Panzerholz - its application in audio systems

[ddk]

Surely - it known since long. But the influence depends on system properties and layout.

The fist thing to understand on grounding debates is the concept of impedance. As long as people stay with resistance it is just an anecdotal debate.

As far as I see you are mainly addressing noise in digital systems, David addresses noise in pure analog systems. I think they are completely different entities, but I can be wrong.

They’re not necessarily different entities there’s an analog component to every system and many systems like mine have digital components. What I’m seeing with a PCB and what Emile described about grounding a Daiza isn’t limited to any system type.

david

 

[microstrip]

The links in this short article will explain a few of them.

https://www.anelectricalengineer.com/methods-of-electrical-earthing-systems/

Yes.

david

Thanks - I see semantics are just separating us. You are just addressing earthing techniques in your links - and I was mainly referring to grounding. Two very different things.

 

[ddk]

Thanks - I see semantics are just separating us. You are just addressing earthing techniques in your links - and I was mainly referring to grounding. Two very different things.

I figured you were shifting gears when you mentioned Bill Whitlock from my spaghetti you mentioned earlier which was all about earthing, grounding in and after the electric panel is all according to local US code.
david

 

[microstrip]

They’re not necessarily different entities there’s an analog component to every system and many systems like mine have digital components. What I’m seeing with a PCB and what Emile described about grounding a Daiza isn’t limited to any system type.

david

Yes, we can mix things to create confusion. I was just addressing your posts, considering you were addressing your typical analog systems. If we want to go anywhere we must analyze simple situations. As far as I know Emile system is only digital.

 

[ddk]

Yes, we can mix things to create confusion. I was just addressing your posts, considering you were addressing your typical analog systems. If we want to go anywhere we must analyze simple situations. As far as I know Emile system is only digital.

Create what type of confusion? Mix what? We were discussing systems irrespective of the front end. Our topic wasn’t specific digital or analog noise either. I don’t even think that grounding a Daiza or plugging in an empty PCB affecting the system has to do what we typically call noise, something else is going on.

david

 

[Taiko Audio]

There’s definitely something going on! I started by pulling off parts off a board and then plugged in a blank PCB and still heard the same affect on sound. I guess the small traces of copper work the same way as what you have with your Daiza. Next step was ground lifting but it turned out that the two prong adaptor I used had it’s own affect on sound without anything attached, any ideas?

david

I can reproduce your experiment, being that adding any conductive or electrically reactive mass to ground and/or your safety earth wiring produces an audible effect, and that effect is variable over time I might add which makes it even more mysterious. Try placing a low value choke, say a few mH in series on that earth line and see what happens compared to just a copper wire over a 20 minute to 1 hour period. In most of my experiments the effect on sound goes from "positive" to "negative", just by adding that choke, the larger value it is, the faster the transition. I always thought additional grounding was just better, but nowadays I follow a different approach minimising loop areas to reduce the risk of noise pickup.

I found this to be an excellent presentation and actually learned a thing of two from it myself:

http://audiosystemsgroup.com/GroundingAndAudio.pdf

But none of it explains this particular phenomenon.

 

[Taiko Audio]

The fist thing to understand on grounding debates is the concept of impedance. As long as people stay with resistance it is just an anecdotal debate.

As far as I see you are mainly addressing noise in digital systems, David addresses noise in pure analog systems. I think they are completely different entities, but I can be wrong.

Yes I did write "ground" with "" on purpose

In this case I'm pretty sure it makes no difference if you are running an analog or digital system.

 

[stehno]

Talk about the use and merit of panzerholz in audio systems broke out in bonzo75's thread about user Tango and his system. Part of that was about the Taiko Audio Daiza product and partly about panzerholz in audio generally. An energetic discussion ensued. The Daiza product has at least two informational / advocacy threads.

Rather than swerve bonzo's thread (and others) further, this thread is offered. It is not meant to be focused solely on a specific audio product. Discussion of all panzerholz uses, products, and merit are welcome here as well as discussion about the merits or demerits of panzerholz itself.

Moderators may copy messages here from the thread mentioned above (or not). Panzerholz seems to be a topic of interest. Little was resolved earlier.

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In case there is a pause in further discussion, here is some reading material:

Panzerholz® A DIN 7707-compliant hardened panel material made of a combination of phenolic resin and hardwood with a hardened structure.

(DIN 7707 is apparently a set of standards for resin impregnated and compressed laminated wood.)

Panzerholz Is apparently a registered product name of Delignit, an off-shoot of Blomberger Holzindustrie GmbH in Blomberg Germany. cf. here and here.

PDF Datasheet here - only available in German.

Panzerholz - there is no English language Wikipedia entry; this one is in German.

The Virtues of Panzerholz - An Investigation into the Acoustical Properties of Aluminum and Panzerholz
- this is by Louis Motek of LessLoss, an innovative audio manufacturer in Lithuania; the company is an avid user of panzerholz for several years now.

Plugging the terms "What is panzerholz?" into a search engine yields little information about the product itself, but lots of references to various audio forum pages, much of those related to tt plinths and speakers.

Anything you sit a component on will change how the component sounds in some way. Shoud you put your components on a piece of panzerholz?

I've never used panzerholz wood - at least not that I recall. However, based on its characteristics, it's hardess, density, etc, I've used similar exotic hard and desne woods, mostly the very beautiful Mexican Cocobolo wood.

To the best of my knowledge wood is wood and there should be nothing extraordinarily beneficial about panzerholz except that it somehow has "caught on" in high-end audio as a wood of choice.

Mechanical energy comes from certain sources and exerts certain behaviors that do not change. But when attempting to manage these behaviors a wood's characteristics will determine the ultimate performance impact of the designs, strategies, and/or methods applied. But then again, so will other materials. It's important to note that mechanical energy's behaviors and sources do not change as they are and should be universal. This is important to note because our percetptions of mechanical energy's behaviors and sources can be all over the map as can be our methods and remedies. Even so, mechanical energy's behaviors and sources remain unchanged.

In general, with its natural warmth and beauty people love the look of wood especially in upscale applications. Designs have the potential to look even more beautiful where there is a nice contrast between natural i.e. wood and manmade materials.

Back to panzerholz wood which seems to consist of a glue and type of wood composite and which in its final state is deemed a certain hardness and density. Vibration-induced distortions are quite severe and their remedies work rather well when employing harder and more dense materials. Since balsa wood lacks hardness and density, that makes balsa one of the least desired woods for audio applications from a performance perspecitive.

At the other end of the hardness and density scale is Lignum Vitae wood which is known as the worlds hardest most dense wood. In fact, up until recent years Lignum Vitae was used as main bearings in the engines of large ships which I always thought facinating. In recent years they stopped using Lignum Vitae as I recall because though the wood worked quite well with great longevity, when these bearings would wear out, they'd blow up. These harder more dense woods are so dense that they will not float and they are also rated with the same fire retardation as concrete, except that ultimately they will burn.

All that said, based on what I think I know about vibrations' behaviors, the sonic harm they induce, and utlimately related to performance, all woods of any type pale in comparison to harder materials. On the metals side of the fence, like wood, audiophiles seem to have a real passion for brass. Presumably since brass is used in a number of instrumentals, audiophile somehow automatically assume brass must be a superior metal for other music / sound-related applications like vibration mgmt.

However, for superior forms of vibration mgmt, brass is among the more inferior metals for performance-related applications for pretty much the same reason Balsa wood is among the most inferior in the wood family. Yet, brass is perhaps superior to any wood when used in a high-end audio application.

I used to design performance-oriented racking systems and for years I used perhaps the best known performance-oriented points / cones / spikes from another performance-oriented mfg'er and were made of a special brass. But I knew I could design a better footer so I eventually did and I chose a far superior metal for the job and the result was night and day better performance.

Brass may make for a beautiful sound in some instruments but it turned out brass was way too soft and hence way too slow for my designs and ultimately severely bottlenecked my designs' performance potential. Yet, brass' characteristics were still superior to perhaps any wood I've used. From a performance perspective anyway and based on my unique designs and methods employed to address mechanical energy's unchanging universal behaviors and characteristics.

Anyway, that's my best guess on the practical use of panzerholz and wood in general from a performance-oriented perspective when attempting to manage unwanted mechanical energy. Wood sells as it can be a strikingly beautiful material but I stopped using it entirely about 15 years ago because my designs were intended to be performance-oriented only and eventually discovered wood was severely bottlenecking my designs' performance potentials, as was brass and for presumably the same reasons.

 

[ddk]

I can reproduce your experiment, being that adding any conductive or electrically reactive mass to ground and/or your safety earth wiring produces an audible effect, and that effect is variable over time I might add which makes it even more mysterious. Try placing a low value choke, say a few mH in series on that earth line and see what happens compared to just a copper wire over a 20 minute to 1 hour period. In most of my experiments the effect on sound goes from "positive" to "negative", just by adding that choke, the larger value it is, the faster the transition. I always thought additional grounding was just better, but nowadays I follow a different approach minimising loop areas to reduce the risk of noise pickup.

I found this to be an excellent presentation and actually learned a thing of two from it myself:

http://audiosystemsgroup.com/GroundingAndAudio.pdf

But none of it explains this particular phenomenon.

I was going to add a resistor on the hot leg of the wire and see what happens but I’ll try the choke too. In my case extended period more change in the sound. It’s not a matter of negative or positive, there shouldn‘t be any change to the sound all, no logic to it.

That presentation deals only with safety and ground loops and many of his earthing and bonding techniques have a negative sterilizing affect on the sound. Our ghost is more intriguing and of a different nature, it’s not universal with every piece of new equipment that we plug in.



david

 

[Lagonda]

I was going to add a resistor on the hot leg of the wire and see what happens but I’ll try the choke too. In my case extended period more change in the sound. It’s not a matter of negative or positive, there shouldn‘t be any change to the sound all, no logic to it.

That presentation deals only with safety and ground loops and many of his earthing and bonding techniques have a negative sterilizing affect on the sound. Our ghost is more intriguing and of a different nature, it’s not universal with every piece of new equipment that we plug in.

View attachment 76159

david

That particular noise issue can be easily fixed by a cat-litter box ! Preferably with droppings from a Persian, they are the best mousers

 

[tima]

That presentation deals only with safety and ground loops and many of his earthing and bonding techniques have a negative sterilizing affect on the sound. Our ghost is more intriguing and of a different nature, it’s not universal with every piece of new equipment that we plug in.

View attachment 76159

david

Hieronymus Bosch captures an audiophile experiment? That's quite the ghost.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Back to panzerholz wood which seems to consist of a glue and type of wood composite and which in its final state is deemed a certain hardness and density. Vibration-induced distortions are quite severe and their remedies work rather well when employing harder and more dense materials. Since balsa wood lacks hardness and density, that makes balsa one of the least desired woods for audio applications from a performance perspecitive.

The speed of sound varies depending on material density causing modes in materials to move up or down in spectrum. Combined with internal damping (which is what panzerholz "is good at") it defines the material resonance spectrum, not much mystery surrounding that, but what is mysterious is how that actually affects the sonic signature of equipment placed on top, and let's assume digital equipment for this as it's much more obvious how that could "colour" the sound on a turntable setup, but strangely it behaves very similar, going against the assumption that this only affects electrical component performance. So how does this cause our perception to change? And why would materials used in instruments impart a similar signature on electronic equipment?

 

[Taiko Audio]

I was going to add a resistor on the hot leg of the wire and see what happens but I’ll try the choke too. In my case extended period more change in the sound. It’s not a matter of negative or positive, there shouldn‘t be any change to the sound all, no logic to it.

In my trials the choke shortens the periods over which performance varies rather dramatically, from hours/days to just an hour or even less. I did not manage to reach satisfactory results btw and I'm convinced the key can be found in understanding the mechanism of what is going on here. Obviously there's a significant market around devices you can hook-up to "ground" causing a change people generally consider positive, but I have very strong doubts any of these are actually addressing this at its root cause.

 

[Rob181]

The speed of sound varies depending on material density causing modes in materials to move up or down in spectrum. Combined with internal damping (which is what panzerholz "is good at") it defines the material resonance spectrum, not much mystery surrounding that, but what is mysterious is how that actually affects the sonic signature of equipment placed on top, and let's assume digital equipment for this as it's much more obvious how that could "colour" the sound on a turntable setup, but strangely it behaves very similar, going against the assumption that this only affects electrical component performance. So how does this cause our perception to change? And why would materials used in instruments impart a similar signature on electronic equipment?

Hi - what are your thoughts or experience using carbon fibre as a 'noise eliminator" - eg - "carbon fiber braid, was chosen for its "better shielding properties than copper and aluminum", because it does not generate a magnetic field and does not create eddy currents in it, distorting the useful signal"

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hi - what are your thoughts or experience using carbon fibre as a 'noise eliminator" - eg - "carbon fiber braid, was chosen for its "better shielding properties than copper and aluminum", because it does not generate a magnetic field and does not create eddy currents in it, distorting the useful signal"

I assume that's coming from an audiophile cable manufacturer? My thoughts are you choose the material most suitable for the application.

 

[Rob181]

I assume that's coming from an audiophile cable manufacturer? My thoughts are you choose the material most suitable for the application.

No actually - from a pre & power amplifier manufacturer - hence my question - that is - in an application where shielding properties might yield positive results..

 

[Taiko Audio]

No actually - from a pre & power amplifier manufacturer - hence my question - that is - in an application where shielding properties might yield positive results..

It's more typically used in microwave frequency shielding applications (GHz) where electrical conductivity of the material is less significant.

 

[ddk]

In my trials the choke shortens the periods over which performance varies rather dramatically, from hours/days to just an hour or even less. I did not manage to reach satisfactory results btw and I'm convinced the key can be found in understanding the mechanism of what is going on here. Obviously there's a significant market around devices you can hook-up to "ground" causing a change people generally consider positive, but I have very strong doubts any of these are actually addressing this at its root cause.

Those devices are there to alter the character of the sound, we’re looking to understand and eliminate the effects of all extraneous devices, it’s the opposite ! I don’t even know where to begin understanding the mechanism, I get the same effect even when plugging things not only in different circuits but also entirely different wiring and electrical panels. It simply doesn’t make any sense and why it is it that some equipment don’t have that affect. We’ll keep looking and update one another if we find anything.

The speed of sound varies depending on material density causing modes in materials to move up or down in spectrum. Combined with internal damping (which is what panzerholz "is good at") it defines the material resonance spectrum, not much mystery surrounding that, but what is mysterious is how that actually affects the sonic signature of equipment placed on top, and let's assume digital equipment for this as it's much more obvious how that could "colour" the sound on a turntable setup, but strangely it behaves very similar, going against the assumption that this only affects electrical component performance. So how does this cause our perception to change? And why would materials used in instruments impart a similar signature on electronic equipment?

This is also very true, I came to the same conclusion that materials used under equipment impart the same signature irrespective of the electronics or components. There’s also the approach, draining and dampening vs live and resonant. Both have their merits but I find them incompatible with one another. Mixing the two creates an audible imbalance in the sound better pick one strategy and stick with it.

david

 

[Ovenmitt]

I have a plinth for my TD124 made with a permali core (permali is a very similar material to panzerholz, manufactured in the UK and with a finer grain/more layers per cm, but very similar density and damping, see link), wrapped not in veneer but in solid wood (sapele to match my speakers). The armboards are permali with a layer of stained walnut on top.

Permali is extremely dense - the plinth alone (no motor unit or armboards fitted) measured at 40kg (about 88 lbs for our non-metric friends) and with motor unit, Schopper platter, armboards and tonearms fitted tops off at more than 60kg. It's a two-man lift to place it on its Townshend Seismic Pods.

It was a bit of an experiment (an expensive one) but I was thoroughly delighted with the result - the deck is substantially quieter in use - the whole noise floor has been lowered, music seems to emerge more freely with more detail ... I would recommend anyone interested to take the plunge.

Taking a cue from @montesuieu and coming back to using panzerholz (or other types of super compressed ply) in turntables, I thought I would share some from my experiences in case anyone finds it helpful.

I have experimented with a few different materials (just using my ears - nothing super scientific) and have really come to appreciate panzerholz as part of the "recipe" in plinth construction. I have tried to use it in plinth making exclusively (i.e., just panzerholz and no other material) and found it dead sounding or over damped.

I have also tried various hard woods (hard maple, cherry, mahogany, ebony, etc.), metals, and different stone combinations. Solid hardwood on it's own can be nice but it's a bit noisy in my opinion. I've experimented with solid wood plinths from 4-about 16 inches deep.

The natural stone that I've tried has had it's own signature as well. Granite sounded, well... hard. Soap stone works really well for dampening and I'm using it in my rack, with my turntables sitting on it.

The last few plinths I've made are more like layer cakes - the recipe. For Garrard's and other idlers, I'm alternating 2 inch slabs of either hard maple or cherry with panzerholz and then 2-4 inches of bamboo for the bottom layer. To my ears, this combination is super effective at quieting the idlers mechanical noise but also keeping the liveliness and dynamics that those decks are known for. My latest experiment with adding bamboo to the mix, has been like adding a nice "icing on my cake". Bamboo seems to augment both the damping of panzer and also the liveliness of hardwood - go figure... For the direct drive decks that I've worked with, I've also used layers of 6061 aluminum.

I "wrap" the layer cake (inner core) with 2-4 inches of solid hardwood and use decorative woods mitered into the corners; you can see the latest one I did in purple hart wood and maple....

Right now I'm having a lot of fun working on a monster Commonwealth 12D.

For my arm boards I am using a lot higher ratio of panzerholz to other materials.

 

[tima]

Those devices are there to alter the character of the sound, we’re looking to understand and eliminate the effects of all extraneous devices, it’s the opposite ! I don’t even know where to begin understanding the mechanism, I get the same effect even when plugging things not only in different circuits but also entirely different wiring and electrical panels. It simply doesn’t make any sense and why it is it that some equipment don’t have that affect. We’ll keep looking and update one another if we find anything.

This has been a fascinating interchange between you and Emile re observable effects with unknown or uncertain causes, some measureable and some not. I have not heard any prior discussion on similar findings and can't even think of a name for what you're discussing. 'Electrical anomalies' perhaps, but there may not be a single description or account but several different causes. It seems weird but I suppose the unknown can seem that way. Can either of you give an example of what you hear differently for one scenario?