To isolate, cancel, or absorb vibrations?

gidrah

Howdy folks. I plan on building a rack for my 2-ch rig, but would like your input as to vibrations.

I've noticed some products use spikes while some use gels and rubber & cork. To me, this seems diametric. I also wonder about the influence of speakers. If your speakers are spiked to the floor would you want to spike your electronics to the same floor via a rack? What about floating your components? It seems like you'd not get the benefits of anchoring, but you also wouldn't absorb any vibrations from other components.

I'm curious as to your feelings and/or experience.

dorokusai

I believe in a combination for gear and/or speakers. I use a bunch of products from Bright Star Audio for isolation and resonance control on the electronics. I plan to use speaker plinths for the SDA's.

The isolation gear helped alot for my SACD, which was getting a tremendous amount of vibration and resonance when playing music at speed....partly due simply to it's location. I had no control over the location, but could attack the other issues. It helped audibly. That is what originally got me hooked, and while I don't think that the air suspension(BSA Air Mass 19) on my amplifier has made any audible difference, I do feel good about its purchase, and unknown effect. It certainly hasn't made it sound worse.

I use a BSA Little Rock 4(Weight), BSA Air Mass 3 and a BSA Big Rock 4(Sand Filled) for the SACD. I use a BSA Air Mass 3 for the Pre-Amp. My stand is going to be shot filled, when I get it this week.

I refuse to drill into the SDA's, so beings they did not come factory equiped with a Bass Brace, have decided on speaker plinths. This will couple them to the floor, and should certainly improve bass response.

I guess you have to pick your battles, test some things out on your own, to really decide if any of these products do achieve peformance improvements.

I like them, they work for me, and I will continue to utilize them.

Happy Hunting

madmax

I am just getting into this aspect but it seems there are a lot of different scenerios. Sometimes you want to transfer the vibration from a component to something higher mass so the component doesn't cause a problem to itself and other times you want to isolate it to keep external vibrations from affecting the component in question.

Doro,
It is my understanding that the bass brace is used to clean up the midrange more than the bass. With the larger SDA's with all those drivers at the top vibrate back and forth and cause midrange problems. At least that is my take on it after reading the manual. I have not used the braces though.

madmax

dorokusai

Max - Ah, ok....either way it's a good idea. Midrange is the word I couldn't remember in relation to the BB, thanks.

Spikes or the Bass Brace were recommended by Polk depending on model and application.