Isolation/coupling: basics?

Sean...And I'm not saying that you are wrong either, (about sonic effects) but that the technical explanations which heve been put forward don't seem adequate. I will remain a skeptic until one of the following happens:
1. An objective test of some sort (I suggested one) shows that vibration affects the equipment (to an audible extent).
2. A terchnical explanation that I can't fault.

If I personally hear an effect, it will be hard for me to remain a skeptic, but I will try to do so because I know how easy it is to fool oneself.

So if you knew it were to vibrate and you knew of a way to direct the vibration away from its own self would you be inclined to dampen the initial vibrating device?...Tom

Vibration is bad, except in loudspeaker cones. Isolation and coupling are good. But at some point, the law of diminishing returns sets in. My equipment does not require the extreem measures which some other folk find necessary.

My 2 cents

1) I have observed that CD's copied at a higher speed are less reliable. I attribute this to the shorter amount of time the laser has to burn the pit into the substrate.

2) Much is made of the error correction affecting the sound in CD players. Unless your CDs are pretty beat up, I would guess the error correction is used far less than you think.

My first CD player was a McIntosh MCD7000 (mid 1980's). It had an indicator on the front that would light up EVERY TIME the player was interpolating data (correcting for an unreadable error). Even with that early transport (high speed transports for computers hadn't yet been invented) the light ALMOST NEVER came on. Maybe once every few CD's.

I attribute the differences in CD player sound to other issues, such as D/A's, analog output stages and jitter (another issue altogether - not related to error correction).

Johnmcelfresh...Right on!