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In Reply to: RE: Can Passive Dedicated Line Conditioners Benefit Sonically from Proper Vibration Mgmt? posted by stehno on October 31, 2014 at 18:50:36
Stehno,
Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive response. I find speaker vibration degrades the performance of components in the same room unless they are uncoupled so I moved most of mine to an adjoining room (connected through holes in the common wall) where they sit on three-inch maple blocks screwed through little maple squares, holes in the carpet and under-felt into the sub-floor. Intuitively your clamps make all the sense in the world to me and I must attempt a do-it-yourself solution for as many of my components as possible.
Have you investigated substituting nylon for stainless-steel screws in your heavy electrical-use components? I did it throughout my 70-watt LFD LE 4 Integrated Amplifier and was rewarded with substantial reductions in EMI distortion every time; particularly after replacing the four little screws holding the interconnect-input unit to the interior of the aluminum back. Given your power levels, the pay-off in EMI distortion-reduction would likely be much greater.
DG
Follow Ups:
No and I don't understand where the performance gains could stem from. That is since much of the entire chassis is already made up of steel or aluminum.
My first inclination is to believe that if there were any gains, perhaps when you installed the new screws and tightened them down you were making the component more rigid than previously.
I say this is a possibility because quality control is a real issue with some mfg'ers when they assemble their products. I do only two things to a product when I receive it and before it goes into my rack. 1) I open the top and bottom (if possible) plates to tightend down every last screw I can find inside to ensure tight coupling everywhere. 2) I install a cryo-treated fuse.
I've opened up component tops where the pcb boards were literally teeting on their mounting posts, the screws were so loose. In another with similar issues, there was even a loose screw floating on the bottom and I never did find out where it belonged.
Some mfg'ers are quite good at quality control. Of my last round of components received, every screw had already been torqued down to a very tight level and I could barely tighten the screws any more.
This may be naive of me (I have no formal engineering background) but I simply look upon EMI as another effect or derivative of undercontrolled vibrations by the distortions they induce. Ultimately, I don't know but with the levels of performance I've been able to attain, I've had no desire nor felt the need to dril down into the specfic EMI rabbit hole.
Ultimately, I see every last high-end audio system as being built on a foundation and it is quality of that foundation that ultimately determines the performance of every system. A proper foundation consists of proper AC/electrical mgmt and especially proper vibraiton mgmt.
I emphasize proper to imply there is an improper foundation that consists of undercontrolled AC/electrical and especially undercontrolled vibration mgmt.
And just as a building structure's ultimate performance is determined by the foundation upon which it's built, so too with every last playback system.
An improper foundation automatically implies a very low performance-limiting governor while the proper foundation implies the performance-limiting governor has been lifted and the performance of every component soars far past the levels even the designer imagined.
Let me try this another way. Every last playback system requires 2 basic energies to even function at all i.e. AC and vibrations. Yet, when undercontrolled, these same 2 basic energies will utterly destroy every last component's peformance potential.
How's that?
Stehno,
Thank you. That's absolutely clear and I completely agree with your comments re. the importance of AC and vibration.
Having spent so much time now on minimizing the fringing effects of the internal Toroidal transformer of my amplifier and the magnets of mid-range/ woofer speakers and even the mid-range and woofer inductors of the internal cross-over inductors. Then moved on to reducing the large levels of distortion created by stainless-steel/ ferrous screws on components and speakers, I have concluded that EMI is at least the equal of either of those two in the degradation stakes. (see attached image for fringing)
Started without any assumption just testing Ultraperm 80 (hyrodgen-annealed MuMetal) against MagnetShield on the transformer and then on the speaker magnets/ inductors. Testing brass screws against nylon to see what the music revealed to the ears versus originals was easy except mine were all Metric and difficult to size for mail-ordering. Minimizing most of the fringing effect maximized clarity from the amplifier and produced decidedly more slam/ crackle/ snap/ pop from the speakers; the fatiguing/ detail-concealing onion layers of EMI distortion created by ferrous/ stainless-steel wood/ machine screws holding magnetism that interfered with optimum performance of signal or AC through neighboring parts was a revelation. I had no point of view, expected nothing particularly, just had an open mind and ears to hear. I understand your reluctance. Perhaps knowing far less than you in advance, I had no resistance to overcome...
DG
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