Sorbothane pads / feet

[Taz777]

I recently purchased Sorbothane pads to isolate my desktop speaker stands and my desktop speakers that sit on top of those stands. They improved clarity from the speakers to a noticeable degree across several of my favourite tracks. In particular I noticed sweeter treble frequencies.

 

 

Is anyone else using Sorbothane strips / pads / feet? Is it snake oil or does it offer any improvement to the sound quality in your experience?

[mourip]

I have used various anti-vibration feet and mass loading devices. Some helped. Some did nothing that I could discern. Some made the sound worse.

 

All that matters is that you like what they do and that their cost seemed worth it to you.

 

Snake oil is in the pocketbook of the beholder ?

 

Enjoy!

[semente]

I use four 3mm sorbothane squares (one in each corner) to "glue" my speakers to the stands.

[Deaf Cat]

Yes I found sorbothane feet made a nice difference, took me a while to realise... ...what about other materials as feet?

after trying this and that, I settled on brass feet. 

Let your ears indicate what you like best, and try all sorts ?

 

[Taz777]

21 minutes ago, Deaf Cat said:

Yes I found sorbothane feet made a nice difference, took me a while to realise... ...what about other materials as feet?

after trying this and that, I settled on brass feet. 

Let your ears indicate what you like best, and try all sorts ?

 

 

The store I bought these from has a variety of different types of pads and feet. They do rubber ones too, and aluminium/Sorbothane 'sandwich' type ones. I might buy some of the more intricate ones as the ones I have now were the most basic (and cheapest).

[davide256]

They make sense for damping electronics from vibratory feedback but are contraindicated for passive speakers. Speakers should be rigidly mounted to prevent

 driver excursion/environment from causing cabinet movement/vibration and degradation of time coherency for imaging and transients.  If you hear "sweeter"

treble it has more to do with changing the geometry of your speaker to ear positioning. Or possibly that your electronics are on the same stand. Wall mount

brackets/shelf or floor stands are best vs placing speakers on a desktop.

[Taz777]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

They make sense for damping electronics from vibratory feedback but are contraindicated for passive speakers. Speakers should be rigidly mounted to prevent

 driver excursion/environment from causing cabinet movement/vibration and degradation of time coherency for imaging and transients.  If you hear "sweeter"

treble it has more to do with changing the geometry of your speaker to ear positioning. Or possibly that your electronics are on the same stand. Wall mount

brackets/shelf or floor stands are best vs placing speakers on a desktop.

 

My DAC and computer are right next to my speakers. I have some spare pads left and I'm going to put my DAC on them to see if there's a further improvement.

[sphinxsix]

5 hours ago, davide256 said:

They make sense for damping electronics from vibratory feedback but are contraindicated for passive speakers. Speakers should be rigidly mounted

+1

[Ralf11]

Speakers should be rigidly mounted to remove the effects of box cabinet movement on modulating the drivers.

 

But... if sympathetic room/furniture vibrations exist, then rigid mounting may be contra-indicated as it couple the box to the floor or furniture...

 

Get the damping vs. freq. curves for the particular sorbothane and study that...  or just try stuff out - blind.

[audiobomber]

I bought a Sorbothane turntable platter mat many years ago. It sucked all the life out of the sound, truly dreadful. I have been cutting footer type discs out of this mat ever since. I have some plain ones, penny and quarter sized. I have a set with a nickel glued between sorbothane discs. Sometimes they improve the sound, sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they do harm.

 

IME, sorbothane is useful under CD and DVD players and DAC's. I never noticed any difference under pre or power amps, but I've never owned tubes so no comment there. Under a turntable may work, depending on the design of the table and the support it is resting on. I agree with others here who said sorbothane should generally not be used under speakers. If they are helping, it's a sign that you don't have properly isolated speaker stands.

[sandyk]

 

Sorbothane pads were sometimes attached to the inner walls of small box type speakers to markedly reduce

the wooden  " boxy" type vibration sound. They worked quite well in some Vifa kit speakers that I had years ago, until the sound level became quite high.

[fas42]

Viscoelastic materials, Sorbothane being the famous one, are a key tool in my armoury - I just use cheap varieties of the stuff that are used in many household items. As stated by many, electrical parts are too sensitive to vibration as regards SQ, for a number of reasons - you do what's necessary to improve this.

 

And, yes, mass loading and firmly locking down of items like speakers can make a major difference - in particular, low end, bookshelf speakers can then project like really, really big speakers - obviates the need for the latter ... .

[davide256]

14 hours ago, fas42 said:

Viscoelastic materials, Sorbothane being the famous one, are a key tool in my armoury - I just use cheap varieties of the stuff that are used in many household items. As stated by many, electrical parts are too sensitive to vibration as regards SQ, for a number of reasons - you do what's necessary to improve this.

 

And, yes, mass loading and firmly locking down of items like speakers can make a major difference - in particular, low end, bookshelf speakers can then project like really, really big speakers - obviates the need for the latter ... .

I've oft thought that a floor to ceiling braced  "C" clamp mount design would be better for small ported monitors, as wall placement doesn't work for these, bass  response requires a few feet distance away from the wall. As in @Ralf11 's point above, even the best floor monitor stand can't resist plywood sub-flooring flex

under carpet but a stand tightly braced against ceiling and floor would mitigate as much as possible.

[gmgraves]

On 10/20/2018 at 4:41 AM, Taz777 said:

I recently purchased Sorbothane pads to isolate my desktop speaker stands and my desktop speakers that sit on top of those stands. They improved clarity from the speakers to a noticeable degree across several of my favourite tracks. In particular I noticed sweeter treble frequencies.

 

 

Is anyone else using Sorbothane strips / pads / feet? Is it snake oil or does it offer any improvement to the sound quality in your experience?

I have been using Sorbothane pucks since the late 1980s. I've used them under my turntables, my Audio Research SP-10 (tubes tend to be  particularly microphonic). They certainly work. The best use I ever had for them was in the construction of a turntable platform. An oak open-faced cabinet with two 13 X 18" X 18" (33cm X 46cm X 46mm) shelves for LPs, had a cast lead top. on top of the lead were three 3" (76.2mm) Sorbothane pucks arranged as an equilateral triangle; two in front and one in the rear with a 21" X 21" (53cm X 53cm) plate of 0.5" (12.5mm) smoked, tempered glass on top of the pucks. The turntable (a JA Michelle Gyro SE turntable with a Jelco SA-750 arm and a Grado Sonata cartridge) rested on that glass surface. Immediately, I noticed that the bass was a lot tighter, the highs sounded more precise, less smeared, with cleaner midrange. And probably just as important, I found that I could walk around in the room without the stylus bouncing out of the groove! (wooden floors in that place). So yes, Sorbothane isolates components susceptible to microphonic excitation (such as tube circuits employing the dual triode 6992/6DJ8/ECC88, which, being a tube originally designed to be a mixer/oscillator for FM and TV tuner front ends was never designed for audio and thus lacks the internal element support of say, a 12AX7 and therefore lacks the isolation from microphonics that the 12AX7 possesses. And of course, Sorbothane works wonders under a turntable plinth in isolating the turntable from feedback from the speakers as well as structure-borne gyrations from foot-falls on unsteady floors. I'm a big believer. 

[Ralf11]

thing to do is to build the listening room on granite, with bolts for the speakers sunk down deep

 

El Cap is a prime candidate

[fas42]

Not needing to go to extremes ... a key reason that I got my first dose of good sound was that the just adequate cabinets of the bottom of the range bookshelfs were effectively coupled to the concrete slab foundation of the house - long spikes under concrete columns were forced through carpet and underlay so that the speaker, coupled with Blu-Tack to the column, effectively was at one with the slab. And lots of mass loading on top of the speaker kept improving the coupling - bass was as 'tight' as anything I've heard elsewhere; rigs with big subwoofers generally just sound ridiculous to me ...

[Blackmorec]

If sorbothane works for you under a component its because it has a less deleterious effect than whatever your component was standing on before. but sorbothane is nothing like transparent or neutral. It will colour your sound and rob it of ultimate pace,  rhythm, timing, propulsion, swing and energy. It will also tend to muddy bass and remove high end sparkle. 

Sorbothane does a superb job in isolating certain frequencies, but unfortunately not all. Also, it isolates in both directions, preventing external vibration reaching the component, but equally well preventing internally generated vibration from leaving the component. 

If you are looking to get the ultimate results from your stereo, sorbothane is not for you. If you are looking for a nice, cheap improvement to enhance your sideboard or wooden shelf, go for it. 

 

Ideally, if you are after highest SQ, what you want is a footer, shelf or rack that isolates external vibration and grounds internal vibration, converting it to work and heat.  Well engineered constrained layer damping is one of science’s answers to the problem. 

[Ralf11]

I am at a loss in trying to determine the mechanism by which your last para. makes sense.

 

CLD is hardly anisotropic

[fas42]

The materials used for isolation, or coupling, are not an answer in themselves. They are a way of attenuating the weaknesses in parts of the system that reduce perceived SQ - if the audio components were made as well as they "should be" then none of this additional fudging would be necessary, or have any effect. IOW, if a tweak alters the sound, then you have exposed that the system has weaknesses, in its raw form.

 

So, two approaches: accept the weaknesses, and mollycoddle the components, to get the best out of them; or, toughen them up, by going inside and directly addressing the precise part or area that is lacking in 'robustness', from inadequate design or implementation. In the real world, one will tend to use a combination of those methods, to get the job done.

[Blackmorec]

3 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

I am at a loss in trying to determine the mechanism by which your last para. makes sense.

 

CLD is hardly anisotropic

CLD doesn’t need to be anisotropic.

 

Sorbothane isolates, so external vibration is kept out of the component (good) and internal vibration is kept in the component (bad)

 

CLD works based on shear strain in the damping layer, which converts both external and internal vibration into latent heat instead of transmitting or reflecting it.  In this way external vibration and internal vibration are dealt with in exactly the same manner.......the component is thus isolated from external vibration (good) and internal vibration is drained from the component into the CLD’s damping layer (good)

 

 

[Ralf11]

nope

 

keep going

[fas42]

What's anisotropic got to do with anything? - both Sorbothane and CLD use viscoelastic behaviour to convert vibration into heat - they damp oscillation. So, both are good ...

[jparvio]

If I remember corrrectly, it was originally Audioquest who came out with Sorbothane feet. It happened two or three decades ago. These were then found to be very case dependent. At worst they muddled and killed the sound as described by some here. 

 

Now, Years after those first impressions I´ve found sorbothane again. At the moment I have placed a set of four small sorbothane buttons under my Roon Nucleus-unit. No negative effects but would I hear much of a difference without them... No. 

[Taz777]

My desktop speakers are Ruark MR1 Mk2 active speakers. I don't know whether active/passive makes a difference to the sound quality when Sorbothane feet are used. It's possible that I'm upsetting the audio by using them but the music sounds better to me.

 

Back in the days when I was into HiFi (mid-80s to early 90s) I had spiked audio racks and every component had large Sorbothane discs at each corner. It was the 'done' thing in those days, and I am glad that I rediscovered Sorbothane recently. The downside is that I have noticed an incredible rise in costs of it compared to a 2-3 decades ago.

[Blackmorec]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

What's anisotropic got to do with anything? - both Sorbothane and CLD use viscoelastic behaviour to convert vibration into heat - they damp oscillation. So, both are good ...

Anisotropic doesn't come into it.

 

Basically, sorbothane and CLD are very different in their structure, properties and function.

 

Vibration is bad for electronic components. External vibration coming from loudspeakers for example should be kept away from electronic components and internal vibration coming from transformers, transports etc. are best drained out of and away from components instead of bouncing around and reflecting internally.

 

For vibrations to transfer efficiently from 1 material to another,  the resonant frequencies of each material should be quite close, so the vibrations encounter a low impedance interface. When the interface impedance is high (big gap in the resonant frequencies) vibrations have a very tough time crossing it. Sorbothane makes for a very high impedance interface with items like hard and stiff shelving or metal component cases, so very little vibrational energy is transferred. This is great for external vibrations as they remain isolated in the shelf and cannot transfer into the component. Perfect!. The sorbothane isolates the component. But in the opposite direction, again due to high impedance, sorbothane will not transfer internal vibrations out of the component very efficiently and isolates them in the component.  Not perfect at all!

 

Constrained layer damping is very different. It comprises two stiff outer layers bonded sandwich-wise to an internal visco-elastic layer. The outer layers' resonant frequencies are close to the shelving and component cases RFs so both external and internal vibration easily cross the interfaces into the CLD's outer layers. The outer layers are bonded to the visco-elastic inner layer so when the outer layer vibrates, it tries to pull the visco-elastic layer with it, but the other side of the visco-elastic layer is bonded to the second outer layer, which is not vibrating. This creates shear forces, which is work, which in turn generates heat. The energy from both internal and external vibration is thereby converted into thermal energy in the visco-elastic layer and thus dissipated.