Michael Green has an evil twin, some kind of Tuning prophet, over on AA. He appears to be making the same argument as Mr. Green with respect to damping and isolation. Michael, quick! Grab this guy and promote him to Senior Tuning Scientist!
Cross forum pollination courtesy of G. C. Kait, Machina Dramatica
RE: One last thought
Posted by stehno (M) on May 7, 2015 at 00:32:16
In Reply to: One last thought posted by bartc on May 6, 2015 at 06:36:28:
"Let's think about this.
Pretend for the moment that your electronic components are vibration-sensitive instruments, not unlike an atomic force microscope.
You're listening to music anywhere from 78 - 105 db, a vibration-rich environment. Now no scientist worth his weight is going to perform his research with his atomic force microscope at a crowded disco on a Saturday night, yet that is exactly what we do with our own vibration-sensitive instruments.
It's safe to assume whatever air-borne vibrations that are striking your body are also striking your vibration-sensitive instruments' chassis' too. Moreover, you also have internally-generated vibrations via power supplies, motors, etc. that your sensitive instruments are plagued with.
If you think of a tuning fork and striking the tines, you should quickly understand that vibrations are captured in a moment in time but with nowhere to go, dissipate over an extended period of time.
Now picture your vibration-saturated sensitive instruments resting on kitty litter or an air-bladder or even on stock rubber footers. Where do you suppose that mechanical energy is going to go?
Your kitty litter or air-bladder has created a disconnect so that all the vibrations captured at the chassis remain in the chassis and will fully dissipate there as well.
First you should understand that vibrations are an energy and energy likes to travel and energy likes to attach itself to anything it can. If there is no exit path, it will travel the component seeking the most excitable components to release their energy there. However, if you successfully provide superior exit paths that allow the energy to escape the sensitive instrument before it starts to dissipate, well you can be assured there's no other upgrade that can compare to it. Not even close.
It's better to think of vibrational energy as electricity which is always seeking the most expedited path of least resistance to ground. That is exactly how mechanical energy behaves.
But since the entire universe is made up of various forms of vibration including electricity, it's even better to think of it this way:
Electricity behaves just like mechanical or vibrational energy in that it is always seeking the most expedient path of least resistance to ground.
The best illustration about what your sensitive instruments face is to think of a lightning rod. Unwanted energy is attracted to that lightning rod and it happens to be the best performance-oriented lightning rod in the world. But it has no grounding wire attached. What's going to happen to that dwelling when lightning strikes? The results are catastrophic.
But when a superior grounding wire is attached and at the other end is a superior grounding spike into the ground along with superior connections, that dwelling stands a very good chance of surviving even the worse electrical storms.
Ok, I'm rambling and it's late.
The point being here is it's against the laws of physic to isolate an object from all sources of vibration simultaneously. And when you isolate an object from one source of vibration, you inherently trap other sources of vibrations captured at the object. You can't win with this methodology, you can only lose just a bit less at best.
It's impossible though many smart fellers will die trying. Why, even in a vacuum chamber, the object would have to be levitating to potentially escape any vibrations.
So why does everybody and their mother go the vibration isolation route? Because for some thoughtless reason it seems to make common sense. But it is pretty thoughtless. When I first started dabbling with vibration control 15 years ago, I started off with the vibration isolation methodology because that's where everybody else was. Surely, everybody else can't be wrong? Read my lips.
The first and last question most always is, what about those nasty floor-borne vibrations?
I could ramble on about why I pay no attention to floor-borne vibrations (not shock and impact) because they are already heading toward ground but I won't. So I'll close with this next real life analogy:
You're sitting in your car at a stoplight and some kid drives up behind you in his car with his subwoofer pumping out the nastiest, most ill-defined rolling earthquake type of bass you've ever heard. You look in your rearview mirror but it's vibrating so violently you can't even tell if the kid is a boy or girl. You're stomach's churning and you're starting to think if you blew chunks, you might get some relief. So there's that kid sitting in his car which is resting on air-filled tires and there you are too, sitting in your car which is also resting on your air-filled tires and you're experiencing one of the most physically nauseating moments of your adult life because of the kid's subwoofer.
From whence are these vibrations coming? The ground or the air?
Are not your air-filled tires and the kid's very much like your air-filled bladder or perhaps your stock footers?
Using that same car at the stoplight analogy, how is the car resting on air-filled tires being continuously bombarded with vibrations from the other car's woofer (or even its own subwoofer) any different from a speaker or component? e.g. couldn't the rearview mirror vibrating violently be akin to a a transistor, op-amp, capacitor, tube, etc?
I've left stuff out but the point being of all this is vibration isolation is an invalid vibration-controlling methodology and always has been. Vibration isolation is nothing more than a grotesquely inferior version of the one true vibration controlling methodology which is resonant energy transfer.
If, and it may not be so, that in your endeavors with vibration isolation have resulted in minor improvements and not just sonic alterations, then it is because you're implementing less inferior executions of vibration isolation. For example, why the maple chopping boards? Is it not possible that few or some vibrations are able to escape to there and dissipate there?"
Michael Green has an evil twin, some kind of Tuning prophet, over on AA. He appears to be making the same argument as Mr. Green with respect to damping and isolation. Michael, quick! Grab this guy and promote him to Senior Tuning Scientist!
Cross forum pollination courtesy of G. C. Kait, Machina Dramatica
RE: One last thought
Posted by stehno (M) on May 7, 2015 at 00:32:16
In Reply to: One last thought posted by bartc on May 6, 2015 at 06:36:28:
"Let's think about this.
Pretend for the moment that your electronic components are vibration-sensitive instruments, not unlike an atomic force microscope.
You're listening to music anywhere from 78 - 105 db, a vibration-rich environment. Now no scientist worth his weight is going to perform his research with his atomic force microscope at a crowded disco on a Saturday night, yet that is exactly what we do with our own vibration-sensitive instruments.
It's safe to assume whatever air-borne vibrations that are striking your body are also striking your vibration-sensitive instruments' chassis' too. Moreover, you also have internally-generated vibrations via power supplies, motors, etc. that your sensitive instruments are plagued with.
If you think of a tuning fork and striking the tines, you should quickly understand that vibrations are captured in a moment in time but with nowhere to go, dissipate over an extended period of time.
Now picture your vibration-saturated sensitive instruments resting on kitty litter or an air-bladder or even on stock rubber footers. Where do you suppose that mechanical energy is going to go?
Your kitty litter or air-bladder has created a disconnect so that all the vibrations captured at the chassis remain in the chassis and will fully dissipate there as well.
First you should understand that vibrations are an energy and energy likes to travel and energy likes to attach itself to anything it can. If there is no exit path, it will travel the component seeking the most excitable components to release their energy there. However, if you successfully provide superior exit paths that allow the energy to escape the sensitive instrument before it starts to dissipate, well you can be assured there's no other upgrade that can compare to it. Not even close.
It's better to think of vibrational energy as electricity which is always seeking the most expedited path of least resistance to ground. That is exactly how mechanical energy behaves.
But since the entire universe is made up of various forms of vibration including electricity, it's even better to think of it this way:
Electricity behaves just like mechanical or vibrational energy in that it is always seeking the most expedient path of least resistance to ground.
The best illustration about what your sensitive instruments face is to think of a lightning rod. Unwanted energy is attracted to that lightning rod and it happens to be the best performance-oriented lightning rod in the world. But it has no grounding wire attached. What's going to happen to that dwelling when lightning strikes? The results are catastrophic.
But when a superior grounding wire is attached and at the other end is a superior grounding spike into the ground along with superior connections, that dwelling stands a very good chance of surviving even the worse electrical storms.
Ok, I'm rambling and it's late.
The point being here is it's against the laws of physic to isolate an object from all sources of vibration simultaneously. And when you isolate an object from one source of vibration, you inherently trap other sources of vibrations captured at the object. You can't win with this methodology, you can only lose just a bit less at best.
It's impossible though many smart fellers will die trying. Why, even in a vacuum chamber, the object would have to be levitating to potentially escape any vibrations.
So why does everybody and their mother go the vibration isolation route? Because for some thoughtless reason it seems to make common sense. But it is pretty thoughtless. When I first started dabbling with vibration control 15 years ago, I started off with the vibration isolation methodology because that's where everybody else was. Surely, everybody else can't be wrong? Read my lips.
The first and last question most always is, what about those nasty floor-borne vibrations?
I could ramble on about why I pay no attention to floor-borne vibrations (not shock and impact) because they are already heading toward ground but I won't. So I'll close with this next real life analogy:
You're sitting in your car at a stoplight and some kid drives up behind you in his car with his subwoofer pumping out the nastiest, most ill-defined rolling earthquake type of bass you've ever heard. You look in your rearview mirror but it's vibrating so violently you can't even tell if the kid is a boy or girl. You're stomach's churning and you're starting to think if you blew chunks, you might get some relief. So there's that kid sitting in his car which is resting on air-filled tires and there you are too, sitting in your car which is also resting on your air-filled tires and you're experiencing one of the most physically nauseating moments of your adult life because of the kid's subwoofer.
From whence are these vibrations coming? The ground or the air?
Are not your air-filled tires and the kid's very much like your air-filled bladder or perhaps your stock footers?
Using that same car at the stoplight analogy, how is the car resting on air-filled tires being continuously bombarded with vibrations from the other car's woofer (or even its own subwoofer) any different from a speaker or component? e.g. couldn't the rearview mirror vibrating violently be akin to a a transistor, op-amp, capacitor, tube, etc?
I've left stuff out but the point being of all this is vibration isolation is an invalid vibration-controlling methodology and always has been. Vibration isolation is nothing more than a grotesquely inferior version of the one true vibration controlling methodology which is resonant energy transfer.
If, and it may not be so, that in your endeavors with vibration isolation have resulted in minor improvements and not just sonic alterations, then it is because you're implementing less inferior executions of vibration isolation. For example, why the maple chopping boards? Is it not possible that few or some vibrations are able to escape to there and dissipate there?"