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In a possible space saving and redisplaying exercise Im thinking of stacking my line stage on top of my cd player.To be honest I'm in two minds regarding the audible benefits of isolating/coupling equipment. But like most of us I I've bought over the years a number of aftermarket accessories in the pursuit of improved performance . At present I have a 1" thick sheet of black delrin under my klyne pre. one set of black diamond cones and 3 DH squares under my cd player along with some (12) small medium hard rubber like feet brought and recommended to me in by a high end dealer in England in the early 90s . I'm wondering what other members have used with good results when having to stacked equipment. Or is it always a bad idea? Thanks.
Follow Ups:
I ran into this issue when I stacked my MSB DAC and the Power Base (they have a very short connecting cord that requires stacking the units on each other) They have the standard issue small rubber feet. Even though I have a nice equipment rack, the sound was not very good compared to the turntable (harsh, flat, and a bit brittle, typical of digital).
I had had good results with Mapleshade brass cone-points(Heavyfoots) under other equipment, so I installed a trio under the DAC onto the Power Base.
The results were stunning! The sound immediately became much smoother, more analog-like, very nicely detailed, in a relaxed, naturally musical-way. Strangely, putting a second set under the Power Base yeilded very little additional benefit.
Give them a try (Mapleshade offers a 30-day trial period)
I suggest you check out Mapleshade Records'(www.mapleshaderecords.com)set of 3 "Heavyfoot" brass feet to drain vibration from your equipment and a set of 3 :Heavyhat" brass weights for the top of the equipment with the brass footers. Cheap they ain't , with the footers going for $95 per set & $65 for the Heavyhat hemispherical weights. But everything Mapleshade sells goes with a 30 day satisfaction guaranty or you money back. The footers and Heavyhat weights are the best $165 I've ever spent improving the sonics of my system. I applied those to my new Onkyo CD player and was absolutely AMAZED at the improvement in what Doug Sax's 1992 digital remaster of Dark "Side of The Moon" sounded like ! It was as tho I'd never heard it before. Way-WAY Recommended ! Incidently, I have NO connection with Mapleshade Records.
You have found the value of vibration control and have obviously put some time into experimenting to find your best mix. When you stack you add the vibrations of both setups, so it's never a better idea for sonics. Why would you want to do that, after you've already spent the time and money to try to control vibrations?
If you must do this for some reason, or are determined to do so for some aesthetic concerns, then you will need to isolate the two components from one another as effectively as possible. While this sounds easy, it isn't automatically so.
For example, lots of isolators are effective vertical "springs" in the physics sense. Elastomers of all kinds fit that bill. But adding more than one vertical spring to a stack often is worse than not adding the second (or third) one.
So if you have to do the above, use only ONE highly effective vertical spring and place it between the components, IMHO. Maybe a vertical spring and a constrained layer shelve together. But not more than that!
I have no direct experience with BD feet and DH Cones, but suspect that they both couple (they're hard as I recall) and dissipate at the same time, but mostly they're hard, so I'd view them as primarily couplers. Delrin as I recall is simlar to Teflon, and I have no idea what its sonic attributes might be. The rubber feet are undoubtedly vertical springs and are probably your weakest link of all. Consider replacing those with a very good elastomer, such as Herbie's material or Norsorex (my favorite) balls. Herbies is at herbiesaudiolabs.com and he's a very good source of information. Norsorex (dead, sad, unhappy) balls can be gotten for good prices (if you ask for only the Norsorex and not the pair with superballs!) from Arbor Scientific, or alternately from Edmund Scientific over the Web.
If you can afford them the new Symposium shelves with the separate top quadrants should be very good. If you can't, there are so many effective DIY recipes here on Tweaks Asylum that I won't bother repeating them.
FWIW, I use combinations: vertical isolation with Norsorex, symp clone shelves that act as "seismic sinks", and horizontal/rotational coupling roller ball clones. YMMV....
Thanks for the excellent reply bartc. Certainly food for thought. The rubber like feet I mentioned my in fact be some sort of elastomer ( isn't that just a type of stretchy rubber?) I really need to contact the dealer I bought them from years ago and get more info. I know he swore by them and he sold really esoteric stuff. The delrin was recommended to me by Savant Audio who seem to rate it very highly as an isolation platform. Its certainly expensive enough! They mention its used in nuclear subs! to help reduce vibrations. i have no idea if that true but thought it worth trying when I saw a off cut cheap on ebay. I'm keen to try the Norsorex balls and possible the Symposium shelves/pads. Any thoughts about stillpoint cones? thanks again.
I have no experience with stillpoints, though they are generally rated very highly. I recall a very good comparison of a number of commercial products, including stillpoints and DH cones and BDR cones, but not which magazine or online journal it was in. Can't help there.
Delrin is a compound with very similar physical properties to Teflon, as I recall, but that's for bearing type use. I know nothing of its chemical structure nor its vibrational aspects. I don't see anyone recommending Teflon or other related compounds for vibe controls, just for their excellent dielectric capacities, which doesn't relate to your use at all. Delrin, like Teflon, is used in bearings where you want good non-sticking sliding characteristics. Can't see how that relates to vibes as a shelf, though. Maybe just my ignorance.
Norsorex IS used for vibrational isolation in nuclear micrography. That's about as close a facsimile to its useful propreties in audio as you're going to get, IMHO. And it truly works that way. When you use Norsorex, you get a startling reacting. They usually sell them as pairs with superballs, which are very energy springy elastomers. You drop the superball and it bounces to almost the height from which it was dropped, thus demonstrating that it only temporarily stores the energy, then very efficiently returns it in the opposite direction. NOT what you want for audio, where you want the energy converted to heat instead of vibrations. When you drop the companion "dead" ball, the Norsorex, it hits the floor and stays there absolutely still! It dissipates the energy almost completely, and that's exactly what you want for audio.
In a different way, Symp and cloned constrained layer sandwiches also conver the vibes to heat at the interface of each successive layer (each of which has different resonate frequencies). It's more of a "seismic sink", as in "heat sink" if you know your physics, and here the vibes are converted to friction, not returned to the system as vibrational energy. Since they don't act as springs (to my thinking), the work well with Norsorex or other vertical springs and don't interfere, IME. If you used two springy elastomers or two actual springs they would pogo stick in the very worst way interacting with one another, which is exactly what you don't want.
Does that make any sense to you?
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