The placement of your equipment can have a profound effect on the sound quality.
It depends largely on the equipment used, how critical YOU are and how careful other
instructions in this series are carried out.
The series Audio Hygiene is called this way since there is a clear parallel with personal
hygiene.
Will you get ill immediately if you forget to wash your hands after a visit to the bathroom?
No.
Only when you adhere to all the rules of personal hygiene, the chance of getting nasty diseases
will be reduced drastically.
Something along these lines goes for audio hygiene.
With every step you take you will reduce the chance of the sound being influenced negatively.
So filling the steps in this video can improve the sound quality of your stereo but if it's
the only thing you do there is not much chance it will.
Vibrations are the main topic in this video, and I'm not talking about my hands.
All equipment, and especially audio equipment, is sensitive to vibration.
Some audio equipment is more sensitive than others but they all are.
Let's start with the turntable: here microscopic modulations in the groove are scanned by having
a very small stylus - of which the soundings are expressed in microns - run through that
groove.
Ideally the cartridge the stylus is mounted in should remain at a constant position above
the groove on the - ideally flat and resonance free - vinyl record.
Any vibration in the record, the cantilever that holds the stylus, the cartridge, the
tone arm and the platter will distort the sound.
Also the platter axis should fit as tight as possible the bearing while it should be
subject to as little friction as possible.
The same goes for the bearings of the tone arm while the mechanical construction between
the tone arm and the platter bearing should be as firm as possible.
Again, any mechanical deviation from the - non existing - ideal causes distortion.
These deviations can be caused by a design that is not sturdy enough but even if it is
sturdy, it will be impossible to design a turntable that has no resonances.
Especially since turntables are used to play music and music is nothing more than variations
in air pressure.
The energy stored in these variations can easily excite one of more mechanical components
of a turntable.
Even worse is when the sound energy excites the shelf the turntable is on since chances
are the shelf is not designed to fight resonances.
Therefore some turntables, like Linn LP12, have the platter and tone arm base mounted
on a suspended sub chassis.
Others fight those resonances by pure mass.
A heavy turntable base will absorb a lot of energy.
Still it is advisable to place a turntable on a very sturdy surface that is almost free
of vibrations.
Ideal is a sandbox that has a heavy stone or granite plate in it on which the turntable
is placed.
But that might cost you your marriage.
There is another factor to take into account when placing a turntable: it almost always
needs to be 100% horizontal when it used gravity to set the tracking force and anti skating.
Often the bearings also work better when the turntable is level.
Turntables that use springs to set the tracking force and anti-skating are less critical where
the tone arm is concerned but there still is the matter of the platter bearing that
is designed to be level.
The cd-player is a combination of mechanics and electronics.
It is in fact a kind of turntable, only with even far smaller grooves and a drastically
higher reading speed.
With most cd-players there is a 1.2millimeter thick, 10 cm in diameter acrylic disk placed
on a platter the size of a one euro piece and rotated at 200 to 500 RPM.
The laser is mounted on either a swing arm or tangential mechanism and has to track a
500 nanometer narrow path of pits that vary in length between 850 nanometer to 3.5 micrometer
at 1.2 to 1.4 meter per second.
Now that is 4.3 to 5 kilometers per hour, a sturdy walking pace, while reading dots
as little in length as 3.5 millionth of a meter.
As one of the main designers of the CD once told me: it works by the imperfection of the
system.
It might be clear that vibration on the CD-mechanism will cause an increase of reading errors and
thus the chance on increase of jitter.
But also the electronics is subject to performance degradation due to vibrations.
In a CD-player in particular the crystal oscillator that generates the clock frequency that the
d/a-converter needs to precisely reconstruct the analogue signal can be - and often is
- rather sensitive to vibration.
An unstable oscillator generates an unstable clock signal and that is called jitter.
Less sensitive - but not free of it - are all other electronic components, the most
sensitive perhaps vacuum tubes.
As we saw before electronics are sensitive to vibration as well.
A rule of thumb: the smaller the voltages the more sensitive the equipment is.
So a moving coil pre-pre should certainly be places on a story surface while power amps
might be less sensitive.
But - again, in general - tube equipment is more sensitive to vibration than solid state
equipment.
And the more refined your stereo is, the bigger the chance it will lead to sound degradation.
Not only because the equipment has to offer more detail but also because owners of more
sophisticated equipment will be more critical.
This all lead to a market of audio furniture.
The good ones really do a good job in keeping vibrations as low as possible while the bad
ones have as primary objective to look high-end.
It also gave us a wealth of accessories like spikes, rubber feet, marble shelfs and so
on.
Some do a good job, others don't.
A substantial marble plate has a very high mass and therefore will isolate vibrations.
Rubber feet will work if they are inert.
Just drop one on the floor and if it doesn't bounce at all, it might work.
Spikes and cones - in my experience - will not work.
I have discussed this with a scientist of the Technical University of Delft.
He was involved in research on vibration and couldn't thinks of a way spikes and cones
would reduce or filter out vibrations.
So that coincides with my experience.
What will work is a shelf made of two planks with a layer of led in-between.
Or, as suggested earlier on, a sand box with a tile marble plate on top of the sand.
But I'll warn you, you'll better not be married or have your own man cave.
Here again there are many stories and advises on how to place your speakers.
For the best location see my video on speaker placement.
The link is in the show notes.
This here is about the feet and stands.
Should you use spikes or not, how important are stands for monitor loudspeakers and so
on.
Let me start with the spikes.
As far as I am concerned they only serve one purpose: give the speakers a sturdy placement
in rooms with carpets on the floor.
If you would use normal feed on a carpet, the speakers can move slightly due to the
construction of carpets.
Using spikes the speakers will rest on the floor beneath the carpet and will not be able
to move slightly and thus cause intermodulation distortion.
Also there might be a better conductance of vibration to the floor since there is now
contact with the floor.
This also means that spikes are of no use when the speakers are placed on a concrete,
stone or wooden floor.
If you use speakers that need a stand, there is a lot to gain from sturdy stands.
Often they are made from tubing and tubing, like organ pipes, have their own resonances.
The better ones are damped in some way.
A popular way is to fill them with sand but they need to be constructed to hold sand.
An extra benefit is that it makes the stands heavier and thus harder to tip over.
If you don't have a carpet where the speakers are to be placed and your speakers or stands
are supplied with only spikes, you could replace them by lock bolts.
They are cheap and far more convenient than putting coins below the spikes.
Whatever accessory you use to decouple your equipment or place your speakers on, remember
that using only three feet will give a very sturdy placement.
In the case of speakers keep in mind that they might tip over more easily.
If you are not sure about resonances in your system, google for mechanic's stethoscope
on Amazon.
For under 20 bucks you can get one.
Simply holding it to the part that you expect to resonate and you will hear the resonances,
if present.
Now, there will be people that disagree with the information in this video, and that's
ok.
In audio there will always be circumstances that will not work with general rules.
Not because of voodoo but simply since we still don't understand everything in audio.
That makes audio so much fun to report on, so subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter
or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
See the show notes for the links.
If you have a question, post it below this video but please don't ask me for buying
advise.
See my About Questions video to find out why.
If you liked this video, please consider supporting the channel through Patreon and see super
exclusive videos too.
Just one dollar a month will do.
The link is in the show notes.
And don't forget to tell your friends on the web about this channel.
I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com.
And whatever you do, enjoy the music.
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