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Suggestion For Amir Youtube Video - Testing Vibration Effects On Components!

Timcognito

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Big and strong enough to put one of those 90s Krell amps on
And Amir can use it on his feet when typing his reviews
:facepalm:
 

amirm

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Big and strong enough to put one of those 90s Krell amps on
And Amir can use it on his feet when typing his reviews
:facepalm:
That's the path I was on until folks talked me out of it! :) Then link you have is very cheap but it doesn't have programmable frequencies like the $400 one I found. These are all electromechanic (motor based) which are used to generate large displacements. We are looking for very small amount of that so I decided to go with electromagnetic ones (speakers).
 

pseudoid

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A little project management can avoid unnecessary work and frustration too.
He'd demand scheduling, budget/funding, manpower and more.:mad:
He would also request a Mechanical Engineer dedicated to the program.
The ME should know the difference between a MEMS accelerometer and a gas pedal!
 

GXAlan

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It’s weird because even Denon, which has had more engineering focus than Marantz division, has spent money on stuff like fancy cast iron feet.

Here is one of the popular ones in Japan

To obtain a bright, lively sound:
Use less fo.Q on the speaker. If you use something like an insulator to raise the speaker slightly, thus eliminating reverberations from the floor or other surfaces, the fo.Q should keep the sound pleasant even if the volume is slightly louder than usual. Using too much can deaden the sound, reducing the listening enjoyment; this is a good approach if you want to listen to the music as background music. It keeps the music fresh and easy to listen to. Try using the products in various ways to maximize your listening pleasure.

Subjective review

fo.Q is apparently a division of

BUT here’s the thing, In Japan, most free-standing single homes have floors at least 10 cm above ground level, and the perimeter foundations have small window-like openings that allow air to pass freely under the floor. That’s to deal with the combination of high temperatures and high humidity.

This makes me think that vibration control is less about controlling the electronics, but more about applying dampening to the floor itself which acts like a drum membrane and you can just add weights and furniture to your whole house instead as well.

We see very few Japanese companies in this space, like TAOC, choosing to distribute in the US when there is plenty of opportunities for snake oil. In contrast, some homes have crawl spaces, some have basements, some are on concrete foundations, etc.

So just thinking about it, it could be a lot of money spent, generating no electrical or acoustic difference in Amir’s lab, but really it’s about the home construction making a difference.

What you need to do is to get the readers to sponsor @amirm to travel to an AirBNB in Hawaii where the floor is built on stilts and to run some tests. ;)
 

Travis

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This has been on my todo list since i started the forum! The blocking item is a vibration mechanism with predictive response so I can look for its response in the gear measurement. I thought about a custom one or using a subwoofer. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
A vibrator with different vibration patterns would be even better, but you would get mail.

Get an electric toothbrush, like a Sonicare. They must make wall holders for them, put toothbrush in wall holder, set wall holder with tooth brush on top of DUT. To test isolation materials, screw wall holder to bottom of piece of 1/4’ply, set plywood on blocks tall enough for room for wall holder and toothbrush. Set the accelerometer on top of plywood, take measurements. Put isolation material/device on top of plywood, accelerometer on top of the material/device and take a reading. Hopefully, it will be less than on top of straight plywood.

Our resident physics professor can probably be of the most help in this regard.

The “vibration” these products claim to dampen, isolate, reduce, whatever are generally not capable of being felt, so you want to have as little felt vibration as possible, but enough that you don't need a crazy expensive accelerometer.

Your testing is going to show, I would suspect, no effect on sources, amplification, etc.

However, vibration is real, everywhere, we just don't feel it, or don't notice. There are some types of equipment that are sensitive to vibration. Examples include microscales that measure in micrograms, and scanning electron microscopes (SEM). SEMs typically require active vibration isolation in order to get the clearest images. So the audio vibration people are going to say vibration is real - of course it's real, the earth vibrates, anyone on the West Coast of USA will tell you it vibrates. They will tell you their products reduce vibration, and I am sure they do to some extent. Some may even have measurements to show the vibration is reduced. None will have measurements of how noise is reduced in audio products - that is the exciting part of this venture.
 

Travis

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And cassette decks, tuners, many phono stages, pretty much all tube gear and even some integrated and pre amplifiers. So yeah, a few things...
We will soon find out, hopefully.

Been a pilot for almost 50 years, and have had airplanes with radios of every type, tube (the same signal tubes in phono stages and preamps), solid-state, UHF, VHF, AM (ADF), GPS, etc. Nor any impact on the passenger A/V system, VHS, DVP, cassette decks satellite radio. Vibration is 1,000 times more intense than in a living room, with no impact on audio quality. No difference with engines off, engines at idle, or full/takeoff power.

The vibration that is claimed to be reduced by most devices that are associated with audio "improvement" you cannot feel, but it is there.
 

Waxx

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The only thing that is affected by vibration are turntables and tube amps, and the latter only with heavy vibrations (earthquake like) i think.Old cd players may also skip when the vibrations are to big (but again, earthquake like vibrations are needed for that).

Btw, the solution for turntables can be very simple, a slat of heavy stone with a piece of damping (rubber, foam, sand) below does the trick, or air cushions. And that should not cost more than a few dozen $/€ (in worst case). Rubber pucks of a euro/dollar does solve it also in most cases btw.

But it's a good id to demystify this.
 

GXAlan

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I wonder if this is how most homes in Japan really are built. @dualazmak ?

This seems very different than how it would be done in the U.S., with either plywood on a top floor or concrete on a ground floor, but I am not a home builder. The thick wood planks would seem to be very rigid to me, like a deck might be.

Been a pilot for almost 50 years, and have had airplanes with radios of every type, tube (the same signal tubes in phono stages and preamps), solid-state, UHF, VHF, AM (ADF), GPS, etc. Nor any impact on the passenger A/V system, VHS, DVP, cassette decks satellite radio. Vibration is 1,000 times more intense than in a living room, with no impact on audio quality. No difference with engines off, engines at idle, or full/takeoff power.

This pretty much answers the question right? If we think about stuff like the SR-71 or stuff like Mars Curiosity Rover and its 7 minute decent, the resistance to vibration has to be far beyond anything we can hear or measure.

The only thing that makes any plausible sense is that some homes are built in a way that you are dampening the surface of the floor rather than the electronics.

That and sighted bias.
 

BR52

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He'd demand scheduling, budget/funding, manpower and more.:mad:
He would also request a Mechanical Engineer dedicated to the program.
The ME should know the difference between a MEMS accelerometer and a gas pedal!

You can substitute project management with systematic, it can be helpful, especially with all the great members here. They can proactive bring the audio world on a higher level. If vibrating is the right one for it, it is under discussion now. Sorry for using the word project management. (Trigger word?)
Your speculation what I demand sounds polemic for me maybe, I’m wrong?
 
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audiofooled

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I'm happy to see that the test is actually becoming a reality!

The purported problem of vibration with audiophile electronics has never made sense to me. It's not just that a cogent technical explanation is rarely put forth; I also wonder just how much vibration audiophiles imagine is happening in their gear? I presume it's supposed to come from the sound itself, from the speakers. Which would implicate mostly shaking from bass waves. But of course audiophiles won't confine the sonic benefits of their new isolation shelf or footer to just heavy bass tracks. Those "improved, smoother highs" will be cited across all music tracks, whether heavy vibration from the bass is likely to be implicated or not. There's no coherent theory that I can see.

My source equipment is all in another room down the hall from my listening room, so it's not affected by the speaker signal. No need for footers I guess, as I must have an enviably "black" noise floor. :D

I'm looking forward to this. I've experimented a bit with low frequencies and found out that they can carry a lot of energy but also do not affect things which are in the close vicinity of the loudspeakers, such as electronics. The wavelengths are long enough to be developed mostly at the room boundaries and are most prominent in the zones of high pressure where particles cannot move, so particle velocity is close to zero but the pressure is at it's peak. Although vibrations travel through the floor many times faster than through the air, IMO it's the room's modal response that carries most of the energy, rather than mechanical vibration of the loudspeaker cabinets. But there might be a feedback of sorts where the floor carries back the vibration to the loudspeaker cabinets and potentially introduces some distortion. That would be nice to see. Still, I think SPL is too high at this point so keep it down and no problem.

Paul Barton talked about this in this video:


Me having some fun shaking the room:

 

Cbdb2

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That's the path I was on until folks talked me out of it! :) Then link you have is very cheap but it doesn't have programmable frequencies like the $400 one I found. These are all electromechanic (motor based) which are used to generate large displacements. We are looking for very small amount of that so I decided to go with electromagnetic ones (speakers).
I would think physicaly hitting something is orders of magnitude more force than a sound wave. Was about to say, why not use a big speaker at high SPL. That would be real world testing. Keep the gear far enough away that any stray magnetic fields from the speaker dosn't creep into the measurements (or use mag. shielded speakers).
And maybe test some speaker cable and interconnects to put a nail in that coffin.
 

sq225917

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I used a vibration mech out of an old phone, just an off centre cam on a tiny motor. You can guess the results did nothing on anything except a cd mech, pre amp, power amp, phono, even on the pcbs, zip, zilch, nada.
 

Thomas_A

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I am confident that there will be no audible effects on solid state amplifiers or DACs with vibrations caused at speaker level. Even having bass shakers from the most powerful Earthquake or Clark Synthesis models. I had some CD-player skipping by heavy dancing on a wood dance floor once upon a time though, but I do not count such devices here, including of course turntables that can skip as well...

What can be audible is vibrations transferred from speakers to other structures in the room, where isolation sometimes works.
 

GXAlan

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What can be audible is vibrations transferred from speakers to other structures in the room, where isolation sometimes works.
By this do you mean isolation of the speakers? What is the floor construction of your home?
 

Thomas_A

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By this do you mean isolation of the speakers? What is the floor construction of your home?
Yes isolation of speakers.


(Right now it is oak mounted on sand. My previous apartment was springy wood mounted on braces.)
 

solderdude

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I think if you want to test for vibration one should not overdo it.
I mean one should look for realistic vibrations.
The ones you get when a speaker in the room is playing loud and the gear or its table vibrate.
We only want to see realistic things.

I would suggest a subwoofer in a small box, closed at the front with a thin wooden plate that can vibrate but is firm enough to hold normal amps, CDP's, DACs etc.
You can sweep the woofer and adjust the volume.
When you want controlled vibration levels mount an accelerometer on the plate.
 
OP
MattHooper

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The only thing that is affected by vibration are turntables and tube amps, and the latter only with heavy vibrations (earthquake like) i think.Old cd players may also skip when the vibrations are to big (but again, earthquake like vibrations are needed for that).

I actually have my tube amps sitting on thick furniture sliders. Two main reasons: It allows me to easily slide the amps forward or back, to get at cabling when necessary or tube changing. But also, one of them is on the wood floor (old house) and, hand on amp, I can feel tons of vibration on the amp from footsteps, especially my huge son walking by. The thick footers seem to do a really good job at mitigating the floor vibrations getting to the amp from the footsteps. My concern isn't sonics, but just that there seems to be enough fine bits and pieces in those tubes, filaments etc, that it seems I don't want that shaking around too much in terms of wear of possibly something shaking loose, if I can help it.
 

pseudoid

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I actually have my tube amps sitting on thick furniture sliders. Two main reasons: It allows me to easily slide the amps forward or back, to get at cabling when necessary or tube changing. But also, one of them is on the wood floor (old house) and, hand on amp, I can feel tons of vibration on the amp from footsteps, especially my huge son walking by. The thick footers seem to do a really good job at mitigating the floor vibrations getting to the amp from the footsteps. My concern isn't sonics, but just that there seems to be enough fine bits and pieces in those tubes, filaments etc, that it seems I don't want that shaking around too much in terms of wear of possibly something shaking loose, if I can help it.
It sounds like you would get ultimate use out of a mobile, gyro-stabilized DJ turntable cart that uses magneto-hydraulic shocks w/auto vibration sense/cancel algorithm integral to the suspension system.:)
 

Travis

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My concern isn't sonics, but just that there seems to be enough fine bits and pieces in those tubes, filaments etc, that it seems I don't want that shaking around too much in terms of wear of possibly something shaking loose, if I can help it.
Two 19 x 16 Vibraplane Active Isolation platforms is your answer. Only $2,500 each (air pump not included), BUT, they really work, really isolate, really kill vibration.

Here are the specs for a Vibraplane, The vibration of homes and buildings is typically up to 60hZ.

Performance Data



Min. Load @ 20 psi
Vertical Natural Frequency2.3 Hz
Isolation Efficiency @ 5 Hz52%
Isolation Efficiency @ 10 Hz83%
Horizontal Natural Frequency2.9 Hz
Isolation Efficiency @ 5 Hz40%
Isolation Efficiency @ 10 Hz92%
Max. Load @ 80 psi
Vertical Natural Frequency2.1 Hz
Isolation Efficiency @ 5 Hz70%
Isolation Efficiency @ 10 Hz91%
Horizontal Natural Frequency1.8 Hz
Isolation Efficiency @ 5 Hz81%
Isolation Efficiency @ 10 Hz95%

I have been looking at the "specs" for the typical audio "isolation" devices and none of them (that I can find) provides any specifications on actual isolation (vibration reduction), what frequency, etc.

Devices that really do require vibration reduction, like high power optical microscopes, precision scales, and SEMs, all use isolation devices that are measured and come with specs.
 
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