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: 24 September 2000 by Mike Hanson
Wow, so much stuff being said, and my brain is a cloud! I had a thought about this "perception of improvement" thing. (Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot, Vuk.
)
- Let's start with no distortion. It sounds good.
- Add a teeny-tiny bit of distortion. Gosh, that sure is obvious.
- Add another teeny-tiny bit. You know something, it's not that much worse. (This is similar to needing twice the power to get a 3dB increase in sound, which is barely audible to the listener.)
- So rather than adding a teeny-tiny bit, let's really increase the distortion (maybe 10 times). That creates the same response of "Yuck!". (The typical claim is that you need 10 times the physical power to create the perception of "twice as loud".)
- To create that response yet again, we would have to multiple the disortion by 10 times again.
- Etc.
If we look at this in reverse, we can see Mana removing a whole bunch with the first level, creating a big response in the user. Go to the next level (removing a lot more distortion on the physical realm), and we get another "Wow!" response (in the psychoacoustic realm). Etc.
I understand now that even considering the dimishing returns in the physical sense, our ears could still perceive each step (e.g. 2-4-7-11) as "twice as good". I don't know why I didn't recognize the parallel with volume perception earlier. Oh well. Catch you later!
-=> Mike Hanson <=-
Smilies do not a forum make.
Posted on: 25 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
Sorry to intrude with some more theory ... If you use pulsar points under shelves and pile them under a CD transport, two levels are much better than one, but further levels make little or no difference. I have talked to a colleague who is a skilled engineer and he says that the Pulsar Point design works by having point projecting upwards into a shallow cup inverted on top of it. A vibration moves the point and friction turns the vibration into heat. Very efficient, but he would expect that the spectrum of vibrational frequencies absorbed to be non-uniform. He would expect the spectrum of frequencies absorbed by the titanium pulsar points to be *much* better (sharper point in harder material, and easier to get the best trade off between slipping and friction). His view was that it was likely that the Mana approach is much more uniform in its absorbtion, but much less efficient - hence multiple layers of Mana would continue improving the situation and the effect would ultimately be much better than aluminium pulsar points because more of the spectrum of vibrations were absorbed.
Nic P
Posted on: 25 September 2000 by David Hobbs-Mallyon
Nic,
I use the aluminium pulsar points. Have you tried the titanium ones, and if so does it stand up to your theory. I know HiFi+ was very enthusiastic about them, but for the price I would hope they were six times better.
David
Posted on: 25 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
David
I am trying to arrange a home trial of the titanium pulsar points (too expensive to just "buy and try").
Nic
Posted on: 25 September 2000 by Laxton
nic,
You mentioned that you tried the nordost pulsar point. Did you place them directly under the cd player or in the arrangement(from bottom up) PP,shelf,cdp? Are you using glass as the shelf? Currently i have a cdx and i wonder how much does the PP's improve it.......
Regards
Laxton
Posted on: 25 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
I went pp*3 / shelf / pp*3 / shelf / CDP. The experiment I did vs Mana was using a friend's CDX, so we just used mdf shelves (according to my theory CDX onto glass does not work well on Mana because the metal feet / glass interface does not transfer vibrations well to the shelf). The pulsar point architecture was in the same league as Mana Phase 4 (but not quite as good IMO). At home I use a Theta Data Basic CD transport which has rubber feet. I suspect glass shelving might be better, but have no glass shelves to hand so have stuck to MDF. The effect of the two layers of Pulsar Points vs directly standing the CD on my ASH stand is pretty dramatic.
Nic P
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by Laxton
Nic,
Quite sometime ago, vuk made some suggestions about putting some 3M rubber feet below the cdx when mating it with mana. It's supposed to help. What about in the case of the nordost PP's? Would a combination of PP/glass/rubber feet/cdx be better than the suggestedd PP/mdf/cdx? What happens if you use 4xPP instead of 3? Thanks in advance.
Laxton
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
In an earlier posting on this thread John Schmidt said:
quote:
A successful theory not only has to explain known observations, it has to make correct and non-trivial predictions that can be tested experimentally
.
Hmmm ... easier said than done, thought I. Well, yesterday I was talking over my theory with one our best physicists and he was extolling the advantages of sand as a great material (cheap with excellent internal damping) for using somehow in supports. Elemental already use this approach by filling hollow legs with sand/shot. I was thinking how to make a sandfilled shelf for supporting equipment when it occurred to me that the sand did not have to be underneath the equipment. If my theory was right then putting a sand filled bag on top of the equipment should work.
Yesterday evening Sue, I and our Mana-owning friend Neil did the experiment. We took out the two pulsar point supported shelves from under my Theta CD ... it sounded awful, the sound really shouted at you. Then we put a small bag of sand (all we had), two bags of sugar, two bags of rice and a packet of instant Horlicks (I hope you are following the recipe carefully) on top of the CD player. The sound was back sounding great again. Some careful tests and we found the effect was better than one set of pulsar points but not quite as good as two sets. Then we put the bags on top of the player on top of the two sets of pulsar points (which I predicted should improve it because the pulsar points do not absorb vertical vibrations well but the "sand" should) and indeed it did improve the sound significantly.
The predictions worked!
Nic P
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by Nigel Cavendish
quote:
one our best physicists and he was extolling the advantages of sand as a great material
I think someone has beaten you (and your physicist) to this conclusion. Try the link below where Uhlrich Hohn has seemingly perfected the use of sand in hi-fi.
sand
cheers
Nigel
p.s. you need to look at "amps"
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
Nigel
That's a fascinating link - isn't the Internet/Web a wonderful thing!
Nic P
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by David Hobbs-Mallyon
There has been some mention of puuting rubber gromets underneath CD players to improve dissipation of vibration. I would assume that glueing the metal feet would have an even greater effect. Who is up for trying this?
David
Posted on: 26 September 2000 by Laxton
Nic,
Have you tried putting the pulsar points directly under the cd player? In this way, the cd player couples directly to the PP's. Wouldn't this enable the PP's to dissipate more energy compared to the feet/mdf/PP route? I would really like to try out the pulsar points, but here in singapore, the dealer for nordost is not such a nice person to deal with. Mana isn't available here either.
Regards
Laxton
Posted on: 27 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
Laxton
Puting the points under the equipment feet is bloody hard (2 person job), looks hideous, but does sound a little bit better (as my theory would expect). I doubt you could put two sets directly under the feet.
Nic P
Posted on: 27 September 2000 by Laxton
Nic,
Thanks for your reply. What about if i put the PP's directly under the naim metal casing(ie. bypassing the metal feet of the cdx;PP's coupled directly to the metal casing), would it work as well?
Regards
Laxton
Posted on: 27 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
I have been applying my theory to various rack designs, and also to the many rules for setting up Mana racks optimally, and have been able to explain things using the theory. I was interested how the (well reviewed) Hutter racks were constructed. Also is there a well respected rack from Germany called Paragon? If so does anyone know how it is made.
My current theory for how the best non-Mana racks work is that they are made from materials with high levels of internal damping, which internally turn vibrations into heat - the way sand does. For example if you tap parts of the racks do they sound accoustically dead?
The link given at the top of this page is the first I have seen that suggests clamping equipment to the damping material (bags of sand in the case described). Some way of clamping equipment to the shelves of good racks should help.
Stephano Rosati made the point about a more scientific approach to measuring racks. A simple test magazines could do is to measure the amount of vibrations in the case of a piece of eqipment on the rack being tested as music is played. In particular, if my theory about Mana is correct the stand ringing is an essential part of how it worked, which would show the "clapping hands" test in the Hi-Fi Choice comparative test to be fatally flawed.
Any info very welcome.
Nic P
Posted on: 08 July 2002 by Alex S.
Mana's back in the news.
I've been trawling through a few old threads. They are generally more interesting than the newer ones. I like this one since I use the Pulsar Points too.
Alex
Yes Greg, I was that bored, and I note you were as constructive as ever.
Posted on: 08 July 2002 by Greg Beatty
...two posts total from me. First one's a small jibe, the second one is constructive
- GregB
Insert Witty Signature Line Here
Posted on: 08 July 2002 by Frank Abela
Nic,
The Hutter is made as follows (as far as I know):
There are two base options - the standard base and the HiFi base.
Standard base. This is drilled with appropriate holes and fixings in aluminium. The spikes are also aluminium and they have what appear to be stainless steel lock nuts (though they're light enough to be aluminium).
The Hifi base has a standard base as above but also has another base decoupled with spikes. This has holes drilled for both uprights and sideways linking to other Hutter racks. Now, the lower base board has aluminium plates fitted in its surface, each with a little dimple, to accept the spikes of the 2nd base board of the HiFi base. Everything is built so accurately that the 4 spikes fit perfectly into the dimples - margin of error less than 1mm!
Each shelf (including the base boards) is made of three layers of spruce totalling about 2.5cm thickness. Effectively they're laminated spruce.
Each shelf's side cheek is made of 2.5cm thick solid spruce.
Supporting uprights are aluminium (about 1cm diameter). These slip fit into the shelf side cheeks and base boards. A nicely anodised finished tube (aluminium) slips over the alumiunium upright for that aesthetic finish.
Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.
Posted on: 08 July 2002 by Alex S.
I love you really
Alex
Posted on: 08 July 2002 by JRHardee
I met Greg a couple of days ago. My enthusiasm doesn't extend as far as yours
but he IS invited back.
Did anyone ever offer a correct definition of Occam's Razor?
Posted on: 09 July 2002 by MarkEJ
Alex:
Again, thanks for dredging this up. Yes, the old ones are certainly more interesting than the new ones...
Cliff:
I too heard that Mana system at Bristol (2000). I agree completely with your summation -- it was ghastly, for whatever reason. I also think that the CDS2/52/500/DBL system in the big Naim room that year was really wonderful -- and the 3 x 500/DBL active system which they showed in 2001 fundamentally failed even to equal it.
All this shows (to me) that "its unbelievably easy to screw the whole thing up", as someone vastly better qualified then myself once said. The more elaborate and expensive the system, the greater its sensitivity to other factors. The Mana room at Bristol 2000 had over 11000 UKP worth of Mana in it, and a Krell CD player which didn't seem to work in any musically valid manner. My own, very limited experiments with several small bits of Mana have produced results which are in every way not only a million miles from those achieved in that room, but qualitatively different, too.
This has led me to the notion that Mana works as a massive lens. If there is the slightest problem with setup, Mana will make things worse. Paradoxically, the system really needs to sound gobsmackingly good before one even thinks of Mana -- in which case the need might not be apparent.
Hi-fi shows are IMHO very bad places in which to form fixed, negative opinions, but very good places to form positive opinions. If it sounds good at a show, it'll knock your socks off at home, on a dedicated spur, warmed up and settled...
Best;
Mark
(an imperfect
forum environment is
better than none)
Posted on: 09 July 2002 by Alex S.
quote:
This has led me to the notion that Mana works as a massive lens. If there is the slightest problem with setup, Mana will make things worse. Paradoxically, the system really needs to sound gobsmackingly good before one even thinks of Mana -- in which case the need might not be apparent.
Partly I agree with this. JW has always said that you should buy the best boxes you can, then add Mana.
I do not think £99 CD players and DVD players are the answer unless you just accept that digital is crap; and by having such digital sources the prophesy is self-fulfilling. Digital can be superb as anyone with CDX/XPS CDS1or2 on Mana knows, but I understand why many don't want to pay for it.
I have taken the full Mana plunge late which means I've lost a lot of money on other supports; but the good news is I like the music I get without Mana so if its set up right things can only get better. This is not a leap of faith, its fact.
Alex
Posted on: 09 July 2002 by Andrew L. Weekes
Another factor I've considered in the Mana equation is the importance of the glass shelf.
Sound travels faster in most rigid solids than in air, and in glass it is dramatically faster.
For air the sound speed is about 330 m/s under ordinary conditions. Most typical glass materials end up with sound speeds of 2000 m/s to 6000 m/s, depending, amongst other things, on the type of glass.
I wonder if this is at all relevant?
Something to ponder anyway. Most other systems seem to damp the sound with wooden boards, I wonder if the glass works on a similar principle to, for example, the LP12 sub-chassis, whereby the design goal is to get everything coupled together as effectively one item , and thereby allowing a more effective energy sink, and eliminate differential signals?
A.
