Isolation Platform for my Sota Cosmos?

Tonywinsc, As my system has improved, those sounds swooshing around in an oval patter have moved from above the plane of the speakers to now where they are circling above my head. I have not gotten the oval to go completely behind me yet, but it is indeed an amazing effect. A bit like helicopters in a big Summer Blockbuster movie. This is an LP that continues to sound different as the system changes.

Peterayer, that is way cool. Your turntable and platform look very good. I'm sure the sound is fantastic. I have an ARC preamp and it throws a deep/wide sound stage but never forward of the front plane of the speakers. It goes deep instead. My analog soundstage goes beyond the speakers and almost to the side walls (24ft across). My digital soundstage is just as deep but not nearly as wide. I also think that the better isolation reduced surface noise on my records. I can't really prove that however.

The fly in the ointment when using suspended turntables on isolation devices such as Vibraplane is that if the resonant frequency of the turntable's suspension is close to that of the isolating system the two systems can interfere with each other. Like a car going down the street with two shock absorbers for each wheel, linked in series. The passengers in the car will have a very bumpy ride. One way to test this theory is to disengage the turntable suspension and see wa' happen.

If you want to go on the cheap, a good home-made isolation platform that I have used for years is to buy several wheelbarrow inner tubes at your local hardware store and a large cement paver block. Place the block on the inflated inner tubes and your turntable on that. Sounds silly, but I learned this trick in graduate school where we needed to isolate a monolayer trough from building vibrations and my graduate advisor had me do the same thing (he was cheap). I tried a lot of other solutions but nothing worked as well as the massive block on the tubes. I think there are some commercial products such as the Townsend Audio Seismic Sink and others that use this principle but will cost you a lot more. Good luck.

Geoffkait, that is an interesting post. I never really considered that. I may try to lock down my SME suspension and listen to the result. The other alternative is to tune either the Vibraplane or the SME towers to different frequencies. They are adjustable, but I don't know how to measure the respective resonant frequencies. Thanks. One more thing to play with.