Jerry's ongoing system blog

[Daniel Quinn]

YNWaN tried to copy the principle and call it his own

Reluctantly i do have to say it is a lovely looking turntable .

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I met Ira Gale on two or three occasions, difficult to remember how many as it was in the mid 70's and the experience was a fug of Cannabis smoke and booze - I think most people would refer to him as a character

http://0339436.netsolhost.com/WordPress/ira-gale-story/

[jammy395]

Ira Gale - He seemed like a bit of a Party Animal......Strange fella indeed.

Those chrome Gales looked nice though...!!!

[Lindsayt]

If you were going to make some sort of magnetic levitation equipment support, wouldn't it make more sense to have some sort of angled, pyramid shaped magnet arrangement (a simple drawing would explain what I mean by this)? So that the support was inherently stable without the need for tethers to stop the shelf sliding off?

OK, you'd still have power leads and signal leads acting as a bypass to the isolation, but at least you'd have done away with the tethers.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The whole thing is silly, and an understanding of energy paths and how to control them would make the idea a non starter. There are two solution that depend on how the problem manifests 1, couple (earth) 2. decouple (absorb). This does neither. So the resonant frequency or the floating structure will just get on with its resonating.

[jandl100]

The whole thing is silly, and an understanding of energy paths and how to control them would make the idea a non starter. There are two solution that depend on how the problem manifests 1, couple (earth) 2. decouple (absorb). This does neither. So the resonant frequency or the floating structure will just get on with its resonating.

I'm happy to come under the banner of Technical Numpty, but it seems to me that the maglev idea comes within the scope of "decouple (absorb") - the vibes are likely to be absorbed by small low freq movements of the supported item within the magnetic field induced gap?

???

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Jerry it comes in the scope of do bugger all and let it hang there, which may be a good thing in itself, none of this is a calculating cure process. To couple or ground is the spike thing (but other ways as well). Get the resonant energy (what ever there is of it and that is infinitely variable) to pass to mechanical earth (the planet earth) with as little interference as possible. To de-couple or absorb thing is the addition of mass and material to change the resonance to make it less apparent. This can be as simple as putting a brick on it (mass damping), or putting springs underneath or rubber thingies.

By religion I am a coupler, unless I am *forced* to decouple.

[jandl100]

To my mind, such as it is, I think that sitting kit on a magnetic field does the de-coupling "putting springs underneath or rubber thingies" thing.

I'm sure we've all played with pushing opposing magnets together as kids, it's a very rubbery / springy feeling. That's the way I look at it anyway.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I don't think you understood me Jerry. You have mechanical energy that is causing a problem so you wish to cure it. Couple / de-couple are different methods of trying to cure the problem. By hanging it in the air you do nothing, it is what it is. If it is a cure of anything then it is to cure interface problems with what the unit is being coupled or decoupled from. Decoupling is a mechanical filter, coupling is a direct connection, floating in the air is different and largely explanations I have seen are crapology. The ultimate hi-fi bullshit spam is to do nothing but give a crapology explanation to justify charging a lot of money for it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't work *for you in your situation*. There are no absolute rules, I am just explaining the science.

[terrybooth]

When I had the CDI, I found that it sounded better when sat on the light table I'd bought for the LP12 (spiked, therefore coupled). And when I had glass-topped, spiked racks, I found it sounded better if I put it on a bit of chipboard with four plastic BB pellets under the chipboard (which I was thinking of as 'kind of' spiked but allowed the CDI to roll around in the horizontal axis, therefore presumably decoupled).

However, the CDI was a fairly heavy thing (presumably mass damping) and, as we know, had sprung suspension around the deck and presumably spinning the CD would create centripetal forces and (since things are rarely exactly round or exactly the same mass throughout) some vibration. Then the power supply would produce vibrations which would vary with the mains supply. And so on and so on.

To try and work out all the forces in that system would be hard enough, let along trying to work out the most sonically effective way of tackling them.

So, unless we have advanced mathematical skill and and advanced knowledge of physics (objectivism), the only practical way to proceed is 'suck it and see' (subjectivism). Then we enter the realms of (objectively demonstrable) psycho-acoustic effects which are exacerbated by the factor of cash, markets and commercialism. As a thought experiment, Imagine what would happen if hifi were as free as the air: what shape would all these debates take then, would we still have the particularly male bias of this hobby, the 'mine's bigger than yours' attitudes, and so on?