Planar Speaker Asylum Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Planar Speaker Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Pure cotton batting is a good alternative.

Posted by Al Sekela (A) on April 21, 2007 at 17:52:45

In Reply to: Re: Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer that was. posted by wazoo on April 21, 2007 at 16:00:26:

Quartz is the natural crystalline form of silicon dioxide, SiO2. This is a wide bandgap semiconductor that acts as an almost ideal insulator at room temperature. It is grown on silicon to form the gate insulator in MOSFET transistors, such as the millions of transistors working in the integrated circuits inside your computer as you read this. The tremendous advances in packing density of transistors, that have led to cheap home computers with processing power that would have been considered in the realm of supercomputers a decade ago, would not have been possible without the superior dielectric properties of SiO2.

The granular nature of Repti-Sand is responsible for the acoustic damping properties. Other granular materials might have similar acoustic damping properties, but would not have the benign dielectric properties of SiO2. I would NOT recommend alternative granular materials to damp crossover components.

Cotton is a very good insulator for audio, and, as a natural fiber, has a broad range of individual fiber sizes. This makes it useful for acoustic damping in cases where the audio signal will be exposed to its dielectric properties. It is less convenient, as it has to be wrapped around heavy components tightly to exert effective damping. It could be stuffed in to existing crossover spaces if done with care not to break the wires.

If you are concerned about sand, cotton would be a good material for experiments. Look for the 100% natural cotton batting, sold in fabric stores for use inside baby blankets and the like. Some of the batting is cotton mixed with polyester for strength. Polyester is not as good a dielectric, so use 100% cotton if you can get it.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---