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Looking for turntable isolation advice

Greetings from Oregon,

Was hoping to get some suggestions on turntable isolation for my particular situation.  My setup starts off with two strikes against it - suspended wood floors in my apartment and the turntable between in the speakers.  Neither is ideal, but that's the room I have.  As it's an apartment, structural changes are out of the question.  I have a VPI Prime on the stock feet, which are a nice step up from the feet on the Traveler that I had before, but I'm not sure about their ultimate performance.  

For my stand, I am using two heavy duty (about 70lbs. each) Sound Anchor speaker stands facing each other with a 4" maple platform on top of them (with blue tack between the stand and platform).  The stands are spiked into Herbie's gliders.  I find that all of my stands sound better on the gliders or generally decoupled from the floor.  The speaker stands are only about 10 inches wide but the platform is 24"x19", so it's probably not the most stable set up.  I'm getting good sound, but I know that the table is still subject to some vibrations.  I'd like to get advice on anything that I might do to better the performance of the table.  

I've considered some the following:

1). Aftermarket footers for the table, possibly Stillpoint Ultra SS.   

2). Better spikes on the stand - Gaia, Stillpoints, Track Audio, etc.

3).  Paving stone under the stand

4). All of the above

5). A wall shelf.  This would be a big task as the table weighs close to 60 pounds.  The only commercial turntable wall shelves I've seen hold 40-80 lbs. max weight, and I'd like something that is rated much higher to be safe.  I guess I could try a DIY project.  Would love to get the maple platform on brackets on the wall, but that would bring the weight over 100 lbs.  

So, any thoughts would be welcome.  It's turntable only rig, so I'm trying to wring every last ounce of performance out of it.  

Thanks so much for any insight that you might have.

Cheers,Scott
smrex13

Showing 1 response by tatyana69

tatyana69
113 posts
 
I have a loose floorboard that caused havoc if anyone moved in my room. Problem solved  with a rack that has a suspension element to it - I was surprised at the total elimination of the problem in spite of the floor board being quite  a significant issue. You did write that your issue was turntable only, but if you are spending that sort of money it is not much more to get a full rack to go the whole hog - and the market place is probably bigger choice anyway and better value as a result.
I swear it made a difference to the sound though so I changed the cables to compensate.
On the subject of suspension type racks,  I bought one which used rubber rings pulled round small spikes on the rack  to hold the platform, again round the small spikes in the platform. What a design issue that gives! The rubber rings break frequently (I wondered why the seller gave me so many!) and you need a number of spare hands to hold the platform, put the ring round the rack spikes and simultaneously put the ring round the platform spikes. And if the rack is populated already (as it is being used of course) to hold the weight of the platform is yet another bugbear. The air is so blue I must wait until anyone is clearly out of earshot when I am doing this!
It must be the MOST irritating design anyone could ever come up with.

As an interesting thread, there must be a number of hi fi products that have serious swear factors  - design over bleedin' common sense!!

What has caused the most swearing out there in Audiogon land?

 
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