Herzan/Table Stable "Active" Isolation table.

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike

relax. There is no accusation but people are hitting some nerves. I am coming up with nothing and will offer my full apology. Where I see people becoming unsettled is the constant comment that only highly resolving systems will achieve such benefit or at least be able to hear such benefits. Such comments IMO can rattle a few members and this is showing.I will only follow from the sidelines but will ask one last question....

why shouldn't this device make any improvement under video components that have moving components? It makes sense to me

Steve,

i'm am relaxed. and apology accepted. thanks.

I have no personal issue with Carl. he might not feel the same toward me.

whether isolation helps video is a question. no one is making that case. but I don't see where the burden is on me or anyone using isolation for audio to prove any relationship between the video question and how isolation works for audio gear. clearly yourself and most everyone on this forum use isolation on their gear in one way or another. I cannot believe that this so basic a question is really worth talking about.

OTOH which isolation works best, where it works best, which one is cost effective, and whether it makes one a better or worse person.....that's all on the table to go after.

 

[Steve williams]

Mike


As has been said by others, this is a most interesting thread. Certainly I feel such. I agree with others that this easily could be the best form of isolation but many have wondered about true efficacy of active vs passive isolation. Members here are divided and IMO valid and sincere questions have been asked. Yes,questions have been asked but to my eyes it seems that frequently the answers that are given boil down to how resolving a system we have. The way I read that, I can understand a member's knee jerk reaction to such comment and hence his angry retort

Now can we just get back to an otherwise most interesting thread.

 

[microstrip]

Really ... A reproduction system that isolates from the room is no substitute? Do you honestly think that removing the room from the reproduction doesn't improve things? What do you think room treatments accessories are trying to accomplish? Moreover do you really think loudspeakers and that includes yours are more resolving than a Stax ESL Headphone?

Frantz,

Some people will disagree or minimize my post saying it is a question of semantics , but the objective of room treatments is not removing the room, but change it to enhance the deliver of the recording, showing recording aspects (that I avoid calling details, as most people reserve this word for coughs during the performance) that otherwise would not be so easily perceived by the listener. I do not own Stax Headphones, only Senheiser HD650s, but there are many features of recordings that I did not notice listening through headphones, but noticed them easily the first time I listened through appropriate systems using speakers. All IMHO.

I do not want to re-start the headphone vs speakers debate, but it seems everyone accepts that the Stax are the top of headphone resolution. Does any one have measurements to prove it? Or it is just because they are sometimes driven by tubed dedicated units?

 

[Bill Hart]

I think the conclusions here are system-specific and don't depend on having an uber-resolving system, to wit: you could have a terrible turntable system that is subject to all kinds of spurious effects and an isolation system, whether passive or active, could radically improve its performance.
Two members here are vouching for the improvements- I'm not necessarily gonna run out and buy one just because Mike or Christian like the thing on theirs, but it's certainly informed opinion from two guys that have worked hard on very serious systems.
I also think Carl's skepticism is healthy.
There's nothing personal in any of this, as far as I am concerned.
As to impacts on video, you see all sorts of claims about how cable or power conditioning for audio, when applied to video, made 'blacks blacker,' etc. Never tried to make such comparisons.
Nor do I think that the onus is on any member to clear the field and compare every available device before proclaiming an improvement. A shoot out, say of active v passive would be interesting, but unless it is done on a wide variety of systems, I'm gonna conclude that even those results may be system specific. That's what's so intriguing about this hobby. Oft-times, you are an audience of one.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Frantz,

Some people will disagree or minimize my post saying it is a question of semantics , but the objective of room treatments is not removing the room, but change it to enhance the deliver of the recording, showing recording aspects (that I avoid calling details, as most people reserve this word for coughs during the performance) that otherwise would not be so easily perceived by the listener. I do not own Stax Headphones, only Senheiser HD650s, but there are many features of recordings that I did not notice listening through headphones, but noticed them easily the first time I listened through appropriate systems using speakers. All IMHO.

I do not want to re-start the headphone vs speakers debate, but it seems everyone accepts that the Stax are the top of headphone resolution. Does any one have measurements to prove it? Or it is just because they are sometimes driven by tubed dedicated units?

i do agree that headphones do reveal truths about cause and effect of speaker feedback. however not all noise a system has to deal with is speaker feedback, and headphones (or moving your system to another room) will not answer that issue. only when you eliminate 'other noise' and hear a recording without that noise will you understand what that noise is. and another limitation of headphones is how bass performance of a system is improved without speaker feedback, since no headphone does bass worth a darn. it cannot tell what it does not know of. so headphones are not the whole answer to these questions, although they have some value.

as far as headphones and how high resolution they might be; i did spend 18 months of effort and a good amount of money trying to answer that question. i invested in the HD-800's and a Woo Audio 6SE amplifier on the dynamic side, and then first the Stax O2 Mk1 (007's) and the SRM-717 amplifier and later the Stax 009's and the Blue Hawaii Special Edition amplifier.....$20k+ worth of headphones and amps. then i went to 4-5 headphone meets, and listened to most every headphone high end contender. my perspective is mostly anecdotal, but i did do the work to form an opinion.

i do think that the only headphones i heard that got to the neighborhood of resolution of my 2-channel speakers were the 009 and BHSE combo. the rest were certainly high resolution, but relatively closed in and limited in the ability to get the whole picture. none of them did much bass in any way compared to what high quality (not necessarily expensive) speakers can do.

then to help pay for my new speakers and amps i had to sell all my nice headphone gear.

 

[PeterA]

why shouldn't this device make any improvement under video components that have moving components? It makes sense to me

This is an interesting question. These active (and passives like Vibraplane) were originally designed for microscopes and often the imagery is fed to computer screens. Some of the on-line demos show images of with/with out the active isolation turned on. The image is always better with it turned on. It seems to follow that video components would benefit as the optics (lenses) vibrate less. This may even make more of a difference if the resolution of pixels/screen etc are at a high level.

These isolation devices also are used for laser work. I would think that a projection of light images (video) beamed toward a distant screen would benefit in a similar way.

After seeing and hearing a very nice home theater performance at a fellow member's house, I can, with sadness, say that I would love to own such a thing, but do not have the room or the budget to pursue it.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

got the TS-150 in the trunk of my car. i'm looking forward to playing with it in the system later this evening.

 

[NorthStar]

Basically, I am finding it more and more difficult to isolate the "information" from the "informercial" in some of these threads. There is very little in the way of rational contrapuntal input.

Fine, there are guys with piles of money and they like to spend it on snazzy stuff. Sure, there are incremental improvements from working on a system, I have been doing it for years with varying degrees of success and failure. Fine if you want high status, big spender elitism or whatever, but honestly every sodding tweak CANNOT have the enormous effects that are touted for these things, especially from the already "high resolution" systems.

There are times when I would actually like to hear what was paid for these items, how much it varies from retail, and what conversations were had with the manufacturers before they were touted, and if there were discounts, are they available to everybody?

I would like to hear with a huge sigh of relief that, "I bought this because it is exclusive, not many people can afford it, I love the way it looks and smells, everybody is really, really impressed, it is going to make me feel so important for a while, but it doesn't otherwise do a thing for the sound."

I think I would die and go to heaven.

My apologies for any aspersions cast, but there, I finally said it with all the gory details.

You all can kick me off the board, if you want, but man oh man, it does become a grind.

Carl, I luv you man! ...It's people like you who are the 'missing link'!

 

[FrantzM]

i do agree that headphones do reveal truths about cause and effect of speaker feedback. however not all noise a system has to deal with is speaker feedback, and headphones (or moving your system to another room) will not answer that issue. only when you eliminate 'other noise' and hear a recording without that noise will you understand what that noise is. and another limitation of headphones is how bass performance of a system is improved without speaker feedback, since no headphone does bass worth a darn. it cannot tell what it does not know of. so headphones are not the whole answer to these questions, although they have some value.

as far as headphones and how high resolution they might be; i did spend 18 months of effort and a good amount of money trying to answer that question. i invested in the HD-800's and a Woo Audio 6SE amplifier on the dynamic side, and then first the Stax O2 Mk1 (007's) and the SRM-717 amplifier and later the Stax 009's and the Blue Hawaii Special Edition amplifier.....$20k+ worth of headphones and amps. then i went to 4-5 headphone meets, and listened to most every headphone high end contender. my perspective is mostly anecdotal, but i did do the work to form an opinion.

i do think that the only headphones i heard that got to the neighborhood of resolution of my 2-channel speakers were the 009 and BHSE combo. the rest were certainly high resolution, but relatively closed in and limited in the ability to get the whole picture. none of them did much bass in any way compared to what high quality (not necessarily expensive) speakers can do.

then to help pay for my new speakers and amps i had to sell all my nice headphone gear.

Mike

Let's frame our discussions in logic. Headphones have bass. Lot of it what they can'thave is the speakers impact in the ass and elsewhere. We hear through our bones and our body too and headphoones limit the hearing to its main apparatus the ears. In term of impact a Bose Radio could be more visceral than headphones .. I am with you. Yet headphones provide an amount of resolution that speakers can't match and the reasons are obvious:

less resistive interface: Headphones are practically coupled to the ear canals , some IEM as their names implies (In Ear Monitors) are in the ear canal. The transducer are perforce lighter, less mass thus less inertia, thus start and stop in ways a speakers can't, they can also be made more rigid because of the area/surface issue.. It is relatively easy to make an almost diamond solid woofer in an headphone try that on a 10 incher or God forbid in a 15 incher. .. So in term of impulse response, low sitortion ( all kind of distortions) headphones are way ahead of speakers any speaker at whatever cost. One of the few speaker technologies that can match headphones in the speaker realm are the ionic tweeters and of course they don't do do bass the last time i checked, they can't.

No room. Let's repeat that : No Room! Absence of room. One can easily show what the best room does to the signal put forth by the best speakers .. And speakers are the least truthful chain of any reproduction systems.

There are many other reasons loosely related to those two mains. These are to me sufficient in the case of this discussion.

I have been listening to headphones for the past three years and like it but continue to prefer speakers, I miss listening to music through speakers. I do know however and accept the fact that headphones will quickly tell what your speakers ( ANY speakers) any room save for an an-echoic rooms and even there do to the sound coming from the transducers. Those are facts.. My preference still remain speakers because of the body impact and the way they try (pitifully) at ties to emulate the sound we hear in real live music. Headphones can't do that but they get the tones, all the tones right .. Regardless I still prefer speakers and so do you. The difference is that I don't claim that speakers have more resolution. They are incapable of surpassing headphones in that area. Fact.

Which bring me to the area of noise. What is the nature of the noise reduced by the active thing under an electronic component; if the active indeed work it should be a simple thing to measure. The noise cannot be at the same time unknown and known enough to be dealt with . You have to excuse me for being facetious but the logic fails here. The active are reducing some noise we don't know about but reduce it anyway .. How does it do it? I would assume these noise to be mechanical , they can't be anything else for example RF which is not the province of those anti-vibration devices. And if any reduction do they result in something verifiably audible? to repeat $12K is to me substantial and that is not chump change to me. The device must truly work ... Experimentation is expensive and we have some skepticism based on how we think it works about its efficaciousness under electronics. You for example said in another post that the results from video are inconclusive for an item designd at the outsed for optical purposes IOW visual/video .. SOme of its benefits should be visible in the case of serious enlargements (from the few sqaure inches of the DLP or LCD chip) to the Square footage of a projection screen. We must question its working and the performance gains you claim.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike

Let's frame our discussions in logic. Headphones have bass. Lot of it what they can'thave is the speakers impact in the ass and elsewhere. We hear through our bones and our body too and headphoones limit the hearing to its main apparatus the ears. In term of impact a Bose Radio could be more visceral than headphones .. I am with you. Yet headphones provide an amount of resolution that speakers can't match and the reasons are obvious:

less resistive interface: Headphones are practically coupled to the ear canals , some IEM as their names implies (In Ear Monitors) are in the ear canal. The transducer are perforce lighter, less mass thus less inertia, thus start and stop in ways a speakers can't, they can also be made more rigid because of the area/surface issue.. It is relatively easy to make an almost diamond solid woofer in an headphone try that on a 10 incher or God forbid in a 15 incher. .. So in term of impulse response, low sitortion ( all kind of distortions) headphones are way ahead of speakers any speaker at whatever cost. One of the few speaker technologies that can match headphones in the speaker realm are the ionic tweeters and of course they don't do do bass the last time i checked, they can't.

No room. Let's repeat that : No Room! Absence of room. One can easily show what the best room does to the signal put forth by the best speakers .. And speakers are the least truthful chain of any reproduction systems.

There are many other reasons loosely related to those two mains. These are to me sufficient in the case of this discussion.

I have been listening to headphones for the past three years and like it but continue to prefer speakers, I miss listening to music through speakers. I do know however and accept the fact that headphones will quickly tell what your speakers ( ANY speakers) any room save for an an-echoic rooms and even there do to the sound coming from the transducers. Those are facts.. My preference still remain speakers because of the body impact and the way they try (pitifully) at ties to emulate the sound we hear in real live music. Headphones can't do that but they get the tones, all the tones right .. Regardless I still prefer speakers and so do you. The difference is that I don't claim that speakers have more resolution. They are incapable of surpassing headphones in that area. Fact.

Which bring me to the area of noise. What is the nature of the noise reduced by the active thing under an electronic component; if the active indeed work it should be a simple thing to measure. The noise cannot be at the same time unknown and known enough to be dealt with . You have to excuse me for being facetious but the logic fails here. The active are reducing some noise we don't know about but reduce it anyway .. How does it do it? I would assume these noise to be mechanical , they can't be anything else for example RF which is not the province of those anti-vibration devices. And if any reduction do they result in something verifiably audible? to repeat $12K is to me substantial and that is not chump change to me. The device must truly work ... Experimentation is expensive and we have some skepticism based on how we think it works about its efficaciousness under electronics. You for example said in another post that the results from video are inconclusive for an item designd at the outsed for optical purposes IOW visual/video .. SOme of its benefits should be visible in the case of serious enlargements (from the few sqaure inches of the DLP or LCD chip) to the Square footage of a projection screen. We must question its working and the performance gains you claim.

Frantz,

i respect that you believe that your logic explains it all. i'm not questioning your reasoning.

what i am doing is relating my own experience where i agressively went after the highest performance headphones i could find and compared them to the performance of my system. i related what i heard. my agenda was to find out what headphones might do that my system could not. it was not a casual effort. the BHSE took 10 months to get after i ordered it. the Stax 009 headphones took 4 months to get.

the answer as to what could headphones do better than my system was nothing at all. others might come up with a different result. or other might try to think it thru and use reasoning to form an expectation.

maybe in my case the room is not much of a problem.

and you need to remember that headphones have their own 'room' problems with the ear. where they have to do tricks and curves to get a flat response. even measuring headphone performance is very tricky to do because of that.

to try and compare the bass performance between any of the headphones and the speakers in my room is laughable. and not only in the bass volume but in every aspect of the bass.

and i completely disagree with you about resolution. my MM3's had more of it in my system than any of the headphones except the 009's, and it was not very close. the 009's were at a similar level of resolution as the MM3's, but not close to the MM7's. that was my result after lots of effort.

it's all good. we don't have to agree.

 

[NorthStar]

I totally agree with you Mike. ...It's about the turntable, and the Herzan 'active' isolation table, and what it does at the end of the speakers, and in your ears in your room.

* Headphones, the best in the world, just has nothing to do with it. ...Or perhaps if one is strictly listening to his hi-end turntable through them.
But even then, the Herzan, I bet, would made sound improvements.

 

[FrantzM]

I totally agree with you Mike. ...It's about the turntable, and the Herzan 'active' isolation table, and what it does at the end of the speakers, and in your ears in your room.

* Headphones, the best in the world, just has nothing to do with it. ...Or perhaps if one is strictly listening to his hi-end turntable through them.
But even then, the Herzan, I bet, would made sound improvements.

And what make you so sure it will make improvements?

 

[NorthStar]

My gut feeling. :b

 

[Mike Lavigne]

got the TS-150 in the trunk of my car. i'm looking forward to playing with it in the system later this evening.

it's installed under the darTZeel NHB-18NS preamp, and I've been listening to digital thru the Playback Designs MPS-5 thru my server. only redbook so far.

my hope was that it brings enough to the digital performance by improving the preamp performance that I can leave it there and not need to stack the pre and digital player, mostly a matter of set-up elegance. my concerns were unwarranted, it's astonishing how much better the digital sounds with the darTZeel pre on the TS-150 instead of my previous isolation/decoupling of choice, the prototype A10 U8's (and they were very good).

objectively the dart pre on the Herzan TS-150 adds a body and weight while increasing speed and agility to the music. it's harmonically richer and more multi-textured. overall focus is better. more impact on the bass, more snap and nuance in the transients. blacker backgrounds, more detail deeper into the noise floor, a bit more bloom and decay, and a bit wider and deeper soundstage. these are mostly small even very small degrees of change.....but musically very significant.

subjectively the emotional content and involvement is greater, more life and energy, more natural and grounded sounding, the music becomes more real, refined, listenable and more experiential. more fun. lots of wows and laughs of wonder.

and this is only redbook.

I had a friend visit this week and he helped do more speaker adjustments, and I've been enjoying the fresh improvements. Wednesday night I listened to digital the whole night and played these same redbook cuts. so my take on these is very recent.

starting now with dsd, more of the same type improvments......classical dsd simply loves the dart pre on the TS-150. all those subtle small improvements take full advantage of the acoustic purity of classical music.

I can only imagine what a separate TS-150 under the Playback Designs MPS-5 might add to what i'm hearing.

can't wait to get to the vinyl and see how the phono stage improvements get added to the preamp improvements.

 

[Audiocrack]

Good to hear Mike that your experiences concur with mine, albeit that I am using various Halcyonics/Accurion devices. Using them under my Kondo M1000 preamp and Lyra phonostage in my Genesis 1.1 set up made a very significant change for the better. I wrote earlier about the impact of the Halcyonics vario series on my dcs scarlatti four box player. I have no doubts whatsoever that Halcyonics or Herzan devices will do wonders for your playback cd-player as well.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Good to hear Mike that your experiences concur with mine, albeit that I am using various Halcyonics/Accurion devices. Using them under my Kondo M1000 preamp and Lyra phonostage in my Genesis 1.1 set up made a very significant change for the better. I wrote earlier about the impact of the Halcyonics vario series on my dcs scarlatti four box player. I have no doubts whatsoever that Halcyonics or Herzan devices will do wonders for your playback cd-player as well.

thanks. I did not doubt what you had said about the Halcyonics under your electronics, but even so I was not prepared for what I heard......anytime your reference gets changed a magnitude or two, and you go to a place your ears have not heard before, the effect is profound and very enjoyable.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

later last night i switched to vinyl, and so far i'm thinking not to try and describe what i'm hearing with the dart phono stage also benefiting from the TS-150......as what i would say would sound like I've come unglued. ;-)

i have listening visitors scheduled this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon who can try and tether me to the ground so i don't float away. it going to be a fun listening weekend.

i'm listening now to a recent Lp classical purchase which is transformed by the TS-150 under the dart pre. wow.

 

[PeterA]

This improvement does not surprise me Mike. I first installed the lowly Townshend Seismic Sink under my old turntable before I upgraded to the Vibraplane. I now have Seismic Sinks under each of my five boxes of electronics. (Vibraplanes under amps and turntable). Though these passive air devices are not as sophisticated as something like the Herzan, they do make some difference at a substantially lower cost. And the 1 1/2" profile is excellent in tight shelf space.

So if I can notice an improvement under each component with the TSS, I can only imagine what the Herzan can do under your electronics. And my equipment is all SS. I found my TSS for about $200 a piece and now have five of them plus the three Vibraplanes.

I must say, though, that your frequent pronouncements about the unbelievable improvements that each of your recent purchases seems to make toward your overall musical enjoyment makes me wonder if there is any limit to how far even the most elaborate audio systems sound from the real thing. You just recently waxed lyrically about the Durand Saphire mounting plate, the Anna cartridge, the Telos tonearm, the Durand Record Weight, now these Herzans (even though the Wave Kinetic isolation had been a game changer). I honestly don't know where all of this is going. And all of this stuff will be replaced with yet newer stuff that will be even more revelatory at some point.

Perhaps you are learning, and sharing with the rest of us, that the better your system gets, the further it is away from the sound of real music because you are learning first hand how everything can be improved, and often quite dramatically and perhaps now questioning just how much more some of your stuff can be improved. If isolation can make such a dramatic improvement, then surely there are other things in the chain that can be addressed. Most of us don't and can't realize how limited our systems are because we aren't lucky enough to have a seemingly endless upgrade path ahead of us.

I happen to think that power delivery, isolation and the speaker/listener/room relationship are the three areas that are most often overlooked in serious systems. You have addressed most of these with very serious solutions and soon will have your speakers located in the optimum location. I look forward to the report of that improvement.

Perhaps I'm now rambling a bit. This is just my observation from reading your posts, and I don't really yet know if constantly learning that what we used to thing was great is suddenly not so good anymore is a good or bad thing. And I hope you don't take offense to these observations. I mean no disrespect.

The more money you seem to spend (invest) in your system, the more you, and we, are discovering just how much further there is to go. It is certainly sobering.

 

[MylesBAstor]

This improvement does not surprise me Mike. I first installed the lowly Townshend Seismic Sink under my old turntable before I upgraded to the Vibraplane. I now have Seismic Sinks under each of my five boxes of electronics. (Vibraplanes under amps and turntable). Though these passive air devices are not as sophisticated as something like the Herzan, they do make some difference at a substantially lower cost. And the 1 1/2" profile is excellent in tight shelf space.

So if I can notice an improvement under each component with the TSS, I can only imagine what the Herzan can do under your electronics. And my equipment is all SS. I found my TSS for about $200 a piece and now have five of them plus the three Vibraplanes.

I must say, though, that your frequent pronouncements about the unbelievable improvements that each of your recent purchases seems to make toward your overall musical enjoyment makes me wonder if there is any limit to how far even the most elaborate audio systems sound from the real thing. You just recently waxed lyrically about the Durand Saphire mounting plate, the Anna cartridge, the Telos tonearm, the Durand Record Weight, now these Herzans (even though the Wave Kinetic isolation had been a game changer). I honestly don't know where all of this is going. And all of this stuff will be replaced with yet newer stuff that will be even more revelatory at some point.

Perhaps you are learning, and sharing with the rest of us, that the better your system gets, the further it is away from the sound of real music because you are learning first hand how everything can be improved, and often quite dramatically and perhaps now questioning just how much more some of your stuff can be improved. If isolation can make such a dramatic improvement, then surely there are other things in the chain that can be addressed. Most of us don't and can't realize how limited our systems are because we aren't lucky enough to have a seemingly endless upgrade path ahead of us.

I happen to think that power delivery, isolation and the speaker/listener/room relationship are the three areas that are most often overlooked in serious systems. You have addressed most of these with very serious solutions and soon will have your speakers located in the optimum location. I look forward to the report of that improvement.

Perhaps I'm now rambling a bit. This is just my observation from reading your posts, and I don't really yet know if constantly learning that what we used to thing was great is suddenly not so good anymore is a good or bad thing. And I hope you don't take offense to these observations. I mean no disrespect.

The more money you seem to spend (invest) in your system, the more you, and we, are discovering just how much further there is to go. It is certainly sobering.

FYI, I'm not sure if Townshend Audio changed their platforms but years ago I found they actually degraded the sound of amplifiers placed on them. I hypothesized that it was because the Sinks were made of steel and that interacted with the amplifier's transformers affecting the sound. Perhaps it was a function of tube amps, older transformers or who knows what. I wonder if Townshend has changed the material. For **** and giggles, take a magnet to the Sink and see if it's magnetic.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

some pics of the TS-150 installed under the darTZeel NHB-18NS preamp.

the TS-140 is above under the NVS.