From my perspective, anything below the rack or speakers may be considered ground. What about from your perspective? You wanna' take sub-flooring to floor joists to support beams to concrete foundation to dirt, that's fine. I only care about draining to the sub-flooring system and where it goes from there I care not as it's outside my scope and no longer impacting the components / speakers.
Who says "energy needs to be converted"? Did you read that somewhere? Please explain which is easier, conversion or redirect. Regardless, once the unwanted energy enters the sub-flooring who cares where it goes or what it does so long as it is no longer trapped at the components / speakers?
Regarding the two clips. It seems to me one is remastered or they are two separate recordings. In either case you are potentially comparing apples to oranges and asking others to do likewise.
Tell me, what in your opinion is a "good vibration control strategy"? Not textbook theoretical but actual. You talk much about vibrations as if you have some kind of insight. Why not share specifically what you do for superior means of vibration mgmt? Also, just so we can get a perspective where you're coming from it should take nothing for you to pony up a video recording to demonstrate the sonics you're thinking.
I put this video up the other day in another thread because somebody there mentioned they were bored with hearing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I'd love to hear what you're capable of accomplishing with your vibration mgmt strategy.
BTW, based on what I do, I claim that my little passive, dedicated, and bi-directional filtering Jena Labs line conditioners perform perhaps 3 - 4 times their already excellent out-of-the-box performance levels. Same with my amps. What do you claim?
Hi Stehno,
Vibration is detrimental to sound quality. Vibrating things like semiconductors, logic circuitry, cables and connectors, oscillators, capacitors etc. adds noise, jitter and other distortions to the sound.
There are typically 3 sources of vibration, the component itself, through AC rectification and transformation, motors etc., ground borne vibration and airborne pressure waves from the music. Ground borne vibration includes seismic vibration, human activity and of course, energy from the speakers. Air born vibration comes from the speaker drivers, acts mainly on suspended floors and can be treated as floor born vibration
It is highly undesirable for ANY of these vibrational energies to act on certain sensitive components in the audio chain, so all need to be dealt with in order to minimise their negative impact on sound reproduction. The problem is that single measures that solve one problem, may often exacerbate another. Another problem is that many measures used to control vibration come with their own unique sonic ‘signature’ , so the problem isn’t just avoiding vibration but avoiding it in such a way that enhances rather than degrades the sound. The problem is that devices have their own resonance frequencIes which can significantly colour the sound or negatively impact its presentation.
Let’s take a DAC or server as an example. Either unit will generally have its own power supply, taking in AC mains which it rectifies and smooths to provide the DC needed to drive the various processes and in a modulated form provide the device’s output. The whole power supply process is vibrationally very noisy. Primary frequencies as well as a host of harmonics act to excite various resonances within the component, so that energy needs to be drained away, otherwise it continues to bounce around within the unit, causing sensitive components to vibrate. But it doesn’t help to lead it away, if at the same time you connect it directly to another vibration source, which does similar damage, just at different frequencies. Let’s look at your strategy of clamping the unit to the floor. Firstly the floor is vibrating through seismic activity, human activity, speaker mechanical vibration and speaker generated sound pressure waves. All that vibration is conducted straight into the component in EXACTLY the same way and along the same route as component energy is drained to ground, so essentially you are swapping one kind of vibrational energy spectrum for another, the degree based on the type of floor, it‘s location within the building, the building’s location etc.
So we agree that we need to remove component generated vibration. Where we disagree is when the concept simply means swapping one vibrational energy for another.
In order to properly treat a component‘s vibration, you need a combination of conductance, conversion and isolation. Starting at the component, there needs to be a really well optimised interface that allows its vibration, at all frequencies to pass easily to the unit’s support structure. From there, the vibration should be converted to a less harmful form, for example work and heat. In this way, we avoid connecting the unit to the harmful ground-born vibration, while still removing vibration. From that point, we need to think about isolating the support structure from ground-borne vibration. Typically this is done by providing a series of high impedance interfaces that the ground-born vibration has difficulty in bridging, and ensuring that the support structure’s own resonance frequencies are adequately dealt with. This may include providing low contact area interfaces like spikes, bearings that convert the vibration to work, or high compliance interfaces that resist the ingress of vibration and convert what does transfer into heat.
All the time we’re doing this, we need to ensure that the materials we are using are adding positive qualities to the sound. Some materials have very definite resonance frequencies, defined by a sharp peak in their amplitude vs frequency plot. Glass for example. What we actually need are either materials that have a very diffuse vibrational spectrum.....bamboo or maple come to mind, or we need to treat the material to diffuse or remove its resonances. Ideally we do both if we want the very best results.
So, what do I use to treat vibration?
My components are mounted on a Finite Elemente Pagoda Master Reference stand. Built from maple and aluminium, the components are connected to the Maple shelves via hard wood blocks, thereby creating a low impedance interface between component case and shelf. The shelf itself is controlled by a number of oscillators, tuned to the shelves’ resonant frequencies. The oscillators convert the resonant frequencies to work and some heat, and are about 90% effective in calming the shelf and removing component generated vibration. The shelf itself is mounted on 2 sets of spikes, both downward and sideways facing. The main structure of the rack is placed on bearings which provide both isolation by virtue of their small contact area and conversion to work....the real life equivalent of such an interface would be trying to push a car while standing on wet sheet ice.
I’m curious what your opinion was on listening to the 2 clips I posted, your in-room recording vs a generic YouTube download. You obviously heard a difference given your conclusion that one was remastered. Usually its pointless trying to evaluate anything from YouTube videos, given the camera and all the file handling and music processing algorithms involved, but in this case, the differences are well preserved, relating mainly to Pace, Rhythm and Timing. The differences are so clear that remastering does come to mind, but that’s not what’s going on (at least IMO). I noticed as soon as I heard the clip that it sounded far slower than I was used to and lacked the propulsive slow rhythmic snap that makes it so entertaining. I was curious if that was an effect of YouTube or system related. Given that in terms of PRaT, a YouTube equivalent sounds more like what I’m used to, my conclusion is that its system related. I would therefore conclude that tying down the components and hard linking them to ground borne vibration has the effect of removing some of the music‘s ‘vitality’. This is of course just my opinion and if you find the result entirely to your liking you are the only one you need to please. I obviously have no idea how your system sounded before you implemented these measures. However you are promoting the effect as beneficial on any system, and there we disagree.
