When is isolation bad? When it overdamps.

marvda1

Hear me out, Skip came by to drop something off for me to review. He made the comment that my system had become a little dead sounding. We tried changing cables, then dacs, then removing my homemade bass traps and sat there for a while and he asked me if I had isoacoustic isopucks under all my components. Of course yes was the answer, so we started by taking them out from under the Mastersound Compact 845. WOW! back comes dynamics, liveliness, larger sound stage. After he left I took the isopucks from under the transport and dac and I get better harmonics and musical texture.

I summed up what had happened was I put isopucks under one of my components with a positive result and then went crazy adding them to one component after another not noticing that I was sucking the life out of my system.

Morale, don't over damp your system, too much of a good thing can be bad and if you do it a little at a time you will not notice it.

It helped a lot that Skip had heard my system before I had the isopucks and later after I had added them to the system. Keep bringing in good ears, it takes a village

displayname

marvda1 wrote: »

Keep bring in good ears, it takes a village

Probably the best advice on the internet.

treitz3

Danny did the same thing at LSAF. Not with isopucks but with room treatments. He was tearing down the room while still listening to the rig set up and he had mentioned that he didn't realize it until he was tearing it all down and heard the difference.

Tom

BlueFox

I did that in my HT with acoustic panels on the walls. After removing them from the side walls, and ceiling, but leaving them on the rear wall it was fine.

Gardenstater

I think those "isopucks" can actually cause a vibration hump (vibration transmission boost) at their resonant frequencies. Above the resonant frequency the vibration transmission drops rapidly. That may be what improved your system when the pucks were removed.

marvda1

tube people listen, tubes are the same way, they degrade slowly over time and your ears adjust so you won't notice it until you replace with new tubes.

joecoulson

Did you leave them on the one component that you heard a difference on to begin with?

marvda1

i think it started when i put the gaias on my speakers, that i liked so much i went full on buying isopucks putting them under the components.

they have the oreas now which are suppose to be better than the isopucks and designed for audio components but i'm not going to put out the cash to try them, gaias were expensive enough.

joecoulson

Interesting
So I have the bronze (lightest) ones under the G1 and did notice a subtle difference. But nothing that was dull sounding.
The Gaia’s definitely made big steps on my setup.
But the biggest difference by far was replacing my TT feet with the isopods. Much darker background.
Synergy is everything I guess.

marvda1

i had five under the mastersound and it made a big difference when we took them off.
i didn't take them from under the transport and dac until after skip left. didn't make as big of a difference as the amp.
dac and transport was more subtle i just noticed better harmonics and instrument textures.

erniejade

Marv, this kind of goes along with Robert's ( star sound ) theory's on his racks.

miner

I had experienced a similar 'viola' moment with my Bryston BCD-3 CDP. I had Stillpoint Ultra 5s under it and felt a bit was missing. I replaced the Ultra 5s with Ultra minis and the dynamics returned.