Seismion - new active isolation platform from Germany

[Jazzjunkie]

Thanks! Would you mind answering this previous question?

„As there’s no cross-section sketch or photo of the internals of the Reaction plus anywhere Sebastian…how did you ensure that the top plate of the platform doesn’t vibrate or ring itself? Is it thick or damped?“

 

[Seismion]

The Reactio 1 and Plus have a aluminium honeycomb structure with 20mm thickness and a 1.5mm steel sheet metal glued on top. This gives stiffness and damping.
Sebastian

 

[JEB42]

In fact, Helmut Thiele, who is using a special version of our Reactio for his own turntable "Thiele TT01", is doing exactly the way you suggest: one turntable directly on the rack, a second one on his active (Seismion) platform. For all his auditions at distributors and dealers, the audience was immediately aware of the huge improvement due to the isolation. We have also witnessed it once, and honestly: it exceeded all our expectations!

We also know of some people who tried our isolator under a Dohmann Helix One turntable. As you might know, this turntable uses the passive isolation system from MinusK. After placing our Reactio below, a further improvement was clearly achieved.
Marcus

I can concur with having tried this ourselves under the Helix One!

 

[JEB42]

Seismion will be accompanying The Audio Association at T.H.E. Show this upcoming weekend in Cosa Mesa in the Bristol 1 room. I believe it will be used under the Wave Kinetics NVS turntable at T.H.E. Show. @TheAudioAssociation @Seismion

 

[JEB42]

Also launched at the Munich High End Show by @Seismion is the upcoming Reactio 2.0. Shown in the pictures is the 500x400 model. Please refer to the Seismion explanation on the isolation ability of the Reactio 2.0 later in this thread. Load capacity of up to 60 kg (132 lbs). Self levelling ability (top plate relative to the base) allowing for accurate correction of components with centroids that are off centre. We were very impressed with the demonstration of these. There will be a 600x 500 model and later a higher capacity model of each also introduced. We are looking forward to receiving our units!

The greatest demonstration was with the Sigma loudspeakers and the Atlas isolators. The demonstration was very readily apparent to everyone listening. This will be an exciting product development as it comes along.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Seismion will be accompanying The Audio Association at T.H.E. Show this upcoming weekend in Cosa Mesa in the Bristol 1 room. I believe it will be used under the Wave Kinetics NVS turntable at T.H.E. Show. @TheAudioAssociation @Seismion

i can tell you that is a very good match, had my NVS on active for 8 years. zero apparent self noise from the NVS (according to the Herzan read-out) so optimal boost from active. exceptional micro dynamics, focus and bass articulation. lack of smearing dynamic peaks. show conditions and noise levels are not the ideal place to hear everything this combo can do, but i'm sure it will do some fun stuff.

 

[Scatterbrain99]

I answered this on #201


Unfortunately that's not the correct way of evaluating it. The correct way is: component over Seismion and it's on vs component over the rack/platform or on the floor.


I'm happy for them. I hope they didn't just turn Seismion on and off when reaching the above conclusion.

I painstakingly (with help from my partner) compared all of my gears on and off Seismion. That comparison (A/B/A) included HRS, and CMS TT footers (and bunch of others). The difference was readily apparent (in favor of Seismion), also confirmed by partner - she has better ears than I do.

The dynamics, aliveness, resolution, jump factor, transparency with relaxation, undistorted realism, etc everything increased with Seismion without affecting tonality. passive devices I tried although good on their own way, were colored.

I don’t know if some electronics are tuned to be vibrated like some BBC/thin walled speakers are. But better isolation turn into better sound in my case. I’ve 4 Seismions in my system add the cumulative effect has been more than their sum. I plan to add more Seismion when budget allows. In all honesty, this has been one of the best audio investment I’ve made in recent years.

Btw, my floors are wood over concrete. Rack is from Core Audio Design. I use linear power supply with Cardas DC cables. All the thick cables connecting the gears resting on top of Seismion have vibration dampening cable elevators to reduce strain and minimize vibration transmission.

 

[jbrrp1]

I painstakingly (with help from my partner) compared all of my gears on and off Seismion. That comparison (A/B/A) included HRS, and CMS TT footers (and bunch of others). The difference was readily apparent (in favor of Seismion), also confirmed by partner - she has better ears than I do.

The dynamics, aliveness, resolution, jump factor, transparency with relaxation, undistorted realism, etc everything increased with Seismion without affecting tonality. passive devices I tried although good on their own way, were colored.

I don’t know if some electronics are tuned to be vibrated like some BBC/thin walled speakers are. But better isolation turn into better sound in my case. I’ve 4 Seismions in my system add the cumulative effect has been more than their sum. I plan to add more Seismion when budget allows. In all honesty, this has been one of the best audio investment I’ve made in recent years.

Btw, my floors are wood over concrete. Rack is from Core Audio Design. I use linear power supply with Cardas DC cables. All the thick cables connecting the gears resting on top of Seismion have vibration dampening cable elevators to reduce strain and minimize vibration transmission.

I've had similar sonic benefits using Seismion tables under all of my components, but I have not gone to great lengths for comparison to other footers and passive devices (was using Herzan tables before). I'm curious: what LPS's are you using to power your Seismion's? That's my next step.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I painstakingly (with help from my partner) compared all of my gears on and off Seismion. That comparison (A/B/A) included HRS, and CMS TT footers (and bunch of others). The difference was readily apparent (in favor of Seismion), also confirmed by partner - she has better ears than I do.

The dynamics, aliveness, resolution, jump factor, transparency with relaxation, undistorted realism, etc everything increased with Seismion without affecting tonality. passive devices I tried although good on their own way, were colored.

I don’t know if some electronics are tuned to be vibrated like some BBC/thin walled speakers are. But better isolation turn into better sound in my case. I’ve 4 Seismions in my system add the cumulative effect has been more than their sum. I plan to add more Seismion when budget allows. In all honesty, this has been one of the best audio investment I’ve made in recent years.

Btw, my floors are wood over concrete. Rack is from Core Audio Design. I use linear power supply with Cardas DC cables. All the thick cables connecting the gears resting on top of Seismion have vibration dampening cable elevators to reduce strain and minimize vibration transmission.

back when i first acquired my Tana/Herzan platforms, i did exactly this experiment under my darTZeel amplifiers; i asked a couple of local friends to come over and we went through the pain of trying the amps on and off my passive amp stands, and on the active devices. then we compared the active devices on the active shelf turned on and off. the active device turned off was better than the floor or my Box Furniture amp stands. but turned on was better than the others in a very special way.

other places i use active i've already used other passive devices prior to using the active and so was very familiar with the transitional performance. collective use of active under the whole signal path is additive.

there are many things it delivers. but the easy one is active further removes the music from the drivers. that distortion it lowers is a noise reducing realism. also active tweaking i've done by completely unweighting my speaker and signal cables from the amp chassis really boosted micro dynamic life. active does benefit from reducing any damping from cables.

 

[Seismion]

renaissens.com from Paris/France have conducted a review of the Wellfloat 3545S and our Reactio plus (in french language). We made contact with them during the Munich High-End, where they experienced our isolators under darTZeel, and they got one demo sample afterwards for their tests:

https://www.renaissens.com/blog/pos...bles-et-de-supports-antivibratoires-2024.html


Here are some snippets of the overall extremely positive review (automatic translation by Google):
"Placed under the Esoteric N-05 XD, this base manages to immerse you directly into the recording studio. Never had we heard a bass descend so low and with so much impact. What relief and what naturalness, it breathes, it sounds wonderfully, it is dynamic and detailed without ever being analytical. You will forget the walls and everything around you. A new era begins..."

Some further listening impressions:
The Cranberries - No need to argue - Zombie:
"This powerful and angry message is fully expressed on our speakers. The Seismion platform brings power, authority and sharpness to the low end. The beat is well marked on the drums positioned in the background. A marvel on the saturated guitar. It sends heavy wood and the listening always remains very solid from one end of the piece to the other, very balanced, the sensations of the concert are not far away!

Rock, real, just the way we like it."

Max Richter - Hostiles – Cradle to the grave:
"The Seismion platform succeeds in producing impressively clear bass. Very powerful sound waves literally hit your solar plexus. From this point of view, the Reactio Plus does much better than any other platform on this criterion with incredible firmness."

Carmina Burana:
"The layering of the sound planes is remarkable, the sources are punctual, the air circulates between the instruments.

The word blur doesn't seem to be part of the Seismion vocabulary!"


For everybody interested, renaissence is pleased to make an appointment, if you like to listen to one of these models and you stay in Paris region: phone 01 84 19 43 88

 

[Jazzjunkie]

twice the isolation capability of the PLUS (543 and 653 models)

Sure you mean the Reactio plus and not the initial Reactio? Sebastian said, isolation performance of the plus and the 2.0 is the same.

 

[Seismion]

Sure you mean the Reactio plus and not the initial Reactio? Sebastian said, isolation performance of the plus and the 2.0 is the same.

The isolation performance is too complex to be described by just one value. In fact, it is at least a frequency dependent parameter, as you can see in below figure.



The transmissibility T is a measure how much the vibrations above the isolator are reduced compared to the ground vibrations. So, in other words, this is the isolation performance.
In above figure there is a qualitative comparison of a typical passive airspring isolator with an active isolator (it is NOT the current Reactio plus model, because the Reactio plus already has about -10 dB at 1 Hz, so it is even better than the blue line). As you can see in the airspring, there is a peak around 2.5 Hz, which is related to the resonance amplification, and only for higher frequencies a real isolation sets in. For the active isolator, the resonance is below 1 Hz, so that in the whole frequency range shown above we have already isolation.
If you now take the ratio of both transmissibilities, then you get the improvement from the passive to the active isolator, which is again frequency dependent. In this example, the isolation around 1 Hz is nearly identical, but around 2.5 Hz, due to the resonance, reaches a factor of 37, and eventually resulting in about 5 times for higher frequencies.
Which frequency is most important for music reproduction remains a topic to be discussed. Typically (as I posted in a previous message), the amplitudes around 2-5 Hz are the highest, so the isolation in that range should have a dominant effect.

When we compare the Reactio plus and the new Reactio 2, these curves will also differ from each other (not as much as in above figure). We will post the final results once we fixed all parameters and did the measurements.