Over the last couple of weeks after some extensive reading I've done some turntable isolation following the advice of Barry Diament - who is a sound engineer.
The gist of it is that you do it in two stages.
The first is an air bearing. You slightly inflate an inner tube and place it under the turntable - just enough so that the air decouples it from the room for vertical vibrations.
The second stage and I would argue this seems to be the most important stage and it has the greater sonic benefits - is to basically get three metal ball bearings. You put each of these in a metal spherical cup (if you can find one). You arrange the cups in the shape of an equilateral triangle with as much distance between each one that you can And then you rest the turntable on top of the three ball bearings in their respective cups. This isolates it from sideways and rotary motions/vibrations. When there is a movement or a vibration the energy gets used up moving the ball bearing up the side of the cup.
I've only really been experimenting with this and I haven't really searched for something metal for the cups, but I will in time. To see if there was anything legitimate about this idea I got some of these from OSH (from the advice of another poster):
Shepherd's 1 3/4" I.D. non-slip plastic furniture cups
They work the same although after I inspected them after a week I can tell they will not be durable for the long term.
I'm not really one for tweaks like these, I don't isolate my cables from the floor etc and in most ways I want this tweak to not work as it all looks a little on the foolish side.
But it DOES work and it really works rather well, especially the ball bearings in the little cups. I don't think there's really many products for sale that does the same thing and you can buy the materials I used from Orchard Supply Hardware for about $15. I'm not really very good at getting descriptive about the glorious results in sound delivered and so forth - but the effect was extremely noticeable! Everything has gained a greater realism. If you've never heard of this (The idea seems to have been floating around the forums a good 10 years or so) this is certainly something you should try.
More reading that can explain it better is here:
http://barrydiamentaudio.com/vibration.htm
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ent-and-other-speaker-isolation-gurus.154013/
I'll post some pictures soon so you can get an idea of what I mean.
The gist of it is that you do it in two stages.
The first is an air bearing. You slightly inflate an inner tube and place it under the turntable - just enough so that the air decouples it from the room for vertical vibrations.
The second stage and I would argue this seems to be the most important stage and it has the greater sonic benefits - is to basically get three metal ball bearings. You put each of these in a metal spherical cup (if you can find one). You arrange the cups in the shape of an equilateral triangle with as much distance between each one that you can And then you rest the turntable on top of the three ball bearings in their respective cups. This isolates it from sideways and rotary motions/vibrations. When there is a movement or a vibration the energy gets used up moving the ball bearing up the side of the cup.
I've only really been experimenting with this and I haven't really searched for something metal for the cups, but I will in time. To see if there was anything legitimate about this idea I got some of these from OSH (from the advice of another poster):
Shepherd's 1 3/4" I.D. non-slip plastic furniture cups
They work the same although after I inspected them after a week I can tell they will not be durable for the long term.
I'm not really one for tweaks like these, I don't isolate my cables from the floor etc and in most ways I want this tweak to not work as it all looks a little on the foolish side.
But it DOES work and it really works rather well, especially the ball bearings in the little cups. I don't think there's really many products for sale that does the same thing and you can buy the materials I used from Orchard Supply Hardware for about $15. I'm not really very good at getting descriptive about the glorious results in sound delivered and so forth - but the effect was extremely noticeable! Everything has gained a greater realism. If you've never heard of this (The idea seems to have been floating around the forums a good 10 years or so) this is certainly something you should try.
More reading that can explain it better is here:
http://barrydiamentaudio.com/vibration.htm
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ent-and-other-speaker-isolation-gurus.154013/
I'll post some pictures soon so you can get an idea of what I mean.
I think this would benefit any turntable. Even SOTA. But I don't know. You should give it a try.
