I was listening at club level volume at home one day and something that had never happened before occured. The CD player skipped. I had never had that happen before and it scared the heck out of me! I thought maybe the CD was messed up, something had scratched it or it was dirty. I inspected the CD and it was clean as can be. I take very good care of my media! At that point I started considering that maybe my old player had seen better days and it was malfunctioning. I took a look and everything seemed to be good, I played several more CDs that day and I was happy with the result, there were no more skips. So I pulled that near perfect CD and placed it on the disposal pile and went about my week. The next change I had to play the stereo at 11 was a couple weeks later. I was cranking some 80s Hair band rock and it skipped again. At the volume level that I had been listening to it was quite startling! Inspection revealed that this CD was nearly perfect too.
I was trying to determine what my course of action was, because I was pretty sure that the CD player was dying. I found it quite strange that both 'skips" happened during very loud playback. Before the first listening session where the skip occurred, I changed the location of quite a bit of my gear and moved it to a lower rack on a wood cabinet. I noticed that it was right in the dispersion field of the speaker that I was using when this happened. Hmmmmm......
Vibration! Oh no! I started looking on Ebay, Audiogon, checked out my local stereo store and read some articles on vibration control. I was bummed because the cost of even a modest vibration control scheme, was like $50 and they ranged to the hundreds of dollars to treat more than one device. So, I decided that I would go down a different route to eliminate the vibration. If the device cannot move, it should vibrate a bit less, so I added 10 pounds to the top of the CD player, in the form of a dumbbell. It worked! At least it stopped skipping during the very loud passages. I am not going to claim that I heard sonic signatures from the vibrations that I know were still attacking the component. I just did not know what my inexpensive options were.
I have a fellow audiophile friend and we visit each others' houses to do listening and to learn about new music that either of us have discovered, or re-discovered. He has a smallish listening room with a bunch of speakers mounted on the same shelves as his components. We were in there for hours listening to all his components, through various speakers, quite loud too, and not a single piece of equipment did so much as hiccup in all that time and as loud as it was playing. I was pretty impressed, so I spoke about my experience with the skipping of the CD with him and he agreed it was vibration that most likely caused the issue. So I asked him how the heck he was able to have all his gear co-exist on the same shelving structure as some of his speakers.
He Showed Me!
I was floored, what an awesome solution that never even crossed my mind! I figured that if it worked for him it would work for me since my equipment is at least physically isolated from the sound source and not sitting together. I went to my local sporting goods store and purchased a large pack of a dozen racquetballs, yes racquetballs! He told me to cut them in half along the mold line which is straight and use them like a cup and put each under the feet of the desired component to absorb vibration coming from the room, the furniture and some of the vibration coming from the speakers. I did this and have not had a single problem with skipping CDs since, and I have listened quite loudly since. Plus I got rid of the dumbbell.
I found this "tweak" to be one of the most effective and cost-efficient methods out there to control vibration, which is the enemy of your components, and can cause issues with the sound. The cost was $12.99 for 12 balls. When you consider that I can cut them in half and put them under 6 components for that price, it truely is the cheapest thing going!
I have used my first dozen balls up, so it is time to buy some more. I have placed them under my solid state and tube amps, my CD Player, my home theater receiver, and my preamp, I will probably use them in my other systems in time.
Again, I am not going to say that I heard more detail, better sound or any of that malarky, although it could be true, I just have not noticed. I am just resting assured that the vibration control will allow me a few things, the ability to play my system very loud, to protect the sound from being altered by all the vibration, and it should help my tubes last longer as they are not being assaulted by vibration when being used.
Unless you point it out, no one notices.
Keep Listening!
Jeff
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