Butcherblock Acoustics "feet" effecting sound and isolation

Under a past amplifier, I used a bamboo cutting board that had a groove around the the edge( to collect juices).  In that groove I glued some fishing, soft rubber worms. Turned it over so the worms were all that touched the counter. I thought it made a noticeable difference.  The amplifier I have now is to heavy for that and I’m going to get some Isoacoustics Indigo isolators.

YRMV

This is my first comment in audígon.

I’m an engineer working for over 20 year on dynamic analysis and vibrations. Normally in airplane components.

Like pretty much anything in relation to stereo systems, there are more that one possible argument or interpretation.  There is no specific data all the discussion are based on assumptions.
 

the wood block is made of hard material and at the same time the large weight and high stiffeners produce a low resonance frequency where music vibration has low influence in the block but given the large mass factor of the block, it influence any other component in the vibration path.

the rubber feet had a linear dampening relation. The metal decouple feet has the differential factor of reducing the amount of energy transfer thru the system.

therefore the system final result can be very similar. If you want to reduce any vibration the best thing would be put neoprene under the metal decouple plates. but High dampening materials have limitations depending of the mass load and displacement amplitude of the vibrations.

you need more energy to move a heavy component. If you reduce the amount of energy input by the decouple support…. The system is more stable.

the sand only benefit ( in relation to speaker stands) is the high mass and

Moving the cg of any system to a lower point, making the stand more stable.

like I said in the beginning there is no simple answer.

every system is different and it depends highly of everything around.

if you are not happy with you system or sound I don’t think those changes would be a game changing…

I strongly recommend Mapleshade products.

Purchased their Turntable Stand that included 

three four inch solid maple shelves.  Isoblocks

under two Pass Lab components. It’s esthetically

pleasing and solid as Fort Knox.

Still points look them up work excellent .evern components vibrate from power supplies and other things from transformers, regulators ,and are cumulative 

put in the Duelund  Audio purifiers down  stream at your speakers to clean up theHF distortions that are there.

The theory of more stuff.

Vibration isolation in audio is a subject surrounded in mystery half truths and any number of wild theories. As an engineering exercise, the explanation is quite straight foreword and may be explained by the “Theory of more stuff”.
 

Take a surface, be it the floor or a table, on which your hi fi component is placed and it is desired to reduce the vibration from the support to the equipment. The way this is done is to put “some stuff” between the equipment and the supporting surface. There are three possible outcomes.
 

1 The vibration in the equipment is more than the vibration in the support.
This is not possible as if it were; the energy crisis would be solved! More
out than what is put in. Free power forever! Unfortunately, this scenario
contradicts the first and second laws of thermodynamics, so is not
possible.
 

2 The vibration in the supported equipment will be the same as in the case of no stuff. The chances of this are one in a million because something has been changed… it may be the same, but that is extremely unlikely, therefore, the only possibility is,
 

3 The vibration will be attenuated, to a greater or lesser degree, and this is the case.
 

There are many products out there that do in fact attenuate vibration. Be it spikes on glass, wood and slate, aluminium spikes in cups, ball bearings in cups, solid plates separated by compliant sheets, lead, Bluetack, sand, marble, concrete, the list is endless. It is also known that multiple combinations of the above produce better results because there is more stuff. E.g. multiple platforms stacked really high.
 

The engineering approach is to get the best result in the simplest manner by optimizing the “stuff” and way back about two centuries ago the Victorian engineers came up with the solution…. the spring! The spring may be anything “springy”, from elastic, rubber, coiled steel, straight steel, air-bladders to flexible wooden strips. As long as it has sufficient spring or compliance, when optimised with an appropriate mass, a mechanical low pass filter is realised.

The ideal is to have the resonant frequency as low as is possible, ideally around 2Hz in both the horizontal and vertical planes and with a damping ratio of about 0.16. This will give an attenuation of about 25dB at 10 Hz increasing at 20dB per decade above. This will ensure excellent isolation for the deleterious audio system vibrations which are from 5Hz to 500Hz.