all the press clippings about their talents. After a while they (and their followers) start to think they are experts in any facet of audio they delve into. Some will go so far as to say, if they can’t figure it out, nobody can. And all too often we act like groupies clinging to their every word and dropping their names every chance we get. When in reality, they are playing very much in the same small sandbox as everybody else and they have no more answers to the serious problems plaguing high-end audio than anybody else.
2. My education is computer science and my background is Oracle database administration and Unix system administration. Oh, I can also now spell E-x-c-e-l. From that, it should be evident that I've no science background whatsoever, I'm not even science-minded, nor an engineer. I'm barely an armchair designer but if I have any strengths, perhaps I’m not confined to the borders of conventional science and I’m a bit of a what if? kinda’ guy. So where others can toss out "scientific facts" (that may or may not be true) rather quickly, I'm left only to rely on my experiences and hopefully logic and common sense. Of course to the science-minded types, I’m perceived as falling short of any mark of their choosing.
3. Aside from a performance-oriented company briefly mentoring me after stumbling across my first design on the web 13 years ago, I'm pretty much autodidactic. However, where that company went maybe 2 blocks down a given methodological path, which is about 2 blocks further than most, I went about 2 miles down that same path and in the past few years I went maybe another 2 miles further down that same path and frankly, what I've discovered over the years about the behaviors and similarities between electricity and especially vibrations (2 very basic energies) and especially their performance potentials continues to astonish me.
Without giving away the farm, I’ll give you just two small examples of more recent performance improvements.
a. For 14 years, various versions of my fabulous Foundation Research line conditioners (LC’s) sat on the carpet behind my humble but well-thought-out playback system. After wondering for the longest time, last fall I decided to see if these little passive and dedicated LC’s might be receptive to my extreme methods of vibration control and out of spare parts I contrived a little makeshift something. Over a period of time, I received no less than roughly 32 distinct audible improvements.
b. Last December I hosted a controversial event for 12 audiophiles with already a host of distinct audible improvements under my humble system’s belt. The event was a success, but since that time I estimate that my system experienced roughly 35 – 40 more distinct audible improvements with the latest occurring 4 days ago. And I haven’t touched a bloomin’ thing on my system since last October simply because the mechanical settling in never seems to stop when methods are taken to the extreme.
Contrast that 35 - 40 with maybe 50 - 150 distinct audible improvements the average enthusiast might receive their entire lifetime through buying and selling and various burn-ins and minor tweaks. And I consider those improvements relatively minor compared to other areas experiencing significantly more improvements. To try to qualify, I would consider each distinct audible improvement to roughly equate to one reasonably minor component upgrade you or I might experience.
4. At some level of competency, components, aside from build quality, are of little consequence to me when compared to the benefits of proper AC mgmt and especially proper vibration mgmt. Sure upgrades can most always improve performance a bit, but like a well-engineered Redbook recording vs a well-engineered high-rez recording, there’s nothing life changing by any means. My components are listed in my profile for whatever that's worth. And no I wouldn’t waste my time with an am/fm clock radio.
5. A portion of my product can be seen in my avatar.
To keep from getting too lengthy, I'll close with a few final thoughts.
1. Of the discoveries I've made regarding proper AC mgmt and especially proper vibration mgmt (translating into unimaginable performance levels), the single most important discovery I made was that extreme results can only occur from extreme efforts, never by token or half-assed efforts.
2. One such discovery that may be of interest has to do with certain behavioral similarities between electrical and mechanical energy. In some respects their behavior is so similar that I'm now convinced to a very good degree there is no such process known as electrical "burn-in". Rather I postulate a “burn-in” process must be a variation of a mechanical settling in process. I wouldn't quite stake my life on it just yet, but I might somebody else's.
3. There is but one true method of vibration control and that’s resonant energy transfer. Anything else and especially “isolation” is simply a grossly inferior version of the one true method.
4. When properly dealing with and within the basic laws of nature, like vibrations, the potential improvements are massive, they are many, they are across the entire spectrum, and they are without any negatives whatsoever. So it should be when dealing with laws of nature and staying within those confines rather than try to change them, as if anybody could improve on natural law.
5. As with perhaps any other performance-oriented industry, it's the foundation that determines a playback system's ultimate performance potential.
I may not be giving you much to hang your hat on here, but that's also my intention, especially since you essentially demanded I fully disclose what I think I know.
But for what it's worth, roughly 65% of my entire system costs are dedicated solely to proper AC mgmt (proper line conditioning is but one part) and proper vibration mgmt. How's that for two categories industry "experts" still deem to be "accessories"?
BTW, I can and hope to be given the opportunity to prove Meridian's Bob Stuart is full of hot air when it comes to his and others outlandish performance claims of his soon to be released MQA format. And no I've never listened to an MQA formatted recording. Nor should I have to since MQA like other high-rez formats does Zero to reduce the universal distortions induced at our sensitive components that severely cripple their precision and accuracy via inferior AC mgmt and inferior vibration mgmt.
