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Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4959 08/19/02 01:30 AM
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Dave Offline OP
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I'm hoping Alan, Ian, or any of you knowledgable fellas can help out here. I've recently blown the dust off my old turntable, after coming across plenty of cheap, well-cared for albums at local garage sales and flea markets. Here's the difficulty: I am noticing that any movement made by me during turntable use is instantly transferred through the floor, and directly to the speakers (M60s), and this is causing the woofers to to move in a most alarming fashion. I mean, these woofers are just flying; they look completely loose, and as though they are about to fall right out of the cabinets. I have noted that this doesn't happen when I'm using any other input (cd, dvd, tuner, etc.). For now, I've fixed the problem by sliding a placemat(!!) beneath my turntable, and this has provided adequate vibration insulation; no more flying woofers. Now I'm wondering if this type of excursion of the drivers could be harmful. Any info would be appreciated, gang. BTW, the turntable and M60s are connected to an old Marantz 2285, if it makes a difference. Cheers!

DS.

Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4960 08/19/02 11:05 AM
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Hi Dave,

Ah, nostalgia for the days of vinyl and tweaking turntables! That's subsonic rumble and mechanical feedback that's causing your woofer "flap". No, it won't harm anything but it does waste lots of amplifier power that could be better used reproducing low bass frequencies. It also causes Doppler distortion of all frequencies reproduced by your woofer but there ain't space to explain that here....

Anyway, does your receiver/preamp have a (good) sharp rumble filter? That might entirely eliminate your problem. The offending subsonic garbage is typically between about 12 Hz and 20 Hz. If not, try mounting four old squishy tennis balls under the four corners of the turntable.

If the turntable has a floating, floppy sub-chassis suspension, like the old AR and Linn clone (Ariston and others used it as well), they were very susceptible to floor-conducted mechanical feedback in rooms with unsolid floors. You could try wall-mounting a shelf for the turntable to the wall studs. I've heard that is an effective solution. Never tried it myself.

There used to be dedicated silicone-type feet (maybe some discarded breast implants would work...) you could buy from Audio-Technica. Do a search for suppliers of turntable accessories. It's too early here for me to come up with the name of the outfit that supplies all that stuff. I'll post the name when I think of it.

Regards,


Alan Lofft,
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Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4961 08/19/02 07:28 PM
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Dave Offline OP
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Here's an e-mail I sent Alan today about this problem:

Alan,

Regarding my post on the message board pertaining to subsonic rumble, here's a pic of my Marantz 2285. I've circled what I suspect may be the closest thing the unit has to the rumble filter you've suggested. In case the photo is not detailed enough, there are two filter buttons: one marked 30Hz, the other 9Khz. Below the two buttons, the marking reads "18db/OCT". Sure enough, the 30Hz filter assists greatly in taming the problem, but it doesn't eliminate it completely. I think I may simply stick with my decidedly low-tech placemat solution. Thanks for your help, sir, and for easing my mind, as well (watching those woofers flap made me feel quite uneasy, as you might imagine). Cheers!

Dave.


Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4962 08/20/02 02:22 PM
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Hi Dave,
Excellent. That's a fairly sharp filter, but it never entirely eliminates the problem, plus the filter may also sharply attenuate low bass below 30 Hz (pipe organ, bass drum, etc) if your speakers are capable of response in that region. Although, except for special "audiophile" LPs that were half-speed mastered, not many vinyl discs contained musical content of import below 30 Hz. It was too difficult to cut and limited playback time of the LP because the groove excursions were so large. Besides, cheap phono cartridges couldn't track such grooves without major distortion.

Regards,


Alan Lofft,
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Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4963 08/20/02 08:38 PM
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Dave Offline OP
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Thanks again for you help, Alan! Time to enjoy some vinyl. Cheers!

DS.

Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4964 08/23/02 01:16 PM
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Alan, your a riot!

" (maybe some discarded breast implants would work...) "

Heh, Heh - Wish I would have said that!

Funny - now that turntables are virtually a thing of the past, the old low frequency rumble filters that were pretty standard on receivers are now gone (just like phono preamps are disappearing on receivers)

Progress.... Hmmmm.......

Randyman

Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4965 08/23/02 02:05 PM
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Hi Randyman,

Thanks. Questionable taste, I know, but I just thought I should do my part in recycling--all that silicone going to waste. . .

Yes, it was fun tweaking those old turntables; sadly, there's nothing to tweak with CD players in the digital era. But I'm generally happy not having to deal with all those old bugbears of analog playback: audible flutter (even on the recordings!), rumble, whole percentage distortion from phono cartridges on loud passages (many generated 5 - 7% distortion on widely modulated loud passages), woofer flap, cartridge alignment, tonearm setup, meticulous cleaning and de-staticizing, the list goes on and on...

I love the nostalgia of the LP jackets and artwork, but I can do without all of the above, thank-you.

Regards,


Alan Lofft,
Axiom Resident Expert (Retired)
Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4966 08/23/02 09:32 PM
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Alan,
I agree 100%! It WAS a real hassle messing with all the variables on turntables - but what fun we had debating over (and messing with) direct drive, belt drive, tonearm shape and weight, base resonance, stylus design, MC vs MM cartridges, platter cushion, gel filled feet, dampening the LPs with weight, and remember ALL that gerat Discwasher stuff! anti-static coatings. Super high density antistatic album sleeves! Man I could go on!

But now we argue over things we have NO direct control of... jitter, DA/AD conversion rates, bitrates, bitstreaming, single vs dual (or triple) laser pickup, etc. etc. etc. At least in the (good?) old days we had a DIRECT influence on the sound (bad as that may have been) Oh well, its fun to remember all that, but I really prefer the ease of the CD too!

All the best

Randyman

Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4967 08/23/02 10:28 PM
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Geez, the last record player i remember was one with a mickey mouse picture on the lid whose arm stuck out and you used his finger for the needle.
I don't think that player had any filter settings though, but the sound was pretty sweet.

I think i missed out.


"Those who preach the myths of audio are ignorant of truth."
Re: Will This Damage My Speakers?
#4968 08/24/02 08:44 AM
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Chess,

You are bustin my chops!!
Oh what memories! Can you sing the song? M I C K E Y... M O U S E!

Yeah if you are too young - you missed out on all the fun of cartridge alignment in the tone arm (amoung many other things) - so you havent really lived! Why, right now I have a really cool Sony flip lid cartridge head holder that holds 5 removeable tonearm heads - and I really have 5 heads in it! (with four different cartridges - Sony XL-15, AT-12s (accurate but unforgiving), Sure V15 type IV (warm smooth sound - but missing the brilliant high end), and an AT 30E) btw AT = Audio Techinica and they were/are pretty dang good cartridges! the s= as shibata stylus - which was state of the art at one time. (designed for 4 channel discrete records) Oh Man I feel old!! How about you Alan?

Wow - this is fun walking down memory lane. You young kids really missed some cool stuff!

Randyoldman

Last edited by Randyman; 08/24/02 08:45 AM.
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