The Mana effect explained?

Posted by: Nic Peeling on 20 September 2000

Since I first heard the Mana effect at a friend's house I have been intrigued as to how Mana have managed to create a support system that makes such a dramatic improvement to sound quality. I am a scientist by training and it nagged away at me. About a week ago I had an idea about the principles involved. I have applied Occam's Razor (does the hypothesis explain all the observable aspects to which the hypothesis relates) and my idea passes with flying colours. I was then a bit concerned about publishing information which Mana (and some other manufacturers) use as trade secrets. I wish no one any harm, but I come from a background where the free publication of information is the norm, so have decided to publish my hypothesis:

The problem: electronic components are microphonic, and turntables and CD transports are adversly affected by mechanical vibrations. There are three main sources of vibrations:

(1) the equipment directly absorbs sound from the air which is excited by the speakers;

(2) transformers and CD/turntable motors, create vibrations internal to the equipment;

(3) vibrations can travel up the supports from the floor to the equipment.

My hypothesis: the Mana effect works by absorbing (not isolating) mechanical energy. The sound bases micro-vibrate turning vibrations into (small) amounts of heat. The higher phase (more sound bases) the rack is, the more efficiently it absorbs the energy. Effectively the sound bases act as a mechanical earth. The Mana racks are designed to carry vibrations from the equipment to the mechanical earth as efficiently as possible - hence the highly resonant, rigid structure of the racks.

A few examples of the application of Occam's Razor:

- CDX/CDS players metal feet sitting on glass shelves provides a poor mechanical coupling from the eqipment to the rack, so the vibrations cannot efficiently reach the mechanical earth. Adding the rubber pads to the metal feet solves the problem.

- Nordost pulsar points act on exactly the same energy absorbtion principle, which explains why they work so well.

- The Townsend sesimic sink stuff has too little internal damping to work really well, and is very set-up dependent (because the main effect comes from the absorption through some damping, rather than the isolation effect).

- Sand/shot filled racks such as those from Elemental Audio Reference absorb energy well and hence sound very good.

Hope you find this interesting.

Nic P

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by David Hobbs-Mallyon

Nic,

I have also found Pulsar Points to be beneficial with my set-up.

Out of interest, could you explain what the Mana effect sounds like, and in your opinion, how does it compare with Pulsar Points. Vuk has said that he compares it with an upgrade from 102 to 52. Pulsar points have a certain effect, but not like 102 to 52, and certainly not the same as a component upgrade.

David

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by John Channing

Nic,
That is a fascinating insight. I have long considered that I understood approximately how the Mana stand worked, but you seem to have added the final pieces for me. A useful analogy would be with a tuning fork, the prongs are like your equipment vibrating about and the bit at the bottom (don't know the techical term) is like the stand. When you place the bottom of the tuning fork against a resonant object, energy is drawn out of the fork and makes whatever it is touching vibrate. The same is true with the Mana stand, it gives a means of sinking vibrations to ground as you point out. The use of Soundbases has always mystified me slightly, but I can add some evidence to back up your theory. If the Mana stand just worked as a mechanical sink then placing it on a solid concrete or stone floor should give the best results since you have a large mass to sink energy into with little chance of any of those vibrations producing a big enough amplitude to be able to feed back into the stand from the floor. Apparently though, the Mana stand works better on a suspended wooden floor and the Soundbases have a most pronounced effect when used on a concrete floor.
Further, I would add this. Generally speaking mechanical vibrations find it easier to travel from hard to soft material i.e. glass->metal->wood. The Mana stands don't work so well if you use an MDF support instead of glass under your equipment (this point is not personal experience it is paraphrasing John Watson) and also therefore has some ability to attentuate vibrations coming up from the floor i.e. it also provides some isolation.

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Nic Peeling

I have compared 2 shelves, supported by 3 pulsar points each, supporting a CDX, vs Phase 4 Mana. The effect was very similar in nature (but the Mana was a slightly more pronounced effect). I have heard Phase 6 vs Phase 4 Mana and know that Phase 6 would blow the pulsar points away.

I agree with Vuk about the extreme effect Mana has, but I would not personally say it is like a component upgrade. For me it is an improvement of a completely different form, which I find it hard to describe. The best I can say is that without Mana or pulsar points the sounds seems to have an almost artificial bloom (a bit like a metallic echo), which good supports strip away leaving a much more realistic and much less tiring (to listen to for long periods) sound. For me the change made a greater difference to my listening pleasure than any component upgrade I have ever made - even though the difference was less like the sort of improvement I had experienced as I upgraded my components.

Words seem very inadequate for getting across my meaning!

Nic P

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Tony L

quote:
The best I can say is that without Mana or pulsar points the sounds seems to have an almost artificial bloom (a bit like a metallic echo), which good supports strip away leaving a much more realistic and much less tiring (to listen to for long periods) sound.

I agree with the above, an awful lot of mush gets into the sound when using lesser tables. Mana seems to radically drop the noise floor, making everything clearer, more dynamic, and less constrained musically. Mana for me is equally 'round' and 'flat' earth, the timing and pitch information is far easier to differentiate, and there is more low level information such as the acoustic of the recording environment / spatial effects. The effect is broadband too, treble, mid, and bass information sounds equally clearer and more open.

I have never heard Pulsar Points.

Tony.

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Mick P

Nic

First of all, let me say that your letter was very interesting.

I am totally uneducated in terms of electronics and vibration etc and hence I can only judge a product by my ears.

I really rate Naim and I have ordered a Mana platform for delivery in late October when I return from my hols. I am hoping that Mana is as good as everyone says it is and will make it all sound even better.

I am able to hide the Mana away in my wall unit (I still think its bloody ugly)and I have a question for you.

Assuming that your theory is correct......does it matter what surface the Mana platform is placed on. eg do you expect it to be OK for me to stand the Mana platform on my very heavy wall unit which is mounted on castors and can be wobbled if I push and pull on it. In other words, it's heavy but relatively unstable.

I know the resultant sound is the best test but I would be interested to hear your views.

Regards

Mick

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Nic Peeling

Mick

One of the reasons I hope Mana will not be harmed by my publishing what I think is the basis for the Mana effect is that the actual design of the sound bases is probably based on a large amount of trial and error to optimise the energy absorbtion properties. In doing their design optimisation I expect they worked on two scenarios - solid floors and suspended floors. You are putting the Mana kit in an environment that will be sub-optimal. However, a heavy unstable base will not stop the micro-vibrations so they will still work to some degree - probably quite well ... give it a try.

Nic P

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Bob Edwards

Nic--

Interesting stuff--perhaps the reason I am not that enthralled with Mana (102 to 52--yeah right !) is that I have always had my system in a room with a concrete floor. I have never heard Mana devastate other high quality racks, which has led me to believe Vuk, TF and others are searching for a very particular sound that Mana enables. (This also explains Vuk's love for the P9, but that is another story :-))

Thanks for musing--very interesting !

Cheers,

Bob

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Bob Edwards

Vuk--

I wonder if the difference in flooring type accounts for our (wildly) different takes on Mana ? Since I have not tried it on wooden floors (and correct me if I am wrong--you have not tried it on concrete floors) this might well explain the disparity in our reactions. As Joe Petrik may have told you, we have swapped some email and generally agree with each other on our observations of different gear, while at the same time assigning different reactions to those observations.

What do you think ?

Cheers,

Bob

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Greg Beatty

quote:

I am so thrilled to be able to just kick back, listen to music and enjoy it without a thought of what the hi-if is or isn't doing, just the way I did with my old Planet/Nait3R/NHTs

Hummm...

Gear cost a lot less than your current gear and did the business WITHOUT sitting on M**a.

Kinda makes you wonder...

- GregB
Freedom is not in finding the Holy Grail but in stopping the search for it

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Arthur Bye

quote:
Let's accept that one way or another it prevents microphony. If it does that by absorbing energy, in a sense the equipment IS isolated. My question is "Do components other than sources and pre-amps benefit ?

The problem with all this is that there are several posts in the Mana Forum about this.

If microphonics was the source of the problem, simply putting your gear in another room should solve it.

If you put your speakers in a separate room from the rest of your gear you still get the "Mana Effect" from their rack. JW doesn't seem to offer any complete answer on this either.

Go figure.

All I know is that it works, so I'm using it.

Arthur Bye

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by John G.

My question is "Do components other than sources and pre-amps benefit?"

I would say all pieces of hi-fi would benefit from Mana, including power supplies and power amps.

"so if there is a good reason to have TWO mana racks, do tell!"

If you have bad floors, small children and want to get the tt at a nicer height a Wall Shelf makes sense. I used to have slight footfall problems when jumping near the tt, with the wall shelf this is no longer a problem at all.

One or more amp racks could then be used for the rest of the gear. I guess it just depends on your budget and long-term goals.

I would inquire on the Mana forum, they're very helpful. JW usually suggest starting with a Sound Frame for your source as a low risk taste of what Mana can do and go from there. It worked for me!

Cheers,
John

[This message was edited by John Gilleran on THURSDAY 21 September 2000 at 02:37.]

[This message was edited by John Gilleran on THURSDAY 21 September 2000 at 02:44.]

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Martin Payne

My dealer reckons that the sinking of vibrational energy received through the air is actually a relatively easy task for a stand. Naim cases are quite decoupled from the innards for this reason.

Moving the gear into another room is not the full solution. Good stands are also required.

His theory is that mains hum and perhaps vibrations from other components (e.g. capacitors) are generated inside the boxes and must be sunk.

Why would a capacitor vibrate? The voltage across the plates of the capacitor will generate a force, which will vary with the voltage, creating a vibration which varies in time with the musical signal.

cheers, Martin

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by David Dever

quote:
BTW--given the importance of setup with these racks and taking into account my obsessive compulsive tendencies with fasteners and levels, it could also be that I have my Reference Table tuned better than anyone on Earth.

...because the nut/spike tightness is such a huge part of the equation. An over-tightened or out-of-square Mana table does itself no favors as regards tunefulness.

David Dever, NANA

Posted on: 20 September 2000 by Arthur Bye

quote:
This means that on one level, there is 40% vibration remaining. If you add another level, you reduce the remaining 40% by another 60%, or a 24% improvement (which is much smaller than the first 60% improvement). The third level would be 60% of the remaining 16%, or 9.6%, which is obviously smaller again. Clearly, these returns diminish very rapidly, and by the time you have 5 or 6 levels (as some people seem to do), the effect should not be noticeable (relative to the first level).

Ross: If you check around the Mana Forum there seems to be a consensus that tangible benefits from additional soundstages are most noticeable at stage 2, stage 4 and stage 7. Can't begin to imagine what JW's stage 17 sounds like though.

There don't seem to be comments regarding diminshing returns with added levels either.

I've also seen several posts from JW(and others) indicating that there are tangible sonic benefits in having your power supplies and amps on Mana stands as well. I'm less sold on the speaker stands though.

I've also noticed that if you want to demonstrate the effect that the stand has it's pretty easy to do. Just push the glass shelf and source (cd player) back far enough so they touch the metal framework and you lose your "Mana Effect"

Arthur Bye

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Naheed

Just thought i'd add my tuppence...

I am upto Phase 4 (pre/amps/*cap), and Phase 5 (source/xover), moving through the various Phases was a revelation to say the least.

Phase 4 is where you start to rethink things seriously !!!

Each Soundstage/level brings ever greater detail, it 'cleans' your audio-window further each time...

naheed...

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Steve Catterall

Its funny how the people who are most vocal about why mana can't work are the people who have hardly listened to it, if at all.

It always seems to boil down to - 'if I can't explain it in terms I understand, then it doesn't happen'. Typical blinkered scientist attitudes

Vuk wants to know how it works - but also seems to be able to accept the fact that it works despite the fact he can't completely explain it

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Tony L

I find two things strange with Mana:

The massive significance of the nut tightness to the sound. Why?
The fact it is tuned to a quite narrow-band resonance - the 'note' the stand rings at when correctly set up. What is happening here?

I understand the top shouldn't rattle for obvious reasons, but why the need for a tuned note. I have no idea at all why the music goes hard grainy and aggressive with flawed timing when the nuts are over-tightened.

I can generate all the elements that the people who hate the 'Mana effect' describe by over-tightening the nuts, and not tuning the top correctly. I also hate this 'bad Mana' effect, though I love it when it is working as it is designed to.

The big question that really needs to be asked, is why is (even really expensive) hi-fi so poorly isolated that a stand can probably account for about 35% of its performance. The need for isolation or whatever this effect is has been conclusively proved, why is it not designed in to components from the start. I still have this naïve view that hi-fi is simply a tool in the way a knife, fork, or spoon is… it should just work, not require 'race tuning' before you can enjoy music without some form of distortion or distraction.

Tony.

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Mark Packer

Perhaps the Mana effect works in both directions.

Sinking vibrations out of the equipment *and* not transmitting vibrations up from the floor/wall into the equipment.

If this were the case then it might go some way to explaining the apparent lack of exponetial decay on the effect as one adds more levels.

Also, although Nic P. says:
"- The Townsend sesimic sink stuff has too little internal damping to work really well, and is very set-up dependent (because the main effect comes from the absorption through some damping, rather than the isolation effect)."

I'm sure that the Townshend "isolation from the environment" idea does have an effect. (The SS under my Townshend Rock III TT, does have a +ve effect, even on a wall mounted shelf.) The seismic sink, as I understand it, works by isolating the device from the environmental, primarily structural bourne vibration, rather than sinking the equipment generated/bourne vibration to ground.

Maybe Mana does both

regards,

MarkÊ

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by John Channing

quote:
Perhaps the Mana effect works in both directions.
Sinking vibrations out of the equipment *and* not transmitting vibrations up from the floor/wall into the equipment.

Yes this was what I suggested in my first post. The use of materials of different mechanical stiffness and the impedance match between them allows vibrations to flow more easily from glass to steel to wood than in the reverse direction. Remember also, that most structural vibrations are at very low frequencies, generally less than 50hz and that the resonant modes of the stand are probably much higher than that.

Seismic sink type stands are likely to be less effective because they effectively create a closed system for the hifi equipment to operate in and often this is not the best approach for equipment contain transformers or motors that generate vibrations. These vibrations cannot escape to earth because the stand is not heavy enough to act as an effective sink and the decoupling is probably not able to absorbent enough.

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by John Channing

The range of Mana stands is huge, covering all sorts of different sizes. Given that they all seem to work in a similar manner, this tends to suggest that the mechanism by which the stand works is not dependent on size. This in turn suggests that the stand is not tuned to resonate at a particular frequency because this frequency would be directly related to the size and shape of the stand. The design must be dependent therefore only on the tube type, angle iron in this case, and the way they are welded together.

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Greg Beatty

...but might bore you to tears (:D) is that other stand manufacturers have produced metal/spike/glass frames and these stands do not seem to approach the result of Mana's stands.

So...an explanation of the Mana Effect (TM) must account for this difference. If the theory would apply equally to Mana stands and the competitors, then the explanation is incomplete.

It is this very fact that has me on the brink of ordering a 4-tier Mana rack. My DIY efforts are good, and are exceptional in value (hey, tiny cost), but I doublt I'm ever going to nail it like Mana has.

- GregB
Freedom is not in finding the Holy Grail but in stopping the search for it

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by bob atherton

Quote:

Thanks for this information. For the reasons I've given above, I think that this is inconsistent with the idea that Mana tables absorb or damp vibration. It seems to me that to produce a bigger
effect at, say, stage 7 than stage 1, there must be something being added, not removed.

Ross,

I don't follow your logic here. If I take an analogy of sound insulation board. I sure we all would expect 7 layers to be more efective than 1 layer. In this case something extra is being taken away at each stage, or am I missing the point?

I am very curious as I have 2 Sound Frames & may yet want to buy some more.

Bob

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Allan Probin

Nic,

I've been giving this quite a bit of thought myself recently and managed to come up with exactly same three sources of vibration, namely:

- internal
- external, from the air
- external, from the floor

(Although you may have missed one other source, vibration from other pieces of equipment in the same rack.)

However, you've gone one step further as I couldn't explain why the mana-effect should be increased by adding more levels when the equipment concerned was located in a separate room. I like your mechanical earth theory, it makes sense to me.

I really need to try some decent stands, which I havn't done so far, so everything I say below is pure conjecture. I currently have two DIY racks, one for the heavy-duty stuff (XPS, Supercap, NAP250) and a separate rack for the CDS2 and NAC82.

I think Mana has a good chance of working well for my 'heavies' rack but not for my 'source' rack. Let me explain.

All the equipment is effectively in another room. In my case it's a large walk-in cupboard under the stairs, fitted with a glazed door so I can use the remote with the door closed. Not only does this substantially remove a source of airbourne vibration, but as it's on a separate section of floor, it substantially reduces the source of vibration that would normally arrive via the floor. Therefore the only significant source of vibration left is that generated internally within the equipment itself.

This is why I think mana has less of a chance of being effective within my CDS2/82 rack, because not only has external vibration been largely eliminated, but the NAC82 won't have a particularly high level of internal vibration (certainly not compared to, say, the NAP250) and the CDS2 addresses this problem anyway - the motor is isolated from the chassis and the chassis is isolated from the circuit boards. And not only this, but the fact that the power amp & power supplies are in their own rack will also contribute to an inherently low vibration factor within the source rack.

A number of people have commented that the high-end Naim equipment (CDS and 52) benefits less from the mana-effect than the lower equipment (no doubt because these top components do address the vibration problem effectively). It seems that mana does have a kind of 'signature' sound which is more than compensated for by improvements elsewhere when using lesser Naim equipment (ie the positives outweigh the negatives), but at the CDS2/52 level where potential vibrational improvements are not as great (ie the negatives outway the positives) a more 'inert' stand like Hutter seems more appropriate.

So in conclusion, and conjecturing wildly, I have this theory that with my setup a mix and match approach may be best. Mana for the power-amp/power supply rack, Hutter for the CDS2/82 (probably 52 next year) rack.

But how on earth do I prove this without shelling out on two complete sets of stands and mixing and matching 'to-taste'.

Allan.

[This message was edited by Allan Probin on THURSDAY 21 September 2000 at 20:18.]

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by John Schmidt

You’ve started an interesting thread Nic, but, as one scientist to another, I think you’ve got Occam’s Razor confused with half of the scientific method. A successful theory not only has to explain known observations, it has to make correct and non-trivial predictions that can be tested experimentally. Occam’s Razor comes into play when you have two or more competing theories that evidently explain known observations – Occam says that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one.

As far as your idea of absorbing vibrational energy rather than isolating is concerned, it raises another question (as theories usually do). What happens to the energy after it is absorbed? Remember the first law of thermodynamics – energy is neither created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. A badly designed speaker enclosure will absorb energy – then remit it a few milliseconds later, destroying both image (the world according to flat earth) and rhythmic (the world according to flat earth) coherence. Energy absorption would only be useful if the absorbed vibrational energy was transformed into something sonically innocuous, such as heat. As a humble chemist, I have no idea how to do such an experiment - any mechanical engineers or materials scientists out there care to comment?

BTW, your idea of “mechanical grounding” is not unique. I believe that Goldmund claims such a principle in the design of their CD players.

John Schmidt
"95% of everything is crud" - Theodore Sturgeon

Posted on: 21 September 2000 by Mike Hanson

Tony Lonorgan said:

quote:
The fact it is tuned to a quite narrow-band resonance - the 'note' the stand rings at when correctly set up. What is happening here?

John Schmidt said:

quote:
Energy absorption would only be useful if the absorbed vibrational energy was transformed into something sonically innocuous, such as heat.

When Vuk and I were speaking about his first bit Mana a few weeks back, I jokingly suggested that the tuning of the stand causes it to ring at a "magic" frequency, which the ear interprets in a favorable fashion.

Perhaps the unwanted vibrational energy that the Mana sinks away is dissipated partially as heat and partially as a supersonic resonance of the stand. This resonance might even be comprised of sympathetic harmonics of the music, which is providing the airborne vibrations.

I read a study a little over a year ago claiming that music seems less "real" to listeners when it is stripped of its super-sonic harmonics. (It theorizes that the missing harmonics enable us to discern when it's a recorded piano versus a live one.) In the same manner, these "fake" harmonics from Mana could be tricking us into thinking the music is "live".

It could also explain why a system on Mana supposedly manages to sound good at much louder volume levels: the stand is "dancing" along with the music.

It's an interesting theory, although it does seem rather fantastical. Catch you later!

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Smilies do not a forum make.