Lifters ForGetting Cables Off The Floor, Worth It Or Snake Oil


  •  I'm looking at some porcelain cable lifters to get some power and speaker cable up off the floor.  Does raising the cables off the floor really make a difference? It's going to be about 200 bucks for 10 of them. Thanks.  
zar
For those of you that might be considering buying and auditioning a set of those ceramic/porcelain/glass insulators but don’t want to pay audiophool prices: do a Search on ebay and you’ll find thousands of these insulators at varying prices.

I recently purchased a set of 4 vintage ceramic insulators for $40.00 shipped. Most of the insulators available on ebay have a rounded top but others have a "saddleback" top which is perfect for holding a variety of speaker cable types and sizes.

The obvious upside is if you can hear an improvement in your system then you’ve saved yourself a lot of money. The downside is if you can’t hear any improvement then these "non-audiophile" brand insulators will be harder to re-sell.

So you can pay the big-bucks for genuine Cable Elevators and if they’re not yer cup ’o tea you can re-sell them for close to what you paid. OR buy essentially the same vintage insulators on ebay and save yourself a bunch of money. I would seriously recommend the latter. Spend the money you saved on something else!
Elevators never worked for me......not positive or negative.  If you can return them give them a whirl
gbmcleod
Geoffkait, do you have to have your spring vertical for the best sonics? You sure do with the Townshend, although it will sound great - even fantastic- with them at the angle. But the "air" will disappear a bit as the bottom part of the springs moves out of vertical alignment (completely my error, of course), and so the field of depth is like an accordion when you push the sides together. Just sayin’.

>>>>>Of course springs should be vertical. If they aren’t their spring rates won't be linear, under the force of gravity, which is vertical, they won’t be as "springy." Consequently isolation effective will suffer. If the springs are angled enough away from vertical you can probably visualize in your mind’s eye they won’t behave properly. The easy way to check for proper operation of whatever is isolated on springs is to manually get the system in motion up and down and observe whether the action is smooth and unrestrained by non verticality of springs or by external forces like power cords or cables or by non uniform distribution of mass on the springs. Sometimes careful adjustment of spring locations can be very helpful in that regard. Of course for heavy masses springs must be placed wider apart than for lower masses.
This might be a good place to mention that all furniture in the room should be isolated from the floor, especially heavy couches, bookcases, tables, etc. For this purpose employ the best cones you can muster. For cost reasons I recommend Small size DH Cones, Diamond Hardness ceramics. Any cones you have lying around waiting for their next mission will do. 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉