Vibration control inside a cabinet


For placing an amp and a CD player inside a built in cabinet, what would be the best way to control vibrations:  do I want some kind of isolation platform (actual brand suggestions would be appreciated), or something more like Herbie's Tenderfeet?  Or both?

Thanks!

mcanaday
Actually the high carbon chrome steel bearings require the extremely hard surface of the top thingies that are provided to perform properly. The underneath surface of the component doesn’t quite cut it, it’s not hard enough and tends to flex. The other problem is without the two upper pieces the component will tend to roll. All three bearings need their top constraining pieces. This constraint forces the bearings to move very slightly up the concave inside of the bottom cup when forced by external uh, forces. All three bearings must be free to move freely in their bottom cups. Otherwise you lose all the isolation. The component must obviously be leveled precisely on the roller bearings and the roller bearing just be in located precisely such that mass is uniformly distributed.

Todd, what Barry Diament (long-term roller bearing proponent, and audiophile recording engineer) suggests is a roller bearing comprised of only one cup (the bowl facing upward, of course), the ball bearing sitting in it, and a hard ceramic floor tile put on the bottom of the component at the locations where the three ball bearings touch, the ball bearing then rolling smoothly against the tile. The original Symposium Roller Block itself had only a single cup, with another of their products recommended for the bottom of the component. The Roller Block Jr. (the $199/3 model nutty mentioned) is a pair of cups, the bowl in each facing each other, the ball bearing between them and riding in both. Barry theorizes that a single bowl provides isolation to a lower frequency; a ball bearing on a flat bottom surface would provide even more lateral (horizontal) isolation, but would then be free to roll right off your rack! The shallower the bowl (the larger it’s diameter), the lower the roller bearing’s resonant frequency.

The Ingress $85 model and the Symposium Roller Blocks have bowls of about the same diameter; the new Ingress model has a bowl machined to Barry’s suggested larger diameter (Ingress’ is 1-1/2"), and is made from Alcoa 7075 aluminum, harder than the 6061 of the original, and polished to a smoother finish, for lower rolling resistance. The new model is also a single bowl design, not a double like the original. But like I said, there is nothing to stop you from turning one set of double-bowl bearings into two sets---just buy three more ball bearings and some ceramic tiles! There are also different grades of ball bearings themselves---Symposium sells them at a couple of price points, but they are also available from ball bearing vendors on the 'net.

One point, the shallowness of the bottom cup doesn’t affect frequency of isolation as Barry theorizes. It affects effectiveness of isolation. Roller bearings aren’t really analogous to mass on spring devices. I.e, a very shallow concave surface provides better lateral isolation (ease of motion) but worse rotational isolation, since the component cannot rotate much when forced by rotational forces, it rotates by climbing the walls of the concave surface. Thus the shallowness is a trade off, it can't be too shallow or too concave. You could probably get really good horizontal isolation with flat bottoms and flat tops, you would just have to constrain the bearings from moving too much, and the component would have to be perfectly level and balanced. It could be done. So you got your roller bearings for the horizontal plane and 3 rotational directions and you got your springs for the vertical. Then all you have to worry about is how you mount the whole contraption on the floor and how to mount the thing on springs. Ah, the art of isolation.

Where there is motion there can be no isolation. Ah, the art of isolation.. choose your paint color made from all the various materials and their geometric shapes all interacting with their various shear speeds and reflected angles most back into the path of what's supposedly being isolated.  Tom
Tom, while I can appreciate your persistence in this matter, apparently there CAN be isolation where there is MOTION as demonstrated by LIGO, the 4 km long interferometer experiment to detect gravity waves - the most critical portion of which is the vibration ISOLATION system - which BTW was successful last year in detecting gravity waves, you know, those teeny tiny physical waves left over from the Big Bang with amplitudes the size of atomic particles. HEL-LOO!  So, apparently there CAN be ISOLATION where there is MOTION. I also submit as evidence all the testimony from users of vibration isolation devices on this thread. Have you NOT been paying attention?