On the draining of resonance.....

To me, music is my spirituality--it amazes, humbles and uplifts me. The system is my altar, out of which all nourishment flows. To acquire better sound is to bring a deeper reverence. It is a material pursuit in the interest of a spiritual revelation. Joseph Campbell remarked that the great cathedrals were built to render an experience of God. When you walk in, you are removed from your domesticity toward a deeper meditation. Even your local church, with the high ceiling and pipe organ, is meant to render a sense of that. And when you walk out, you are back to the pedestrian concerns of survival, etc. The goal, as he said, is to retain some sense of that meditation that transcends the more mundane concerns of life. This would also be the Zen state of being.
Anyway, let's start a new church out of our hobby. Each of our homes will be a sanctuary--we will call it Audiology, and we can all get tax breaks on our houses. We will need a high priest--anyone?
I am serious on the first part, though--I have been through a religious conversion, only to return to music as my inspiration.

JAfreeman,

Great post! I can relate to that.

Ommmmmm. Of course you would ask me that! My wood blocks I was using on my old shelf (and when I say old, I mean like 175 years old!!) don't fit on my new shelf, so my turntable is sitting on the ground, which is OK, because the ground is a concrete slab over 300 tons (literally, don't ask) of crushed rock. My old Thorens TD150mkII sounds best in this configuration sitting directly on the floor on its little rubber feet. The bass is from middle earth somewhere. In my rather flexible old wardrobe, my CD player, table and amp all sounded better supported with cones on a large wooden slabs that were isolated from the actual shelf (purely home brew) as described above and in the images from Mapleshade. If you have a concrete basement floor resting on a large mass of rock, I might recommend trying your turntable or disk drive on their stock feet sitting right on the floor. I haven't tried my amp in this configuration. If/when I reconstitute old setup, will post photos.

Tosta, no.
What I am saying that if it still worked and was all you still had today you should not be distressed about it.
Easier said than done, but that's the goal .

I realize my suggestion to put gear directly on a concrete floor is something of a side light given the original post, and could be perceived as contrary to my earlier advice, so let me praddle on a bit further.

The conditions that made me resort to the more heroic isolation and "draining" were I think more typical of what others face, a shelf system on a wooden floor supported by joists. Everything flexed, and flexed further with loud music playing. My experience was that the biggest difference was made with the large, heavy wooden board directly under the piece of equipment, I assume because it adds resting mass and absorbs both external and internally generated vibrations. The second biggest difference was derived from using small metal cones to connect the equipment to the board. I have not used large brass cones, which some swear by. Without the large wood, the cones can sound bright. With the wood underneath, the cones added clarity without brightness. Isolating the large wood from the underlying shelf with something pliable like sorbithane dots added value, but proportionally less than the wood and the cones.

So why does the concrete floor work so well with my turntable (well enough to put up with bending down to change records)? I do not think that much internally generated vibration is goining into the floor. I think the value added is that the floor imparts diminishingly low amounts of vibration back to the table at any volume level or external input short of an earthquake. Imagine a 300 ton turntable platform. This kind of stability works effectively in concert with the sprung platter and arm of the Thorens. I haven't tried this with my amp yet, but am convincing myself as I write this that I should.

kn