Where and How You Set Up Really MattersIt may be hard for you to believe, but where and how you set up your valuable stereo equipment really makes a difference. In an ideal enviroment for your audio equipment, the places that you mount the equipment would provide rock-like stability, zero resonance, and complete air circulation around all of the equipment. Stereo equipment performance is degraded when there is excessive vibration, heat, or instability. And common practices such as stacking pieces of equipment directly on each other is not good for any of the pieces stacked.
The first tweak that we'll cover is stands and mounting equipment. The goal in this case is to reduce resonance, vibrations, and excess heat. Regardless of what you purchase, implementing these ideas will lead to better performance and longer life for your equipment, irrespective of price or complexity.
The Reasons
There are two schools of thought with regards to reducing vibrations and mounting your equipment. The first, proffered by a fairly well-known writer on the subject of high-fidelity stereo would be complete isolation. To accomplish this you'd seek to remove vibrations coming from the floor or ground. How? Well, you could use a solid, vibration-free substance on which to mount electronics. From a stability and resonance point of view, it would be perhaps a concrete, marble or granite block perfectly balanced on one steel spike with an infinitely small point touching the ground. Further, the hard surface would be a fair distance from the equipment, with something holding the equipment up so that air could flow to the underside of the piece of equipment.
The steel spike would serve to decouple the concrete block from the ground underneath, and reduce vibration that comes through it. This approach is not exactly practical for either cost, design or aestetic reasons.
The other method of isolation, one that was recommended to me by a doctor of Physics, involves lots of dead weight under the equipment (ground or floor) underneath as possible. The idea comes from the fact that the massively solid area on which the system is mounted will be so heavy and weigh so much, as to not be affected by most vibration.
Along those same lines are those that advocate using blocks or stands filled with granular sand or tiny steel balls, something like ball bearings or buckshot. Loaded with this filling the mounts are very heavy. The granular makeup of the encased steel shot or sand injects millions of miniature surface-to-surface "transmission losses" to attenuate (reduce) entering vibrations. In other words, the multiple paths created by the granular material or shot allows the vibration to be dissipated evenly through each individual grain of sand or shotball, thus it never reaches your equipment or speaker above.
Again, the main goal is to reduce vibration from floor to equipment.
As for heat, the solution to that is simple: adequate space around all pieces, and good airflow. Contrary to popular belief, a free-standing piece of equipment will get enough cooling (without fans) just by convection (movement of cooled and heated air) if it has adequate space (usually a few inches) on each side (including the bottom and top).
Obviously most of the technical effort goes into vibration and resonance reduction. These attempts at "mass damping" or vibration elimination, have been underway from the beginning of the home audio revolution. Intrepid tweakers have tried anything heavy and inert to attack resonating component chassis and overly "live" (vibrating) speaker cabinets. The list of things put on top of or under equipment is long and varied. Sand bags. Shot-filled Cuban cigar cases. Dumbells wrapped in saran-wrap (to avoid scratches to equipment surfaces). Bricks. You can make your own shot-loaded Ziploc bags: any metal-working shop or ball bearing plant can give you steel powder or bearings to act as a granular filler.
Whats In The Tweak
Most people don't realize how important the stand or mount is to having great sound. Good stand designs will improve equipment performance in ways you can see and hear. This is the simplest of all tweaks. Vibration and resonance can lead to jitter in your CD player, or rumble in your turntable.
For example, speaker stands that isolate and reduce vibration will lead to much better soundstaging. Decoupling speakers also tames (or possibly eliminates) what is known as 'room boom' or 'bass boom' because of speakers acting like a microphone, and adding room vibration into bass from the speakers.
Make no mistake - elevating a system from good to jawdropping is, most of the time, not a function of acquiring that next super-hi tech component ... Most times it's a matter of attending to all the details. Resonance/vibration control, and heat management are key details.
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