Vibration Air & Roller Bearings - Thanks to Barry & Warren

[jas]

I use roller balls and medium weight PC and IC cables to DAC, pre and amp.  I've found that the amp and pre weighty enough that when I push on them to test the resistance to movement by the cords, I get pretty good movement.  In other words, the motion is close to what I get without cables attached.  I could get better movement overall if I reinserted the tiles but the bottom of the amp and pre are pretty smooth so I am not using tiles quite yet.  This is not recommended, however.

 

For the Dac, I use an aluminum plate above the roller balls to support it and the reclocker.  Both are lighter pieces with a  medium sized PC to the DAC and 3 cables in/out of the reclocker, and an input and output to the DAC. I get good motion from a test push, but think its both the PC and the total number of cables in and out that tangle that provides resistance.  BD always precautioned that dressing cables was critical to the success of the roller balls and that holds true for me in my situation.  Overall, there is offset by cables, but if you dress the cables it should minimize the impact.  If I were more concerned, I would use lighter cables like those from Audience and others, but do not feel the need. 

 

Two more related items of note.  I started using roller balls under my external disc player when recording CD's to iTunes/Audirvana, but started just recently.  I tested several CD's ripped without the roller balls vs. the same CD's with, and noticed quite a change in midrange instrument separation, and I'd guess I'd say sweetness.  It was more than I thought I'd hear and this is with 3 plastic roller balls and regular SS balls--the cheap stuff.  Frustrating because I know now that I have to order more Ingress Engineering roller balls and re-rip a bunch of music!

Item 2.  Somehow, one of the ball bearings was missing from under a speaker.  One corner of the speaker was sitting on the roller ball itself and not on a ball bearing.  When I discovered it (easy to spot), I listened to a few test songs, replaced the ball bearing, and listened again and heard a clear improvement. 

 

The point is that these things flat work even in my less than BD approved application.  I can follow only some of his suggestions due to space constraints and WAF but even then, even in a half-baked installation, the increase in SQ is clear and worth it.  

[Superdad]

On 9/28/2017 at 1:12 AM, acg said:

Yes it does.  But so does wood and so does aluminium, so does your brick wall or your concrete slab.  The difference with steel is that it is more dense (and therefore heavier) and more stiff which are both things that make it more difficult to excite to vibration.  What this increased stiffness does is cause higher frequency resonances that have less energy in them and are therefore much more easy to damp than something less stiff or with less mass such as aluminium and wood.

 

I've measured the resonances of quite a few materials and items and can tell you that damped steel can be an excellent inert platform on which to sit audio equipment.  Here is a photo of the first isolation platform I built (with my dac sitting atop)...

 

Lead. As in Pb.  Don't know what its resonant F is but man is it ever dead.  I've had  a 1/2-inch thick, 28-inch x 20-inch slab of lead for about 32 years.  Used to use it as part of a turntable base.  It has been stored in my garage for about 15 years now.  The darn thing weighs 120 pounds!

 

Obviously of no use for a roller bearing set up.  But your discussion of ringing and vibration made me think of it again.  

[esldude]

Maybe you should use dougong joints in a table.  Watch the recent Nova program for info.  A test of a model using these joints survived more than a Ricter scale 10 earthquake.  

 

http://www.pbs.org/video/secrets-of-the-forbidden-city-1o8igy/

 

http://www.core77.com/posts/67922/These-Ingenious-2500-Year-Old-Chinese-Wood-Joints-Make-Buildings-Earthquake-Proof

 

 

[Johnseye]

Here are some other ways to isolate.

 

minus k

 

Vibraplane

[jabbr]

32 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

Here are some other ways to isolate.

 

minus k

 

Vibraplane

Minus K looks good but expensive. Question would be how much better than Barry Ds inner tube? Vertical does have a conventional spring but all in the implementation. 

 

Clearly though the idea of so-called “negative stiffness” is similar to the nonlinear springs described  as Euler Springs. If you have an unlimited budget prob a good product. 

 

The other link link didn’t have enough info to comment on — would suspect more traditional vib iso .

[tapatrick]

On 9/4/2017 at 3:19 PM, rando said:

... Bicycle tubes are not a great long term solution as they are effectively porous items that lose air with greater expediency as pressure rises.  My road bike tires, at 95 psi, lose up to 10 psi over the course of 24 hours sitting stationary...

Thats strange, my experience differs. I have 12" tubes on IKEA bamboo boards and the tubes do not deflate so easily. I inflate them half full as recommended and I top them up every 6 months.

 

As posted earlier I tried the cups and roller balls also to good effect but as I have some stiff power cables I ran out of patience with the constant movement (and sometimes sliding off shelf!) of my components. I just use the part inflated tubes now..

[marce]

https://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ctu-sc/files/doc/ctu-sc/ctu-n39_eng.pdf

Just build an isolation barrier in your garden...

I tend to use standard AV (anti vibration mounts) where I have a real concern such as radios in armoured vehicles, it also depends where you live as to how much vibration your home will experience, those lucky enough to be in the country would get very little, next to a major highway it will be worse... Personally a big fan of blue tac, it works well is lossy so vibration turned to heat or sorbothene both work well.

The thing is how much will the signals be affected by the levels of vibration?

[rando]

Obviously the effect I noted is lessened under 25 lbs of total weight.  Stack a 200 lb speaker + 20 lb marble tile + 5 lbs of boards on top it.  Same principle as a balloon inflated to the limit losing significant amount of volume overnight.  After initial loss the smaller denser surface area and lower pressure both heighten amount of time it will stay inflated.

[cjf]

On 1/9/2018 at 8:00 AM, marce said:

 

The thing is how much will the signals be affected by the levels of vibration?

Based on my own recent experiment it seems the signal is quite affected by vibration. I've recently placed my monoblocks on two 18x18x2.5" thick slabs of Pennsylvania Bluestone weighing about 75lbs each coupled to the floor with Herbies Spikes and the difference makes me do a double take everytime I hear it. The amps were previously just sitting on the floor which is a timber based suspended above basement design.

 

I've used Symposium Rollerballs and Stillpoints in the past but found them both to add quite a bit of grain, hardness, and hyperfocus to the sound. In contrast these cheap $25 per slab stones and Herbie feet are super stellar by comparison. I couldn't believe it at first but Wow.

 

I considered using bicycle tubes also and may still give them a try but they seem to have a bit of maintenance, inconsistency and stability issues tied to them.

[Ralf11]

Pavers or Flagstones??

 

Also, do you live on a busy street?

[fas42]

1 hour ago, cjf said:

Based on my own recent experiment it seems the signal is quite affected by vibration. I've recently placed my monoblocks on two 18x18x2.5" thick slabs of Pennsylvania Bluestone weighing about 75lbs each coupled to the floor with Herbies Spikes and the difference makes me do a double take everytime I hear it. The amps were previously just sitting on the floor which is a timber based suspended above basement design.

 

I've used Symposium Rollerballs and Stillpoints in the past but found them both to add quite a bit of grain, hardness, and hyperfocus to the sound. In contrast these cheap $25 per slab stones and Herbie feet are super stellar by comparison. I couldn't believe it at first but Wow.

 

I considered using bicycle tubes also and may still give them a try but they seem to have a bit of maintenance, inconsistency and stability issues tied to them.

 

Yep. Mass for stability - floppiness is not something that I've ever tuned into as being useful ...

[cjf]

10 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Pavers or Flagstones??

 

Also, do you live on a busy street?

The ones I have are natural stone and not man made so I guess that categorizes them as Flagstone.

 

My house (120yrs old) is probably about 50ft or so off of a fairly busy street.

[sdolezalek]

This thread is both very interesting and very puzzling.

Why interesting?

1) Because there is a fair amount of science behind the sonic improvement of getting rid of vibration and I think most people actually hear it in their own system

2) There seem to be solutions that should be both good and affordable but few are broadly commercially available

3) In theory you should actually be able to measure waveform impacts on a before and after basis that prove the benefits of isolation

Why puzzling?

1) Because a lot of folks are confusing isolation, coupling and damping and mixing them together. Generally, the problem we are trying to deal with here is the effect that ground-borne vibration has on the working of our equipment (in some way not that different than worrying about EMI/EMR impacts on cables).  So the idea is to keep any vibration in the ground under us (i.e. from street traffic, but potentially also from the sound our speakers and particularly woofers make) from traveling through your rack or floor into your equipment or speakers.  When you use metal spikes or put heavy materials on or under your equipment, you are actually coupling that equiopment more directly to those vibrations (which should make things worse not better).  When you use sorbothane or other squishy things under the equipment you are damping some of the vibrations, but generally have no idea of whether the frequencies you are damping are the source of the problem or maybe only part of the problem (like applying equalization to only half the frequency range).  What correctly designed roller bearings should do well is to to float or isolate your equipment from those vibrations, but only the horizontal ones; the cups and balls act as couplers in the vertical direction (which is why Barry and others use both cups and inner tubes.  The inner tubes probably act more as dampers than isolators, so getting the air pressure right to affect frequencies you care about matters.

2) Because the science of this is known, you would think there would be a market for products that do provide good isolation and affordably do so.  But most of the products on the market seem either ridiculously expensive or look as though their manufacturers don't understand the isolation, damping and coupling differences.

3) Maybe they exist, but I can't remember seeing any waveform measurements of before and after on good isolation in, lets say a sound room located on a busy urban street.

 

Does anyone have a good explanation of why someone hasn't come out with a set of true isolation products, at an affordable price that are also backed by some real measurements?

[jabbr]

2 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

Does anyone have a good explanation of why someone hasn't come out with a set of true isolation products, at an affordable price that are also backed by some real measurements?

Nice description — probably because the different issues haven’t been bro ken down as you describe. 

[Ralf11]

I think real measurements would require a vibrometer at minimum, or perhaps laser interferometry.   Not hard for a corporation (or a skilled genius, like the one on my PhD committee in the 1980s who made a frickin' sonic anemometer out of an old TV remote control - saving $20,000).  I do know that Mr. Markins (the Korean guy who started the Markins photographic ballhead tripod co.) used a vibrometer to study tripods so a startup could easily do the measurements, maybe an individual.

 

You would then have the harder job of determining the effects of a given freq. and amplitude on disparate types of gear (and the isolation/dampening the manf. provided).  This is similar to pollution in the env.  We can detect down to the low ppt but then you have decades of epidemiology to do, and have to figure out not just acute effects but chronic, and a myriad of possible interaction effects.  It's a nightmare, really.

 

OTOH, why do this work at all when you can shill graphene cable treatments to the types of people described in my sig.??

 

re: ground-borne vibration - one might want to consider airborne vibrations too

 

Apparently, I have clean power and I also have very few vehicles on my dead-end street.  So I don't really have a horse in this race...

[cjf]

5 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

1) Because a lot of folks are confusing isolation, coupling and damping and mixing them together. Generally, the problem we are trying to deal with here is the effect that ground-borne vibration has on the working of our equipment (in some way not that different than worrying about EMI/EMR impacts on cables).  So the idea is to keep any vibration in the ground under us (i.e. from street traffic, but potentially also from the sound our speakers and particularly woofers make) from traveling through your rack or floor into your equipment or speakers.  When you use metal spikes or put heavy materials on or under your equipment, you are actually coupling that equiopment more directly to those vibrations (which should make things worse not better).

I think some products and how they are used blur the lines a bit in what they are attempting to do.

 

As an example the Herbie Audio Lab Spike contains a layer of damping in combination with the Spike itself. So its attempting to both couple and decouple/isolate.

 

I've chose to put the spike facing up in my case because of the somewhat uneven surface of the stone slab I am using and the Spike sinks into it a bit to provide a nice tight fit. The combined weight of the Amp and the Slab (160lbs or so) are coupled to the small head of the Spike and it all then presses tightly into the Black padding that lives between the base of the Spike and the floor.

 

Using a caveman vibration measuring device (My Hand) resting on the floor with music playing loudly and then moving it onto the Amp Stand next shows positive signs of their being less vibration transmitted to the equipment. 

 

I'm a bigger fan of Seismic Spring based products myself between the floor and the equipment/stand but wanted to try this cheap approach first. Given my positive results thus far with the above approach I'm inclined to leave things as they are.

[sdolezalek]

16 minutes ago, cjf said:

I've chose to put the spike facing up in my case because of the somewhat uneven surface of the stone slab I am using and the Spike sinks into it a bit to provide a nice tight fit. The combined weight of the Amp and the Slab (160lbs or so) are coupled to the small head of the Spike and it all then presses tightly into the Black padding that lives between the base of the Spike and the floor.

 

Using a caveman vibration measuring device (My Hand) resting on the floor with music playing loudly and then moving it onto the Amp Stand next shows positive signs of their being less vibration transmitted to the equipment. 

 

Not meaning to pick on you because there are already a number of others in this thread who have gone down the same course you have...but, 

You have tightly coupled your amp and the slab and the points so that they are now a single large mass which presumably has its own resonant frequency; you have then pressed that "tightly" into "padding."  The padding should function as a damping device, unless the 160lb mass is so great that it is squished to the point where it no longer provides damping and instead just couples.  Technically, that would mean any vibrations in your Amp would now flow more directly onto the rack and any vibrations in your floor would flow more directly into your amp.  Both should be worse not better from a vibration standpoint.  

 

But, as to the mass point, presumably there are some vibrations (like clicking your finger against the stone slab) that simply won't move or excite that big mass; so those "lightweight" vibrations may actually be deadened by your mass.  On the other hand, if a truck drives by and vibrates the whole house, your 160lb mass is going to vibrate right along with it.  So I guess part of the question here is which vibrations are we actually worried about/trying to get rid of? The subway rumble, truck driving by, constant tiny earthquakes kind or the kind made by toe tapping, your turntable rotating, etc.  

 

I'm not fully sure, but the solution is presumably different depending on which one you are trying to solve...

[sdolezalek]

3 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

I think real measurements would require a vibrometer at minimum, or perhaps laser interferometry.   Not hard for a corporation (or a skilled genius, like the one on my PhD committee in the 1980s who made a frickin' sonic anemometer out of an old TV remote control - saving $20,000).  I do know that Mr. Markins (the Korean guy who started the Markins photographic ballhead tripod co.) used a vibrometer to study tripods so a startup could easily do the measurements, maybe an individual.

 

You would then have the harder job of determining the effects of a given freq. and amplitude on disparate types of gear (and the isolation/dampening the manf. provided).  This is similar to pollution in the env.  We can detect down to the low ppt but then you have decades of epidemiology to do, and have to figure out not just acute effects but chronic, and a myriad of possible interaction effects.  It's a nightmare, really.

 

I'm not sure you actually need any of that.  What you do need is a recording of a sound playing in a room where the equipment is fully isolated and then a recording in that same room, now without isolation.  In both cases you'd like to have a fairly constant and high level of background vibration (but not noise).  If you can't see any difference in the detailed waveform of the two recordings then presumably there is no meaningful or audible difference.  The only complicating factor may be how those same vibrations are affecting the microphone...

[cjf]

1 hour ago, sdolezalek said:

 

Not meaning to pick on you because there are already a number of others in this thread who have gone down the same course you have...but, 

You have tightly coupled your amp and the slab and the points so that they are now a single large mass which presumably has its own resonant frequency; you have then pressed that "tightly" into "padding."  The padding should function as a damping device, unless the 160lb mass is so great that it is squished to the point where it no longer provides damping and instead just couples.  Technically, that would mean any vibrations in your Amp would now flow more directly onto the rack and any vibrations in your floor would flow more directly into your amp.  Both should be worse not better from a vibration standpoint.  

 

But, as to the mass point, presumably there are some vibrations (like clicking your finger against the stone slab) that simply won't move or excite that big mass; so those "lightweight" vibrations may actually be deadened by your mass.  On the other hand, if a truck drives by and vibrates the whole house, your 160lb mass is going to vibrate right along with it.  So I guess part of the question here is which vibrations are we actually worried about/trying to get rid of? The subway rumble, truck driving by, constant tiny earthquakes kind or the kind made by toe tapping, your turntable rotating, etc.  

 

I'm not fully sure, but the solution is presumably different depending on which one you are trying to solve...

Not sure which "course" you are referring to that some of us have traveled down?

 

FWIW, the Amp is resting on the Slab via its stock rubber/poly feet. Not sure I would consider this tightly coupled to it. The Slab on the other hand is indeed coupled to the Spike. If your not familiar with the Herbie Spikes I am referring to the Black padding is not one that would be squashed by the weight I have on top of it. I dont have a recent pic in my sig to show the setup but...

 

According to Herbies Marketing material his padding Decouples object from the floor regardless of the objects weight on top of it (within 500lbs or so). Granted, there are many flavors of Decoupling and I wouldnt argue that an air suspension or a spring Decouples much better but they also have there own issues such as trapping Airborne Vibe in the component or Self Vibration of component with no path for exit. And of course that is where the Roller-Balls..etc come into play. I'm not a fan with how the ones I've tried sound but others like them obviously.

 

If the Mass/Stand is the thing in contact with the Air Suspension/Spring and Floor and is floating then it takes on the roll of soaking up, resonating..etc the components self or airborne disturbances. It can be a multi tier approach depending on how you have it all setup.
 

[Summit]

21 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

This thread is both very interesting and very puzzling.

Why interesting?

1) Because there is a fair amount of science behind the sonic improvement of getting rid of vibration and I think most people actually hear it in their own system

2) There seem to be solutions that should be both good and affordable but few are broadly commercially available

3) In theory you should actually be able to measure waveform impacts on a before and after basis that prove the benefits of isolation

Why puzzling?

1) Because a lot of folks are confusing isolation, coupling and damping and mixing them together. Generally, the problem we are trying to deal with here is the effect that ground-borne vibration has on the working of our equipment (in some way not that different than worrying about EMI/EMR impacts on cables).  So the idea is to keep any vibration in the ground under us (i.e. from street traffic, but potentially also from the sound our speakers and particularly woofers make) from traveling through your rack or floor into your equipment or speakers.  When you use metal spikes or put heavy materials on or under your equipment, you are actually coupling that equiopment more directly to those vibrations (which should make things worse not better).  When you use sorbothane or other squishy things under the equipment you are damping some of the vibrations, but generally have no idea of whether the frequencies you are damping are the source of the problem or maybe only part of the problem (like applying equalization to only half the frequency range).  What correctly designed roller bearings should do well is to to float or isolate your equipment from those vibrations, but only the horizontal ones; the cups and balls act as couplers in the vertical direction (which is why Barry and others use both cups and inner tubes.  The inner tubes probably act more as dampers than isolators, so getting the air pressure right to affect frequencies you care about matters.

2) Because the science of this is known, you would think there would be a market for products that do provide good isolation and affordably do so.  But most of the products on the market seem either ridiculously expensive or look as though their manufacturers don't understand the isolation, damping and coupling differences.

3) Maybe they exist, but I can't remember seeing any waveform measurements of before and after on good isolation in, lets say a sound room located on a busy urban street.

 

Does anyone have a good explanation of why someone hasn't come out with a set of true isolation products, at an affordable price that are also backed by some real measurements?

 

For speakers it’s the vibrations and the mechanical energy movement in the speaker itself that needs to be drain away from the speaker system without getting the speakers to move. Law of Conservation of Energy stipulate that the energy must go somewhere. Metal spike or cons are used to drain away mechanical energy from the speakers to the spikes and floor and not for isolation.

 

For audio rack it’s the opposite, to pick up as little vibrations as possible, both those coming from the ground and airborne. A mix of isolation, coupling and damping can be used together here.

 

[rando]

I'd suggest browsing through the rest of this thread.   After digesting the doctoral thesis and a few of the other cited papers, this discussion might make better sense. For posterity, this is the Herbie spike (which I was quite easily able to transport here with three clicks).  It is an affordable but incomplete solution that tries to accomplish more than is possible.  This is where the line gets drawn.  Where we are constructing or buying miniaturized professional vibration isolation platforms.  Complex solutions that deal with all of the inherent problems well and some unbelievably so.

 

 

As Summit just touched on, there are too many easily available products which solve complex issues within an already stable systematic solution.  A boon for someone in the rare case that exact piece completes the puzzle.  An apt comparison is using a very specialized grease for sealed moving parts as anti-seize between two tightly fit surfaces.  Nothing in the world will do what that grease does when used correctly.  For general use you would need the exacting knowledge of what it does to understand if it would work or not.  Which probably eliminates any thoughts of reaching for it to start with.  

 

If you have read through the last 9 pages you should realize all of this is just an aside to the general desire for getting someone else to do all the leg work needed to make those silly aluminum bowls.  In bulk to assure we can suspend all our equipment for hundreds not multiples of thousands of dollars.  Great solutions like that very expensive Stacore table exist.  Just not in sufficient quantities in our listening rooms. 

[sdolezalek]

2 hours ago, Summit said:

 

For speakers it’s the vibrations and the mechanical energy movement in the speaker itself that needs to be drain away from the speaker system without getting the speakers to move. Law of Conservation of Energy stipulate that the energy must go somewhere. Metal spike or cons are used to drain away mechanical energy from the speakers to the spikes and floor and not for isolation.

 

For audio rack it’s the opposite, to pick up as little vibrations as possible, both those coming from the ground and airborne. A mix of isolation, coupling and damping can be used together here.

 

 

If you are to "drain away" speaker vibrations that would suggest very tightly coupling those speakers to a very heavy mass (like literaly screwing them into the floor), but that would entirely contradict what Barry Diament is doing in floating his Magnepans

For the audio rack, I get isolation and maybe damping, but where is coupling relevant in an audio rack? 

[sdolezalek]

1 hour ago, rando said:

If you have read through the last 9 pages you should realize all of this is just an aside to the general desire for getting someone else to do all the leg work needed to make those silly aluminum bowls.  In bulk to assure we can suspend all our equipment for hundreds not multiples of thousands of dollars.  Great solutions like that very expensive Stacore table exist.  Just not in sufficient quantities in our listening rooms. 

 

Yes, 6,000 Euros for a combination of a piece of marble, air tubes and cups/rollerballs does seem a bit excessive...but the Stacore table at least exhibits the same characteristics of horizontal and vertical isolation that the prior discussions refer to.  I'm not sure why desiring a solution that accomplishes what Stacore does at a reasonable price seems like a "silly" effort? 

[cjf]

The Stacore unit is certainly a very nice platform but at roughly $5800 US per platform it places itself squarely in the middle of the

"1% market" audience.

 

Only the 1% audience would consider placing a component on top of such a platform with no thought of price/component/balance. So with that in mind that leaves us with using the rest of the world as an example. At $5800 per platform and assuming most normal folks wouldn't want to place a component that costs less than the Stacore on top of it that leaves us with only dealing with components that cost more than the Stacore resting on top of it.

 

So what does that price per component scale look like? For myself, I wouldn't feel right placing a component that doesn't cost at least 60-75% more then the platform its resting on does. This means were talking about one audio component in the $12K-$18K range resting on top of a $5800 platform/stand

 

I don't suspect there are that many folks floating able to shop comfortably in that kind of store so to speak.

[rando]

Silly as in how hard they have proven to agree on a design for and actually get machined.  Or did you miss the very long and tiresome thread that predated this one?  Such was the [%$<+@?!] I refuse to dredge up memories that would tell me if you participated in it.

 

Silly as in what the collective lot of us have used to replace the genuine machined article with.  Miniature dollhouse platters made to a low level of earthenware construction for instance.