I appreciate this thread; I started the one discussing the best tweaks. Some there argued that the tweaks couldn’t be ranked; I suppose some will claim that here about isolation. This makes a certain kind of sense, if they’re all additive to affecting the sound, but someone who has limited time or budget would ask the smart question the OP did here, namely, "where all the vibration is coming from that we are addressing with isolation." In other words, what should be addressed, first, and on what is money best spent?
Regarding the question "Can the vibrations from moderate sound levels affect the quality of sound?" there is an unspoken and crucial additional question, "Under what conditions -- room, equipment, and listener abilities" is there an effect? Because this is similar to the question, "Can moderate amounts of salt affect the quality of the taste?" The answer will depend on what someone can notice and how they taste. Some people are trained to savor food, to look for certain attributes, etc. To them, it’s easy to notice "too much salt." Others are less sensitized or they don’t care that much; their focus is elsewhere.
In other words, vibration control is like salt control — it’s hard to measure without specific metrics for user experience and for the preferences of a specific user. The fact these elements are not regular parts of these posts lead to all kinds of disagreements. Pie fight! It's fun, but essentially it comes about because someone has asked too imprecise a question (perhaps unwittingly) and then been dissatisfied with the answers. Whereas others have taken the imprecision of the question as some kind of trap set for the gullible. Bar fight!
And of course if we are talking about adding too much salt by two, three grains, then the whole topic becomes absurd. Some measure of minima sensibilia must be provided to discuss differences.
This is why the concrete floor issue is a hard one for me. I have concrete floors under my gear. And I realize that concrete can transmit vibration of people walking around the speaker. But when I listen, no one is in the room and no one is walking around. The Townshend demonstration about people walking around is, for me, a red herring. It doesn’t dissuade me that there’s something good happening with the products, but the walking example doesn’t help me.
Regarding the question "Can the vibrations from moderate sound levels affect the quality of sound?" there is an unspoken and crucial additional question, "Under what conditions -- room, equipment, and listener abilities" is there an effect? Because this is similar to the question, "Can moderate amounts of salt affect the quality of the taste?" The answer will depend on what someone can notice and how they taste. Some people are trained to savor food, to look for certain attributes, etc. To them, it’s easy to notice "too much salt." Others are less sensitized or they don’t care that much; their focus is elsewhere.
In other words, vibration control is like salt control — it’s hard to measure without specific metrics for user experience and for the preferences of a specific user. The fact these elements are not regular parts of these posts lead to all kinds of disagreements. Pie fight! It's fun, but essentially it comes about because someone has asked too imprecise a question (perhaps unwittingly) and then been dissatisfied with the answers. Whereas others have taken the imprecision of the question as some kind of trap set for the gullible. Bar fight!
And of course if we are talking about adding too much salt by two, three grains, then the whole topic becomes absurd. Some measure of minima sensibilia must be provided to discuss differences.
This is why the concrete floor issue is a hard one for me. I have concrete floors under my gear. And I realize that concrete can transmit vibration of people walking around the speaker. But when I listen, no one is in the room and no one is walking around. The Townshend demonstration about people walking around is, for me, a red herring. It doesn’t dissuade me that there’s something good happening with the products, but the walking example doesn’t help me.