Cones vs Planar... the woes of equipment support
Posted by: Ron Toolsie on 13 February 2001
When I ventured into the walk-in closet to fire up a CD, I had the tuner playing fairly loudly. And for some reason the palm of my hand came to rest upon the 52, which I have housed on the top shelf of a non-clamped Roomtune clamp rack. I noted that although some sympathetic vibrations were felt, they seemed reassuringly small. My hand wondered down each of the chasses below- the Geddon, then lower to the Nat01/NATPS, followed by the 52s supercap, thence on to the Snaxos Supercap and finally to the CDSPSon the lowest shelf (a picture of all of this is of course to be found on my homepage). Oddly enough there were profound differences by how much each component was vibrating, with the supercaps being palpably much greater than all of the others. Closing the door to the walk in closet made very little difference, as that flimsy door just screened out the HF portion, but the DBLs low end was about as loud with the door closed as it was while open, as were the component vibrations, and the differences between the degrees of vibration also remained. Dropping down to a knee showed that the two supercaps that were vibrating like crazy were seatup on a threesome of the Michael Green brass Audiopoint cones with dimpled brass 'buttons' under each one. This had to me more than coincidence, so out came the cones and the Supercaps were then allowed to rest on the standard rubber feet, as all the other components were already doing. Sure enough, the level of rattle then decreased and became commensurate with all of the other 'un-coned' chasses.
I believe what happened is that the brass cones, by allowing the chasses to be a certain height above the rack created a resonance chamber, reinforcing vibrations of a certain bandwidth. Dropping the chasses to almost rack level by removing the cones then decreased the volume of this resonance chamber, and with it those pesky vibrations. Due to the mechanical diode effect of cones/brass buttons, I don't think that they were merely conducting the vibrations more faithfully from the shelf to the chassis- and indeed the nature of the resonating coned chasses felt 'boomier', not just 'louder'. Whatever the reasons, it was quite obvious that using cones under the chasses in this application was objectively worse. I never really paid any attention when I first installed the cones as they were placed there weeks before I had the system up and running. Tonight was the first time I really tried the system without them. Oh, the reason that I hadnt initially placed cones under all of the chasses is that the cones were vestigial to my previous electronics which numbered far fewer chasses, and I simply did not have enough to 'treat' all of the chasses- I heard that the supercaps were the most vibration sensitive, so that is where they were placed.
All of this would not matter one jot if there were not subjective improvements gained by removing the offending cones. There are, and they were immediately obvious and far from insignificant. Even more coherence and more percussive 'snap' to the LF. As I type this I am listening to late night jazz music on NPR (through the NAT-01 of course) two doors down from where I have the computer. And I can tell from this poor vantage point that something has changed for the better.
As a 'by-the-way' may I suggest users of Mana wall shelves do NOT stand up suddely from a crouched position their heads are beneath the shelves. The undersurfaces of the mana frame has some very angular corners made of very hard steel. Had I stood up any quicker this evening I would now be having a scalp flap sutured instead of listening to music.
Enough writing, more listening.
Ron
Dum spiro audio
Dum audio vivo
[This message was edited by Ron Toolsie on WEDNESDAY 14 February 2001 at 07:41.]
John (trying out Neat Petites and Gravitas at the moment - review coming up in the next couple of weeks)