How do you deal with vibration?

I have some experience supporting jadem6. I have two sets of aurios, and liked them under my cd player. At the suggestion of the Audionut folks I found a nice low profile 10 lb barbell weight stuck on some rubber feet and set that on top of my cd player with the aurios underneath. I perceived a little more 'air' in the sound.

Then I tried the aurios between my Silverline SR17s and my Osiris stands. The soundstage widened, and the players seemed more clearly to occupy specific locations. Roger Waters dog on "Amused to Death" started barking behind my right ear. The cd player will have to be happy with the DH ceramic cones for now.

>>there is no need to debase someone else's beliefs.<<

>>There are a lot of things out there that a lot of folks feel good about
believing that can't be explained or even proven to exist. Start with God. With
your mentality I could visualize you going to church<<

This is not a church dedicated to one set of beliefs where good manners
means non-believers must sit reverently for fear of insulting someone's
"religion."

This is a site where audiophiles of every stripe are free to join in, offer
opinions, reservations, beliefs, skeptcism, and recomendations based on
many different approaches.

This way, the people who come here get to listen to many different
approaches and everyone gets to make up their own mind.

>>I paused the player and placed it on brass cones (seating position was
lower than rack so he couldn't see under the player and I blocked his view).
Sat down and pushed "play". He immediately was puzzled and
asked me :WHAT DID YOU DO? THE SOUND IS RADICALLY IMPROVED!!!<<

There are several problems with this "conversion experience."

First, by pausing the music and doing something, then starting the music
again, you raised the expectation that you did something to improve the
sonics.

Second, if you are the audio expert here and your buddy is the "
untrained" listener, your buddy faced peer group pressure to hear an
improvement in order to measure up.

Third, your experiment was not done double-blind. In other words, YOU
knew you had made a change and whether you know it or not, your body
language may have been giving your buddy the tip that you wanted him to
notice, were testing him, had some expectation, or that YOU thought the
sonics had improved, which would make your buddy want to please you by
complimenting the change you -- the expert -- had made by pausing the
music, getting up to make a change -- you needed to place the cones -- and
then resuming the music.

This is WHY listening tests must be done double-blind to carry any weight.

If you did this test double-blind and your buddy with his untrained ears was
eable to reliably tell when the cones were in place and when they weren't --
that would be convincing.

Now, since you claimed the chage was so dramatic that your buddy had to
exclaim that the sound was RADICALLY IMPROVED, we should expect that it
would be easy for him to tell the difference in a double-blind test.

Jadem6,

Thank your for taking the time for your in depth message. Much appreciated.

Upon reading your post, I think we are both on the same page, and you have reinforced my initial thought.

I agree that the stand should be isolated from the floor and be very rigid. I like how you are using the sandstone slabs to do this.

I also agree that keeping a stand isolation from the floor is only half the battle. The other part is individually dealing with each component as to meet each items isolation needs. I do like the Nuance platforms that you have.

I am hoping to make some DIY platforms this weekend for myself. I am currently thinking about a Sandbox to drain internal vibrations from the component, and then the sandbox will sit upon another isolation device to keep any vibration that I have in my stand out of the isolation device for the component. For this I am thinking about some more open cell foam or maybe a bike tube? What do you think would work better here? Foam, Bike tube, cork, bubble-wrap, other??

So to summarize I will have my component sitting on a sandbox which then sits on a softer isolation device (TBD per above) which will then sit on a shelf of my rack, Then my rack is spiked to my floor. I will probably look at getting some Sandstone or another rock to put between it and my floor as you have.

For my CD player I am also planing on using some DIY rollerbock in conjunction with a sandbox, etc...

Thanks again for you help,
Cheers,

>>Nevertheless, at some level it is real and an explanation for why vibration
control can influence what we hear.<<

We have no *proof* that it is real.

Whether this sounds insulting or not. there are always at least two
explanations for "hearing" anything.

1) There is something "real" to hear.

2) It is caused by the imagination.

John Dunlavy used to do an experiment where he would invite audiophiles
and audio critics to his lab and position technicians behind a set of speakers.
The technicians would employ Zip Cord and the audience would be
unimpressed. Then the technicians would swap out the Zip Cord for exotic
looking speaker cables and the audience would exclaim enthusiastically
about the radical improvements they heard.

Only problem:

The cables were never really changed -- it was still Zip Cord.

Why did the audience "hear" large improvements when there was
absolutely no difference?

The mind is powerful and can supply us with sensory experiences that have
nothing to do with "reality."

So, it is always necessary -- for some of us -- to question whether any
testimonial is based on something real or something imagined.