Anyone use a Ringmat on a TT

My experience is that the poorer the suspension of the table, the more beneficial the Ringmat will be. Tables that can't properly drain air-borne vibrations or lack isolation from floor-borne energy may respond positively to tweaks like the Ringmat.

The arm / cartridge tracking across a record with / without the Ringmat is kind of like someone walking across a floor that is rock solid in terms of consistent support or a floor that is "springy" due to having limited support with the supports spaced a distance apart. Obviously, one of these will be far more consistent in terms of what to expect in terms of "sure-footedness" ( tracking and vibration ) whereas the other is going to introduce variables into the equation. It is for this reason that tables that are more advanced / suffer less from microphony and smearing due to vibration induced resonances won't take too well to this type of device.

With that in mind, i would recommend avoiding the $60 - $130 expense on one of these items and investing that towards a better turntable and / or turntable installation. After all, you are talking about a piece of cardboard with a few rings of cork glued to it. I'm NOT saying that "tweaks" don't or can't work. What i am getting at is whether or not this "tweak" is really worth the money. Could you find a more effective way to combat the problems that this tries to address? Personally, I think so. Sean
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PS... No weight to transport, no fancy packaging required, minimal outlay in terms of production materials, etc... Must be a helluva profit margin in something like this. No wonder the places selling it recommend it so highly.

Aceto's comments would lead one to believe that the Ringmat improved the vinyl to cartridge interface by negating some of the effects of either floor-borne vibration and / or air-borne vibration due to the increased spl levels he mentioned. This is exactly what i was getting at in my previous post i.e. the Ringmat is acting as a "band aid" for the lack of proper energy control in the turntable design and installation itself. As such, it might be a viable alternative to replacing a TT system that you already have and are already happy with, but there may be other side-effects that this "tweak" brings with it. Nothing is a "cure-all" without having some other side effects that one has to deal with. Sean
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Linn's have never been known for having adequate isolation from vibration. By themselves, they are prone to skipping tonearms and cartridges across the disc if one is not careful. All i will say is that turntable design has come a LONG way since the design of the Linn, and even then, there were tables that were better than the Linn. Having said that and as you know, marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to high end audio.

I have reviews where they compared a few different tables in terms of their ability to resist acoustic feedback and the Linn was the worst of the bunch. In comparison, the table that was at the top of the list measured some 40 to 50 dB's better in terms of isolation. Not only does this equate to a lower noise floor and the ability to produce more resolution from within the same grooves, it also means the ability to play much louder in the listening room without losing that level of resolution.

As a side note, you might want to look into a different type of support system underneath your table. Constrained layer damping is far more effective than sheer mass in most every case. As such, i would lose some of the "rigidity" of materials underneath the player while still finding a way to keep things level.

Using this approach, not only will you put another absorbent boundary between floor-borne vibrations and the table itself, you'll have made an "energy sink" that the table itself can drain air-borne vibration into. This would be much cheaper than replacing the table itself, which is the ultimate solution to the problem you mentioned. Sean
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Simon: The Oracle is the table i had in mind when talking about doing it better than the Linn to begin with. I also agree that "wobbly feet" aren't good things under a table. Sean
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Aceto, i have a question for you if you don't mind. Which model AR turntable do you have and between the AR and the Linn, both in stock form placed on the same support surface, which one is more susceptable to air-borne acoustic feedback and / or heavy footfalls / floor-borne vibrations? Sean
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Aceto: I was just asking questions about the differences between the AR and the Linn. I did not know if your LP-12 was a relatively "bare bones" stock model or a heavily updated model. I would have been curious to see how those two tables in base form compared to each other. Sean
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