Help Diagnosing Turntable/Speaker Vibration Issue

[Kremmen]

Wall mounting (into brick or a similar material) would be the way I would go, as some members here have suggested.

Back in the late 80s I knew someone who struggled with a similar problem in a small room with a pair on Tannoy 609 speakers in it. His turntable was a Systemdek IIX with a suspended glass platter and a Moth tonearm. (The Moth tonearm was, I believe, a variant of the Rega RB200.)

The manufacturer of the turntable shelf he used was Target Audio and it was constructed from square, steel tubing and featured upward-facing spikes supporting a MDF board that had a circular, metal disc on the underside of each corner. It was very solid indeed and it worked like a dream at eliminating all manner of noises induced by sound from the speakers and vibrations from the floor. Please see the attached image.

 

[1066]

Wall mounting (into brick or a similar material) would be the way I would go, as some members here have suggested.

Back in the late 80s I knew someone who struggled with a similar problem in a small room with a pair on Tannoy 609 speakers in it. His turntable was a Systemdek IIX with a suspended glass platter and a Moth tonearm. (The Moth tonearm was, I believe, a variant of the Rega RB200.)

The manufacturer of the turntable shelf he used was Target Audio and it was constructed from black, square, steel tubing and featured spikes supporting a black, MDF board that had a circular, metal disc on the underside of each corner. It was very solid indeed and it worked like a dream at eliminating all manner of noises induced by sound from the speakers and vibrations from the floor. Please see the attached image.

I had that turntable shelf
Worked a treat for me.

 

[Kremmen]

I had that turntable shelf
Worked a treat for me.

Nice to hear that.

I've been thinking of getting a second-hand one at some point because I have the same issues as the chap who started this thread with my trusty CJ Walker CJ55 turntable fitted with a Linn LV V tonearm. The stand it's on at the moment is built like a tank but those pesky floorboards are a pain in the arse!

 

[EERecordist]

That is a nice looking setup with good equipment.

Knowing ASR, I am sure you have many good suggestions. A long time ago, in our high school which needed a turntable for stage music, as well as reel-to-reel tape, the turntable had its own bolted to a masonry wall shelf independent of the rest of the stage sound booth. So I guess you could cut out a hole in your floor and build concrete down to a separate from the building foundation for the turntable. In our recording studio later, the control rooms had a separate foundation from the tracking room, which was separate from the building. That was millions in construction.

There is not a lot of energy in vinyl below 100 Hz, so just roll off your turntable input at a frequency you determine below 100Hz. You can use a calibrated USB mic and software to find the room/system modes causing the problem. Maybe there is a way to have 2 profiles on the Wiim?

For the rest of your non-vinyl music, proceed as usual.

 

[1066]

you could cut out a hole in your floor and build concrete down to a separate from the building foundation for the turntable.

Although this sounds quite extreme, there was a customer once who did something similar for his speakers. Cut a hole through floorboards and built brick plinths for speakers to stand on.

 

[1066]

Nice to hear that.

I've been thinking of getting a second-hand one at some point because I have the same issues as the chap who started this thread with my trusty CJ Walker CJ55 turntable fitted with a Linn LV V tonearm. The stand it's on at the moment is built like a tank but those pesky floorboards are a pain in the arse!

This turntable?
It has full sprung suspension. Am surprised it picks up floor vibration. The tonearm cable is not touching something inside and bypassing the isolation?

Is it a USA manufacturer?

 

[somebodyelse]

Rubber based isolation does not work so well as it’s so bouncy.

That's a generalisation that's more wrong than right. How bouncy the isolation is depends on the degree of damping, and good isolation can be achieved with low damping, as demonstrated by numerous turntables with bouncy sprung sub-chassis suspension. Rubber isolation isn't necessarily bouncy - it depends on the type of rubber and the way it's used, butyl rubber in shear being a choice with relatively high damping. It's all a matter of engineering.

 

[1066]

That's a generalisation that's more wrong than right. How bouncy the isolation is depends on the degree of damping, and good isolation can be achieved with low damping, as demonstrated by numerous turntables with bouncy sprung sub-chassis suspension. Rubber isolation isn't necessarily bouncy - it depends on the type of rubber and the way it's used, butyl rubber in shear being a choice with relatively high damping. It's all a matter of engineering.

In the context of the post, hemisphere compression with basic shapes, sorbothane has better vibration isolation properties.

No doubt there are ingenious combined material engineering ways to get rubber to not reflect energy back and forth.

Sprung suspensions like the Linn L12 had a combination of a rubber spring seat and steel spring. In combination I suspect they prevented energy reflecting back and forth in the two materials.

The platter was two machined lacquered metal pieces. On their own they rang like bells. But seated together they did not. The physics of it I do not know. I guess both pieces had different resonant frequencies?

 

[Kremmen]

This turntable?
It has full sprung suspension. Am surprised it picks up floor vibration. The tonearm cable is not touching something inside and bypassing the isolation?

Is it a USA manufacturer?

Yes that's the one.

It was actually made by a small company run by a husband and wife team in a place called Frodsham in Cheshire in the UK back in the 1980s.

The issue I have is that my main hi-fi is in the man cave upstairs and the floorboards are creaky and bend in quite a few places. If I play an album I have to lie very still on the bed!

BTW, the suspension is set up perfectly but even so, heavier footsteps can be enough to trouble it. The steel stand weighs a ton and is all solidly welded to form one piece. It is also spiked to the wooden floorboards under the carpet. All four spikes are firmly screwed into the stand and pierce the floorboards

The cartridge is a Nagaoka MP110 set to 1.7 grams so that seems fine too. Sounds great I must say!

 

[1066]

Yes that's the one.

It was actually made by a small company run by a husband and wife team in a place called Frodsham in Cheshire in the UK back in the 1980s.

The issue I have is that my main hi-fi is in the man cave upstairs and the floorboards are creaky and bend in quite a few places. If I play an album I have to lie very still on the bed!

BTW, the suspension is set up perfectly but even so, heavier footsteps can be enough to trouble it. The steel stand weighs a ton and is all solidly welded to form one piece. It is also spiked to the wooden floorboards under the carpet. All four spikes are firmly screwed into the stand and pierce the floorboards

The cartridge is a Nagaoka MP110 set to 1.7 grams so that seems fine too. Sounds great I must say!

Very interesting turntable. I’ve not heard of it. Probably due to uk hifi press favouring advertisers.

So glad you are enjoying it. Makes me curious to find my old turntable

What kind of main bearing does it have?

Does it have 4 suspension springs?
I saw some screws on the top in the photo.

 

[1066]

Linn LV V tonearm

Oh! I had that tone arm on my Linn Sondek as I couldn’t afford an ittok initially. Goodness. Had forgotten all about that tone arm.

 

[Kremmen]

Very interesting turntable. I’ve not heard of it. Probably due to uk hifi press favouring advertisers.

So glad you are enjoying it. Makes me curious to find my old turntable

What kind of main bearing does it have?

Does it have 4 suspension springs?
I saw some screws on the top in the photo.

When I bought it I gave it a very thorough service. The main bearing is steel and the turntable does indeed have 4 suspension springs. It's very easy to set up actually, just a bit of patience and gently turning the Allen bolts till the platter is level.

The turntable also features a Sonceboz motor and an aluminium, two-speed pulley. The platter is made from a dense, brown resin called Tufnol which needs removing if you need to change the speed from 33 1/3 to 45. The plinth is MDF with a real wood veneer on most of it with the lower section left bare and painted matt black. The four feet are cork discs of a few millimetres thickness and the lid is a thick, tinted plastic.

I'm lucky to have an almost immaculate CJ55 and I see them crop up on eBay every few months or so for a few hundred. It's certainly not a premium turntable of the likes of a Linn Sondek but I consider it to be well made, charming to look at and a pleasure to use.

 

[Kremmen]

Oh! I had that tone arm on my Linn Sondek as I couldn’t afford an ittok initially. Goodness. Had forgotten all about that tone arm.

When I was a teenager in the 1980s I used to drool over the Linn Ittok. Even now it looks so seductive and beautifully engineered. I'd love one but boy are they expensive!

 

[Steven Holt]

It's been about a month now. If u haven't solved the issue, I'll chime in.