Dynamating My Baskets

I've got four square feet, so I should have plenty. I was going to do my fronts and center, and the covers on the AVR and conditioner (frames if there is room to do so). Then do the surrounds if I have enough. Haven't had the SC-05 or Monster conditioner open yet, so I don't know how much room is inside to apply it yet. The AVR looks pretty packed from looking through the vents. The lid is 50% vented, so I should have enough clearance to do the solid un-vented parts of the lid, at least.

Once I'm inside the SC-05, I'll look to see if there is room to install an AC socket so I can upgrade the power cord. It's not removable on that model.

When I used to post multiple pics, they would show up as thumbnails. Now if I post one pic, it shows up as full size, but if I post multiple pics they show up as links without thumbnails. To make this thread easier to follow, I'm just going to post one pic per post and make multiple posts. Otherwise known as being a post ****.

Dynamat/RTi8's

With Dynamating my Blu-ray player, upgrading it's power cord, upgrading speaker cables and building acoustic panels, each time I had that Ah-Ha moment when I said, "Oh yeah, I undoubtedly can hear a difference." I'm going to be honest here, I didn't have that moment after doing the baskets in the RTi8's. I'm not really sure I can hear a difference. I have two theories as to why and I welcome thoughts and opinions.

Theory #1
The larger the driver, the larger the basket. The larger the basket, the longer the spokes. The longer the spokes, the more ringing it will have and the more you will notice a difference after applying Dynamat. My speaker have small drivers/baskets which make it less noticeable.

Theory #2
Volume/loudness level. I don't play music at loud levels (small room/sitting about eight feet away from front speakers). After buying Doug's speaker cables (excellent upgrade for me), I immediately noticed how much better the music sounded at lower levels and have since been playing music at lower volume at about -30. That number is deceiving because after calibrating my AVR, the MCACC set my front speakers to around -6 in the speaker level settings. So that -30 is actually not as loud as you might think. My thinking is the louder you play the music, the more you will notice the difference after applying Dynamat. I play movies around -23. So I'm betting that I will benefit more during HT use.

This is how I look at it. I may do one tweak and it may not result in a noticeable difference, but if I do five tweaks that individually result in a little difference, once you combine all of them, it might show a sizable difference once combined. I'll say this, every speaker and electronic component I buy in the future will get the Dynamat treatment. It doesn't cost a lot. It just takes time. And to anyone thinking about doing this, it is time consuming! And it doesn't do your back and knees any favors if you do it on the floor as I did.

Pioneer SC-05

After finishing the RTi8's, I disconnected my SC-05 and pulled it out. The lid actually seems really solid due to the ample amount of screws on the top, sides and back. I didn't hear any ringing, but wanted to apply Dynamat where I could. After removing the top, I saw that there really wasn't much room for it. Some of the boards come within a couple millimeter from the lid, and it has a lot of bracing that contacts the lid. I was able to to apply three pieces. One strip to each of the lid's sides and one square piece to the top portion.

Didn't notice any difference in sound, but like I said, I didn't hear a ringing before applying it.

Pioneer BDP-51FD

Next I took apart my Blu-ray player. I started a thread last summer after I got it and applied some Dynamat to it. I know there are members here with that same player so here is the thread with pictures:
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?151519-My-Dynamat-Blu-ray-Player-Art-Project

I strongly recommend doing this. Applying Dynamat to my source yielded the most drastic results of all my Dynamating. This time I removed the power supply board and was able to apply a good amount below it and was also able to get underneath the optical drive from the opposite side from last time. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it is very difficult to find areas to apply it on the frame, so this really helped. I also applied a few more small pieces to the lips that come up one the sides of the frame that the lid screws to. This really is a great player. Blu-rays look and sound amazing. I know DVDs aren't known for picture quality compared to Blu-rays, but it does an amazing job with DVDs also. I have a Sony upscaling DVD player and there is no comparison between the two. And music CDs are crystal clear and detailed.