Aloha,
Been thinking of getting my act together and making a booklet of cheap and readily available tweks, and figured I may as well start here.
Let me know if any of y'all have tried any of these or what you think if you do try one or more:
1) Duct tape and washer damping.
Any piece of cabinetry or gear that you can feel vibration on when playing music gets a square of duct tape to that spot, a washer on top of that, and another piece of duct tape to hold the washer in place.
Beats the heck out of Mpingo discs.
I have one cabinet that has been wrapped on all sides except the front with duct tape and has washers placed at various points. Extra layers of tape and washers can easily be added and removed.
Ugly, but effective.
2) Golf balls in furniture "coasters" (those things you put the legs of furniture on to protect the floor) make awesome support feet.
3) Hot Wheels cars on top of electronics. These cars have a sort of flexible suspension and damp vibration better than most audiophile devices.
You can fill the cars with pennies to increase damping.
This one is hard to explain until you check out the little diecast metal cars.
The best car, seriously, is one called the Ice Cream Truck (also sold as the "Grillionaire") because it can hold up to ten pennies.
An atom or two of Blue Tac can be applied to the wheels if rolling is a problem.
4) Gummi Bears make great Blue Tac substitutes on speaker stands. They are less dead sounding than Blue Tac, a lot sweeter.
5) Bobble head dolls can act as damping devices for gear as well. They act kind of like tuned mass dampers on buildings, taking energy from the top of whatever they are on and translating the vibration through their heads into bobbling motion instead of heat.
*Their damping frequency is too low to be useful on speakers.
6) An M&M, any color, can be attached to large drivers - woofers or big midrange drivers - in an asymmetrical pattern to break up standing waves within the driver. Attaching with Blue Tac or rubber cement is best.
Even random dabs of hot glue from a hot glue gun can help.
The larger the driver, the greater the improvement.
The jury is still out on Reese's Pieces.
7) Keeping an artificial Christmas tree between the speakers makes for a great diffuser. Imaging is amazing. The strings of lights seem to create a DC offset sink that quiets down spurious electronic noise in the system, too.
8) Small sized marshmallows under power supplies work great until they harden up - usually about 2 weeks.
For larger gear, Peeps work wonders.
9) Black Velvet paintings make the best wall treatments. I've used the nude African woman, the sleeping Mexican guy, and Dogs Playing Poker to great effect!
10) Using a compass to align your toroidal transformers with magnetic north will eliminate RF problems with your cables - big money saver.
11) Use a timing light for seeing which direction the current flow is going in your amplifier's toridal transformers, as well. Make sure the current is flowing counter-clockwise. If it is going the other direction, flip your transformer over.
*This should be done with the opposite direction in mind for audiophiles living south of the equator.
If you are not handy, turning the amp upside down can work, too.
Enjoy, hope you had a happy holiday today.
Aloha,
Been thinking of getting my act together and making a booklet of cheap and readily available tweks, and figured I may as well start here.
Let me know if any of y'all have tried any of these or what you think if you do try one or more:
1) Duct tape and washer damping.
Any piece of cabinetry or gear that you can feel vibration on when playing music gets a square of duct tape to that spot, a washer on top of that, and another piece of duct tape to hold the washer in place.
Beats the heck out of Mpingo discs.
I have one cabinet that has been wrapped on all sides except the front with duct tape and has washers placed at various points. Extra layers of tape and washers can easily be added and removed.
Ugly, but effective.
2) Golf balls in furniture "coasters" (those things you put the legs of furniture on to protect the floor) make awesome support feet.
3) Hot Wheels cars on top of electronics. These cars have a sort of flexible suspension and damp vibration better than most audiophile devices.
You can fill the cars with pennies to increase damping.
This one is hard to explain until you check out the little diecast metal cars.
The best car, seriously, is one called the Ice Cream Truck (also sold as the "Grillionaire") because it can hold up to ten pennies.
An atom or two of Blue Tac can be applied to the wheels if rolling is a problem.
4) Gummi Bears make great Blue Tac substitutes on speaker stands. They are less dead sounding than Blue Tac, a lot sweeter.
5) Bobble head dolls can act as damping devices for gear as well. They act kind of like tuned mass dampers on buildings, taking energy from the top of whatever they are on and translating the vibration through their heads into bobbling motion instead of heat.
*Their damping frequency is too low to be useful on speakers.
6) An M&M, any color, can be attached to large drivers - woofers or big midrange drivers - in an asymmetrical pattern to break up standing waves within the driver. Attaching with Blue Tac or rubber cement is best.
Even random dabs of hot glue from a hot glue gun can help.
The larger the driver, the greater the improvement.
The jury is still out on Reese's Pieces.
7) Keeping an artificial Christmas tree between the speakers makes for a great diffuser. Imaging is amazing. The strings of lights seem to create a DC offset sink that quiets down spurious electronic noise in the system, too.
8) Small sized marshmallows under power supplies work great until they harden up - usually about 2 weeks.
For larger gear, Peeps work wonders.
9) Black Velvet paintings make the best wall treatments. I've used the nude African woman, the sleeping Mexican guy, and Dogs Playing Poker to great effect!
10) Using a compass to align your toroidal transformers with magnetic north will eliminate RF problems with your cables - big money saver.
11) Use a timing light for seeing which direction the current flow is going in your amplifier's toridal transformers, as well. Make sure the current is flowing counter-clockwise. If it is going the other direction, flip your transformer over.
*This should be done with the opposite direction in mind for audiophiles living south of the equator.
If you are not handy, turning the amp upside down can work, too.
Enjoy, hope you had a happy holiday today.