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Writer's pictureSteve Elford

Coupling & Isolation – Part 2

Right here we go. Time for some experimentation with isolation and coupling. 


Let's presume you are at the stage in your system building journey where you have good components and speakers, with perhaps a fairly good rack, but you haven’t yet bothered with feet, spikes, couplers and so on. Of course, if you’re fully 'stillpointed up' say, then you’ve already traveled this path, but if not this stuff is worth giving a go.


Take a good look at your system and assess what feet are on the bottom of each component. If they are the usual mass-produced plastic feet with a bit of felt on then we have scope for some simple experimentation (and don't be fooled by fancier looking feet that may still have rubber or plastic embedded in the bottom). Let’s say you have two items that are easy to work on such as a DAC and a preamp. Measure the height lift of the feet, from the surface of the shelf to the underside of the chassis, and then go out to your garden and find six irregular shape hard stones that have a height of a few more millimetres that the gaps below each component. Try and find hard stones (not bits of brick or concrete!) that are a little bit pyramidal in their shape because they will be more stable. Wash and dry them. 


Now when your stones are ready, carefully raise the front, then each side of the components and slide one of the stones under to form a wide and deep triangle to support the component safely. Take your time and ensure everything remains stable. The stock feet should be raised clear of the shelf. You have now lowered the acoustic impedance (coupling) between the the component chassis of these two units and their supporting shelves. Of course you would have been listening to the system a lot before you put the stones in, so carefully listen again now the stones are in position. 


At this point there are often big differences in the sound. Take your time with different music and assess all the different performance parameters carefully. If there are some things you don’t like, don’t rush to remove the stones just yet, take a couple of days to keep listening and let it marinate in your mind for a while.


Look for changes in clarity and soundstage, scale and rhythm – fine detail and extended treble often change quite considerably. But remember, if there are tonal changes, such as a reduction in bass, assess this very carefully because you might find that the bass definition has actually improved and it was really airborne bass polluting the components and bloating the sound before. You might now be looking at the possibility of adjusting your speaker position to achieve an overall significant gain in bass response and resolution. 


The point of all this is to see if you can manipulate the response in this way without changing anything else in the system. You might of course equally be doing a decoupling experiment if you were putting soft bits of cheap silicone under a turntable say, to hear those changes. But now you can sit back and consider some upgrade options with some proper isolation and coupling products, confident that you have demonstrated to yourself the fundamental principles first at no cost.


sticks and stones

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