First of all, you should ask yourself what vibrates below 4 Hz in your house. The only thing that comes to mind is tectonic earth movements. I think when that happens, you have other problems and you don't listen to music. Joke
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everything.
yes. and it turns out that is significant.
this falls into the category of "until you hear it, you don't realize what is going on". especially listen to a double bass or cello in a full frequency recording with properly executed active in and out of the system. especially with vinyl. big difference in realism. i have found that i need to turn down some recordings without active since the feedback causes bass distortion when a system can be linear in the lowest octaves. not all systems push the linearity ceiling, but some do.
. Joke
until you use active devices, it's hard to appreciate what the performance ceiling might be for that approach. the earth is constantly in motion objectively.
I'm happy for you that it's working well for you. Guess what kind of table an electron microscope stood on before there was an active base. You have 3 attempts. I don't want to say anything bad here, I take my hat off to engineering.everything.
yes. and it turns out that is significant.
this falls into the category of "until you hear it, you don't realize what is going on".
until you use active devices, it's hard to appreciate what the performance ceiling might be for that approach. the earth is constantly in motion objectively.
observe how an electron microscope installed in a ground floor facility on a sold table becomes usable with active, useless without it. easily observable.
visit me, and we can turn all five of them off, and then turn them on. enough said. my room has a concrete floor, i'm in a separate building from my home, in the mountains, not close industry or roads. yet it makes a big difference.
and agree that passive can be wonderful. but passive floats and settles....to some degree, active is 500x stiffer....and can start and stop.
my Rockport Sirius III turntable designed in 1995, used a passive air bladder table designed for Electron Microscopes. active was not yet a thing in 1995. science moves on.
agree totally. context is everything.
agree that passive can be very high performance. that is what i use for my Wadax and am very happy.Cplusw in germany made gorgeous passive systems
Optische Tische | cplusw GmbH
www.cplusw.de
When I first heard about the DIY air spring solution at a friend's house in 2010, I quickly built something like that myself. The German AAA analog forum was a buzz when we introduced it. We tried out almost all materials as a base for the air spring. From metals, wood to multi-layered soundproof glass. We had the most natural sound with slate. 3 air springs of type SLM 1 require at least 110kg mass load to function from 3.5 Hz. e.g. turntable 35kg + 75kg slate plate.
i think alternatives to active are completely on topic. i have seriously considered the passive air bladder Stacore for my CS Port turntable....which i expect would have too much self noise for active, and it's footprint is too large for active shelves. the Stacore is very well executed (more advanced than a Vibraplane). however not cheap when i would need a custom size. my 200 pound CS Port would need a special version for heavy units. and also; not cheap to ship from Poland. the Stacore is more than a simple air bladder. i would choose that mostly instead of a Minus K or some very spendy rack system i would be forever wed to. it's a particular answer to a particular question. and it would not be tweaky. i'm about solutions, not dogma. my mind is open to the best performance.
Unfortunately, my budget is not enough for that. That's why I've been looking for a DIY solution, planned slate plate + air springs, hose and valves ~600 euros. Also very important in case there is a loss of pressure. In the photo, the stainless steel sleeves around the air spring effectively prevent it from tipping over.
You have a point, mtemur.
i think this might be related to gear that does not fully complete notes and decay, in the name of accuracy, somewhat strangling the music, and which depends on normal resonance to fill it out. take that resonance away and it's thread bare. but don't point fingers at the clarity of active. it's garbage in-garbage out. avoid overly clean and ultra detailed gear.
Can't agree more, Mike.
In fact, Seismion will present our first fully active vibration stabilizer (isolator) for loudspeakers at the High-End in Munich next week! The new "Atlas" system for audio applications is built around our industrial isolators, which are especially designed for dynamic systems in the field of semiconductor inspection. Such applications typically contain moving XY stages, and the task is to stop the platform motions due to the accelererations and decelerations in the shortest time, so that the next measurement can be performed. Beside an extremely fast settling time, the device must be be isolated from the ground vibrations all the time.
Thank you for the information.
No, we will clamp the platform with wedge shoes when the isolators are turned off. They are extremely rigid. This will come as close as possible to the ideal circumstances that you mention, and can be done within seconds.
It will definitely and absolutely not close to speakers standing on their feet. Whatever you wedge under or over or wherever of isolators, speakers will still be on seismion platforms. If you think otherwise I’m sorry you’re totally wrong.
