The Infinite Fight Against Vibration

- Spikes vs Absorbers -

Each hifi device born in a sophisticated lab and subsequently is put in in our listening rooms, we take care to their positioning in the environment , to their interconnection, but often in the home environment the equipment are a victims or source of harmful vibrations.

Think for example to a tube amplifier in the proximity of a pair of loudspeakers: the amount of vibration transmitted from the spekers via the floor surface can dramatically deteriorate the more sophisticated amplifier performance.

This is due to
To give credit to every effort made by electronic manufacturers is essential that the environment affects as little as possible the electrical performance.

The Terra Acoustic damping systems are the natural complement to a stereo system that aspires to reproduce the musical event in its harmonic completeness.

It is not new to the fact that any vibration can deteriorate the performance of an electronic device, this happens in all areas, aerospace, medical, etc.
This happens with all types of circuitry, analog or digital. In most cases, the equipment mounts highly sensitive vibration components such as quartz oscillators and capacitors.
At this point we are at a crossroads:
Coupling the floor everything that vibrates in the hope of decreasing its harmful effects, or isolating both the source of vibration (acoustic speakers) and the electronic enclosures (CDs, turntables, amplifiers)?

Let's analyze these two possibilities in detail.

Coupling

Coupling to the floor usually takes place by placing spikes under the objects, this minimizes the surface by obtaining a very high contact pressure. This ensures that objects are firmly supported on the floor below.
In this way the vibrations generated, for example, by the speakers, will be transmitted in an almost integral way to the support surface. If this was infinitely rigid, we would have a big problem, the speakers under the action of the vibrations would go bouncing on the floor. Fortunately, this is not possible because every real material has , more or less rigidity, but not infinite.
Our loudspeakers will not walk undisturbed in the room but will transmit vibrations to the floor which will also start to vibrate. This will transmit vibrations to our furniture and electronics themselves.
The only hope we have is that the vibrations are dissipated in this path and this will depend on the shape and material of the floor.
We have realized that the ability of this system to absorb vibrations depends basically on things that are hardly under our control, except in rare cases the floor of our room has already been built and without big expense it is difficult to modify it.

Decoupling

The decoupling from the floor is obtained by placing special accessories under the objects, these, regardless of the type of material, will consist of a spring + damper assembly that can absorb, like any mechanical system of this type, the vibrations that pass through it a certain range of frequencies.
In the case of application under lodspeaker systems, it is possible, with an optimal calculation of stiffness and damping coefficient, to eliminate vibrations transmitted to the floor, regardless of its rigidity. All the equipment electronics will have immediate benefit while working without vibration.
Many will find that in this way the diffuser, free to oscillate on the dampers, will cause a pendulum movement of the mobile as a result of the loudspeakers, thereby changing the position of the emission centers.

In fact this is a non-problem, the masses of moving speakers are in a range from 0.2 g (typical dome tweeter) to 50 g (typical 25 inch woofer) while the mass of the speaker cabinet may be from 20 to 100kg.
We have a ratio between the masses ranging from 0.0025 to 0.000002, the ratio between the masses (Third Law of Motion - Newton) will also be the ratio between the reciprocal accelerations.
Even in the worst case, the cabinet acceleration will be 0.0025 times that of the speaker cone, and in the first analysis the displacement induced in the mobile will be about 0.0025 times that of the loudspeaker. Assuming a woofer with a xmax displacement of +/- 10mm, this will result in a shift of 10x0.0025 = 0.025mm.
This is, however, a pessimistic hypothesis as the cabinet is not completely free to move, even in this case the speaker cabinet dsplacement and therefore the speaker output centers, is absolutely imperceptible.
In any case, the decrease in system performance due to these oscillations is much lower than the damage caused by vibrations to the listening environment.
You have understood at this point how fighting against vibration with metal cones is a very difficult battle to win.
Much more effective will be to equip our listening chain to a range of accessories to reduce vibrations transmitted to and from the equipment.