Experiments in Isolation
I have been listening to the youtube video by the "British Audiophile" recently, they are quite interesting and he talks quite a bit of common sense, he says that he was in the audio industry, but I am not sure in what capacity. Any way this video is interesting.
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A very good audiophile friend had watched it and isolated his amplifier and phono stage, and Cd player, and speaker with what "British Audiophile" recommends and he told me that the overall improvement was a no brainer, especially for about £60 outlay. I have been looking at some quite expensive isolation products but the cost has been putting me off.
I had already isolated my amps, so I thought I would have a play with my speaker isolation.
I have had the speakers stood on spikes directly on the carpet with the spikes going into the floor. The floor is concrete block and beam construction, with foam insulation on top and then a layer of chip board, so effectively a stiff suspended floor. I found that as the Wilson Benesch Vectors have downward firing ports that placing them on the Oak platforms improved the bass, detail and depth.
Prior to the changes below they were stood on the Oak platforms on their spikes onto aluminium spike protectors.
1st Test - This is with some simple rubber speaker floor protectors that are designed to take spikes. This was an improvement, there was definitely more bass, but not as defined as I had hoped for, so room for improvement maybe.
2nd Test - I removed the speaker spikes and placed each speaker on 4 isolation pads, I already had two of them spare, https://www.amazon.com/Diversitech-M...on+pads&sr=8-4 so I cut each in to quarters.
The result here was quite a big improvement IMO, bass was more defined, control and had better extension and clarity. This was particularly clear when listening to Paul Simons - 'Boy in a Bubble' from Graceland the bass drum being very impressing with clear extension and decay not anywhere near as evident as before. Ravi Shankar - track 1 off Portrait of Genius has some excellent Indian Tabla drumming and the hollowness of these became more evident with better decay.
I alos noticed with both these tracks and others that general instrument separation and clarity had improved, so not just the low end frequencies have improved but the focus of mid and upper range as well.
So if you fancy a little experiment and see if you can improve what you experience for not much cost I would recommend you have a play.
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Originally Posted by willbewill
