Suspended Equipment - Anyone ever tried it?

[audioqueso]

Spikes, isolation cones, dampening materials...
All these tweaks we do to isolate out equipment as much as possible in order to prevent any sort of vibration, degrading factor, etc..

Well, lately I've been surfing around in some Japanese audio forums. What I've been finding lately is that a big thing Japanese audio enthusiast do instead of spikes, cones, whatever... is suspend their components. Interesting!!!

Now.. I've done this with computer hard drives to isolate any possible vibration in order to prevent noise... but I never thought about audio components. I even saw a PS3 suspended.

Has anyone ever tried this? I'll very curious about this and thinking about testing it out. :B

[Alaric]

I meant to respond to this when you first posted! Sorry for the delay. I saw rigs for suspending turntables as far back as the 70s. I looked into it in the mid 80s when I finally got my first really decent stereo , but my TT was a Yamaha PX-2 and was a heavy beast and I was afraid to hang it , plus the weight of a platform , from my ceiling! And the linear arm was pretty sensitive to any deviation from perfectly level , so I went with a more conventional heavy table and lots of sand fill. Does Japan have a lot of wood flooring? I can see where isolation from a wood floor could benefit. Footfalls , or thumps and bumps from neighbors in an apartment , might be a concern also. I actually thought of it again a few years ago when I began easing back into audio. I ran into the same concerns plus my TT was in the finished basement. That meant the ceiling was also an upstairs floor. With a small child running around up there I was better off going up from the poured concrete/carpeted floor. I suppose I could have come up with some sort of framework to hang it from but couldn't see re-inventing the wheel. It ended up on a very solid , low , MDF entertainment center (300+ lbs.) on the concrete floor.
If you have the URL for any sites with pics I'd be very interested to see them. I can imagine some elegant set-ups being used , and seeing their equipment would be fun , too!

[Chris D]

FWIW, here's a pic of my previous theater during construction, where I had the center channel suspended from the ceiling. It worked out fantastically, putting it right in the middle of the screen once the transparent screen and wall were assembled in front of the gear you see.

[impala454]

I'm trying to understand how suspending a component isolates it from vibration. Perhaps in a situation like a computer where the chassis is vibrating and the hard drive is attached to the chassis, but with a speaker, the speaker is what's creating the vibration. Same with suspending an entire PS3, what would that isolate the PS3 from? Seems strange to me.

[Alaric]

Environmental influences , mostly. Too close to a speaker will wreak all kinds of havoc with a TT , and I would imagine it can cause problems with CD playback as well as DVD. If Chris' center channel would have otherwise had to sit in the same furniture as his disc player....It probably also allowed him perfect placement.
Amplifiers also benefit from isolation , as they can create their own resonance issues from transformers , etc.. Especially tube gear , since the thin glass can resonate , potentially causing issues throughout the signal chain. In fact , you can buy dampers for vacuum tubes to cut down on the microphonics from the vibrations they generate within themselves.

[madmac]

I've seen all kinds of kooky stuff when it comes to audio. I dunno....Do a blind test for all these ideas and see once and for all for yourselves if they actually make a difference. My guess is that the results would be marginal at best.

[Alaric]

The noise from a speaker too close to a TT is quite audible. Also , the hunt for the best quality sound reproduction is a game of marginal improvements itself , otherwise , this would be a Bose forum.

[wkhanna]

Also , the hunt for the best quality sound reproduction is a game of marginal improvements itself , otherwise , this would be a Bose forum.

:roflmao:

Well put, Lee!

[Alaric]

Hi , Bill! I think I found the website for your Carver guru, Is this him? http://www.vintagehifipgh.com/

[impala454]

Oh ok I suppose I could see that with a turntable. A PS3 though? Come on. :P

[Alaric]

I have zero experience with the PS3 , and less anecdotal knowledge! For all I know the frenostat doesn't have jitter correction flubbery in it's doohickey.

[wkhanna]

Hi , Bill! I think I found the website for your Carver guru, Is this him? http://www.vintagehifipgh.com/

Yes, Lee.
That's Tom's shop website.
If you look here you can see some pics taken at this year's Carverfest. Of course Bob Carver himself is always in attendance bringing with him 'little' projects for the 'gang'. Page 4 of the thread in the 'link' has a very boring video of Bob Carver working on one of our friend's DIY amps. Only hardcore geeks can stand to watch the whole thing. :W

[madmac]

It is true as stated above that any small and minor difference makes a difference. Like upgrading patch cords for instance. The difference will be minor but it will be there in some small measure. Suspending components on the other hand I am very sceptical about. Only because it makes no logical sense that minor vibration would affect a components performance. I do not believe this has been adequately proven at all.

[Hdale85]

Well, lets forget vinyl for now because if you can't see how vibrations can affect that then I can't help you there. But a CD player has a laser that's rather sensitive, it's picking up tiny markers on the CD and any small vibration can create more "errors" that the player has to correct. From what I've found less error correcting generally improves sq as it's working from more real information rather then having more patched up by the error correcting process. Even small vibrations can cause errors to happen, just think back to when portable players had little to no error correction and had issues playing if you even slightly bumped the player.

With that being said, do I believe there is a difference? Heck yeah, on the other hand I'm not sure if I could hear a difference or if anyone could? Is it possible they could? I would say if every other piece of their system is perfectly meshed then maybe. But hey this is a DIY forum for the most part and we are all about over kill, so it's probably more of a peace of mind sort of thing.

[Alaric]

If you're already familiar with the sound process of records and TTs , skip this post.







I'll get vinyl. :B The stylus oscillates in response to the record grooves. Inside the (closed) cartridge the oscillations occur in an electromagnetic field. The oscillations within that field are the signal sent to the RIAA adaptor (phono pre). The stylus being necessarily sensitive to small inputs will pick up footsteps , loud TT motor , or give some awful feedback issues when the soundwaves of a nearby speaker induce their own vibration. It's trying to oscillate essentially the same signal from two seperate sources with a slight time delay on one and much less precision than the record grooves. At least that's how it was explained to me a bazillion years ago.

[Alaric]

we are all about over kill

That's a big :T

[chrispy35]

Well, lets forget vinyl for now because if you can't see how vibrations can affect that then I can't help you there. But a CD player has a laser that's rather sensitive, it's picking up tiny markers on the CD and any small vibration can create more "errors" that the player has to correct. From what I've found less error correcting generally improves sq as it's working from more real information rather then having more patched up by the error correcting process. Even small vibrations can cause errors to happen, just think back to when portable players had little to no error correction and had issues playing if you even slightly bumped the player.

The RAM buffering that every portable CD employs now is what's making the difference as I don't think the method of error correction has changed at all (still CIRC).

Chris P.

[Hdale85]

Yes that's true, but either way my point is still the same. Getting the most raw information off the disc is the best method of accurate reproduction.

[madmac]

Of course vinyl is very sensitive to vibration. However, hanging a turntable has it's inherent risks as well. I knew a friend once that placed his turntable and amp outside the listening room to avoid vibrations. I'm not sure it's such a big deal with digital audio though.

[Alaric]

Well , this hobby is populated with many different flavors of enthusiast.Some of us read the specs and declare a component good because the engineers said it was.Some of us ignore the specs and declare the sound good because it pleases us. And some of us (most , probably) try to combine the two and hope for the best. Without a truly unlimited budget there will always be those of us looking for tweaks within the compromises of finance , room size/shape , WAF , kids , etc..