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Line the underside and inside the top cover of your CD player or other component with $1.50 vinyl floor tiles from Home Depot. They damp the resonances just as well as the $10 sheets you can buy from the audio parts houses. Be careful not to cover any ventilation holes. Cheap Tweaks
Are the cover screws working loose or something? If there isn't a screw loose somewhere, then I don't see why anyone would care about panel resonances on a cd player.
Some believe panel resonances translate to vibration, which could compromise the player's ability to accurately reproduce low-level detail. For example, Marantz used to offer the standard CD67 player and an upgrade version, the CD67-SE. In additon to better quality caps in the audio section, the CD67-SE had a double bottom chassis plus a cross brace over the top for vibration control. But you may be correct, in which case I am the one with a loose screw, having frittered away three whole dollars of my hard earned money.
I'm on Fred's side that damping can improve the performance of a CD player. Especially when you consider how a laser in a CDP reads information off a CD. I'd also though that CD being a digital media would have its content read digitally (ie. reading 1's and 0's off the disk). But that's not true at all. The track on a CD consists of pits of various lengths and the laser reads the distance between the lips of each pit, which then is converted into a digital signal. To repeat, it does not COUNT and READ a series of 1's and 0's, but rather a physical distance between markers on a disk. Considering how cheap the laser and plastic lens are in a typical CDP, it makes you question how accurate CDP reads content on a CD. Any unnecessary vibration has the potential to mess up this reading process to create a playback that is even lower in resolution. Gar.
I don't know how serious miniscule resonant vibrations of the side panels might be as far introducing tracking errors to a spinning disk. I suppose that somebody has researched vibration vis-a-vis tracking errors, because it is important for portable cd players that joggers and others wear. I suspect, however, that it is pretty minor. "Tweak" would be the appropriate term. I do know that over 40% (it may be more - I forget) of the data on a cd is sophisticated error correction code (of various levels). So, there is quite a bit of room for correctable errors.
Join the club. I hate to think how much money I have wasted trying to improve my sound!! At least it was only three bucks, not three thousand bucks for silver cables! :)
I've seen tweeks go so far as to change out the screws on the components in order to improve sound (no kidding.) The debate, if I recall correctly, was which screw material (various metal, nylon, etc....) sounded better. You can't make this stuff up. As for your inital post on dampening, I think it's a great idea. Almost as cheap as my 100# slate isolation table top (free from counter top mfg. dumpster) and my 1.5" wooded balls ($1/4 at craft store) that hold up my CDP.....Colin
You're right Dean. I lot of the vibration that a CDP would typically be exposed to are minor. But my main point is that the process of retreiving data from a disk is mechanical in nature and that unwanted vibration can have an impact on its ability to do it properly. Although I have come across CDP where its own vibrations were anything but minor. Noisy motor and transformers gave it a nice mechanical hum all its own. But then again, in that situation, you should look into getting a new unit rather than trying to damp it. BTW, one article I found said that actual music content on a CD only represents 30% of the information stored on a disk. The other 70% are for error management. Gar.
I bet I know which screw sounded best. The one that costed the most and the manufacturer was able to pay the most in advertising dollars to audio review magazines.
You're right about the storage of digital media - The read/write heads are all analog. Magnetic, optical, whatever - This is an analog world and digital information is simply a quantified representation of it that's easy to reliably store, process and transmit in a consistent manner. No matter what you're doing, if you process something digitally, it has to first be converted from analog and then at the end, it has to be converted back to analog. In fact, many digital circuits are just like analog ones that are made to be used either in saturation or cutoff, but nowhere in between. The simplicity of that arrangement is what makes it robust.
A few years ago I took a course in error correction. I could not remember if the actual data was 60% or 40%. Since you have a 70% figure, I suspect that the actual data is between 30% and 40%. Kind of amazing, isn't it! As I recall, there was one scheme upon another for checking the data at various levels. Some of the 60 or 70 percent may have been formatting for addressing, but a huge amount was redundancy.
Your isolation table is worthless, however, if the case sides resonate!!!! ;) What are the wooden balls supposed to do? Are they under the granite slab or over it? I can see a granite slab sitting on top of a piece of foam or rubber, but not on wooden balls! All this makes some sense - in a wierd, tweaky way - for turntables, but for cd players????
Sorry. My "loose screw" comment was not very nice to make at a guy who was just trying to be helpful by giving an inexpensive tweak. I can see that if you spent a lot of money for a granite slab, you certainly would not want any vibrations in the case, and you would appreciate the suggestion for an inexpensive cure, since you had already spent all that money on the granite slab...
No offense taken. Another cheap tweak: That "expensive" 18X12X3" granite slab sells for $36.95 from Enco Tools at the link below. It's product #640-0422 in their catalog. It weighs a hefty 80#, so the shipping is another $40. If it's not clear in the picture, the slab has two "ledges" which are resting on a set of four Dayton isolation cones (msrp $20). Like the floor tiles, I really don't know if it does anything, but it's pretty kewl looking. Granite slab source
I got one; I use these slate interior floor tiles supported by 3/4lb lead fishing weights, the tri-corner type placed on top of these cheap telephone pads. I put this contraption on top of all surfaces. The Lead weights stay in place pointy side up, the slate tiles are about 4"x4" and they sit on top of the fishing weights (or sinkers for you fresh water guys). I put the telephone pads under the sinkers to prevent scratching. Total cost, about 1$ per resonance sink. Another is Sears sells these rollar bearings made of teflon that sit in a teflon cup. They come in different sizes and work well under all CD or amp chassis. About 1$& 15c each. The best one of all is using threaded rod and a cross brace to make a square frame. Then getting chair webbing and using the threaded rod: stretching the chair webbing taught, then sitting the component on top of the stretched web; total isolation.(Sounds like Americas current foriegn policy) J.R.
I get the tongue-in-cheek tone of your messsage, and I kind of agree. But for a few bucks here and there it really can't hurt. Can I tell a difference when I add one tweek? No. Can I tell a difference when all the tweeks are in place? Barely. Does it make me feel better? Yes My system sits on a #100 (approx.) slate slab (1 x 24 x 48"). My CDP sits on 4 1.5" wooden balls. The balls fit in the recesses of the feet to allow for some lateral movement. My amp sits on an additional piece of granite (1.5 x 24 x 24") sitting on the slate; the two stones are separated by a rubber plate.......Colin