Isolation Feet for Blu-ray Player?

Sakahara,

I agree with your point, my bad for not providing a complete description of how wooden blocks can help - maybe I should clarify.

I suggest placing hardwood blocks under your player on top of a significant block of wood or other material that absorbs and dissipates the vibrational energy from the drive mechanism and digital boards. Brass or other stiff material works well to transfer vibration away from the player chassis, but brass footers generally cost a lot. You can purchase a thick piece of solid maple or maple or other hardwood composite chopping block and make a few wooden blocks of the proper height for well under the cost of a set of brass or other dedicated footer solutions, and I my experience is that you will get very close to the same performance in my opinion. And having brass footers alone above a glass, thin MDF or other compromised shelving will not provide adequate vibration control.

The problem with soft solutions like sorbothane is that they can help protect your drive from external vibration, but do less well at transferring internal vibrations away from the player. One solution is to have a large, thick wooden block supported above your rack by sorbothane or other flexible material, and support your player above the large block with smaller hardwood blocks, brass footers or some other hard support that will drain vibrations away from the player and into the body of the wood below.

No worries... I'm a fan of natural wood footers with audio system (Shun Mook), but the HT gear with it's spinning drives, fans,..etc was causing resonance through my [cheap] cabinet. Footers are a less expensive fix to a new $1K+ media console.

If your shelves are adjustable, try isolating them from the cabinet frame with a little piece of Blutack or sorbothane dots between the shelves and their supports, and if you don't have space in your cabinet for large wooden platforms under your gear, then isolate with Herbie's or similar footers as suggested above.

It's actually when the component is on the bottom shelf (base of cabinet). The shelf rests on metal supports and doesn't transfer the vibration as much. I have considered placing something in between though as you suggested.

The Vibrapod Isolators work well. But the HD Dual Tuner/DVR is just so noisy that the sound travels through the air, reflecting off the cabinet and rear wall. May have to cover it with sorbothane sheets and line the cabinet.

Whenever CD Players and Blu-Ray Players experience excessive vibrations, their error correction circuitry kicks in to ensure they can continue to track the disc that is being read properly. When the error correction circuitry kicks in, the dynamic range is limited, sound quality is compromised, and you are restricting the performance of your blu-ray player. My Pioneer Elite BD-09 address this by using heavy duty composite material feet with an additional absorptive, spongy layer to help reduce vibrations.

I have tried several different feet, and the best are made by Harmonic Resolution Systems - one spacer and two couplers make "one isolation foot" and you need 3 of these sets per component. They make a remarkable difference! Audioquest, Herbie, the old "Mod Squad," and several other companies make various versions of these, but HRS really knows what they are doing. Mod Squad was the first company to make a "footer" and they made a great one - it featured a soft sorbothane footer that vibrations which you could use alone, but you could also insert a 1/2" Tip Toe (the first isolation cone) into the rim of this footer. The combination of an aluminum cone and a sorbathane footer was very effective, and every so often, you can find them on the used market (I still have a bunch of them).

If you have a "normal" rack that is not made by Harmonic Resolution Systems or some other company that specializes in isolating the shelves from vibration (these racks are expensive - over $1,000), then it is definitely worth your time and money to invest in isolation feet for your Blu-Ray Player and your CD Player.

Good Luck,
Dave