Concrete Slabs


Here I go, perhaps stirring up some controversy.

I have two turntables, both sitting on a 400lb 17th century oak chest. The chest in question sits on a suspended wood floor in a 1985 post and beam house. I just started to play Mahler's 9th (DG/Guilini/CSO) on an SME 10 with an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze. It sounds as it should. But the point is that if I stamp as hard as I can right next to the chest, there is no interruption of the sound. Even if I take a deep breath and jump with both feet off the floor—nothing, nothing at all. So, tell me, what may I gain by pouring concrete here, there, and everywhere (as I believe someone once sang)?

Is this reverence for the ultimate solidity of a foundation the same kind of daftness as when someone says an interconnect must be as thick as their wrist, even though the component may pass the same delicate signal through a PCB trace of minuscule cross-sectional area? What are we aiming for?

dogberry

Showing 1 response by mulveling

Sounds like you’ve got your turntable support reasonably well sorted. Congrats! In my experience: isolation isn’t a problem, until it’s a BIG problem. If you don’t have good enough support (combination of rigidity & mass), then footfalls and speaker energy through the floor can cause a large enough displacement (shifting the cartridge relative to platter) to excite your cartridge & tonearm’s resonance (8 - 12 Hz). This isn’t usually audible, but it can be enough to cause problems for your amp & woofers. It can even cause your amp to clip, which will send a nasty jolt to your tweeters. Absent that, it can certainly cause mis-tracking.

Concrete slab floor isn’t a complete isolation - it will transmit energy in the audible spectrum just fine - but that stuff can be handled in a number of ways, with audiophile footers or platforms. What concrete can do, is it vastly reduces the maximum displacement your cart & arm get subjected to. Because of its great mass & rigidity. Absent a concrete floor, isolating speakers and turntable are your next best bet. A properly tuned spring platform works great - Townshend podiums look interesting. SOTA’s 4-point suspension is amazing - it will absorb even large displacements QUICKLY and then dissipate the energy very SLOWLY at like 2Hz where it doesn't matter. Bigger SME’s also have very substantial elastomer suspensions, but your SME 10 appears to have a non-suspended design utilizing polymer layers.