Where is Your Turntable?

Mine came out of the closet... Honest!

Well, at least it's back into the system. Many years ago a TT was the centerpiece and reasonably well contained in a home-brew contraption. Then came the grunions - you know, rug rats. The whole system (except speakers, of course) migrated into a closet in an adjoining hallway - unusual, yes, but away from prying and PBJ-covered fingers. Over the years family demands changed, CDs arrived, and the turtable & vinyl migrated to a storage closet. And then there was this stupid, stupid thread here earlier this year that kinda booted my butt into gear and the turntable literally came out of the closet and I started listening to vinyl again. Family status and accompanying FAF (Family AF) means that it's sitting on a jury-rigged pseudo-isolation contraption on a shelf, but it has to be along the front wall between the speakers today. At least it's out in the light of day...

mine is immediately to the left side of my listening position along the left wall (room is 21 feet wide); there is a 1 meter interconnect to the phono stage on a rack next to the tt. the wall behind the tt has a large multi-cylinder diffuser. the floor is 6" of concrete and i have a 24" x 24" piece of Travertine on top of the concrete for the tt. the tt itself has it's own integral stand and air suspension.

i have spot lighting directly onto the tt, with one button on my remote the lights dim. i like lots of light for cueing and checking the stylus but like it dim for serious listening.

i can be back in my chair before the music starts after cueing......and the tt is easily seen from my listening position.

the VPI 16.5 is set up on a built-in cabinet in the hallway outside the room with all the tools at hand for quick action.

Due to lack of space I have Lovan 3 point stands with .75" marble shelves with the turntable sitting on top with an extra 1.25" granite slab separated with rubber buttons. All of it sitting between speakers. I haven't had problems with walking around or vibrations from speakers but the granite does have a "ring" when you tap it. I am considering a maple platform and maybe some Ganymede feet beneath it. Would the lateral movement that is possible with bearing type iso have negative effects on turntables. Would the arm bounce back and forth in the groove?

Well, you can tell where mine is by my system pictures, but for those who don't wish to look it is behind and almost centered between the speakers on top of a DIY stand. I toyed with placing everything opposite the speakers (and I still may), but the wall behind the speakers is very accessible so that's where the dedicated circuits went for the analog and digital components. My table may be a bit high off the floor but since everything is on a concrete basement foundation I didn't worry about it.

Like those absorbers, 4yanx! I have four, 3x4, one 15"x90", and a boatload of Jon R's bass traps. Most of those are the 12" diameter, but I do have one 16 incher that tames the bass in a particularly troubling corner behind the speakers.

Mthieme, RE your ringing granite shelf: The rubber buttons are making the ringing worse. A little tip: when you put a heavy material like glass or granite on a another surface or shelf, place a sheet of thin 1/16" foam between them (you can find it anywhere they sell packing supplies.) It mates the two surfaces together uniformly and damps out any vibration between them.

Glass and granite do have a high frequency sonic signature and they need to be uniformly damped/mated to a substrate like wood (or even another slab of granite!) which is accomplished easily with a very thin sheet of foam. It would be even better to spread a layer of contact cement and laminate the two surfaces together, but that gets a little messy as a DIY project, and foam gets you 80% there.

Neil