Inexpensive vibration damping

As many of you know, placing components on top of sand eliminates vibrations that originate from within gear (motors, transformers). Although there are products on the market that use these principals, here's an inexpensive way to check out before buying.

For sand damping, fill 4 balloons (black looks best) with sand so that each balloon is about the volume of two golf balls and then place under the 4 feet of a component. This improved the sound of my ss amp and ss preamp (less grain to the sound) but had a negative effect on the HF when placed under cd player. When placed under the feet of my PS Audio P500 power regenerator, the soundstage got smaller. (But I was able to improve the P500's performance by placing 4 small ceramic tiles under each foot. Total tile cost was 50 cents.)

White sand has the finest grain and can be purchased in most gardening sections of hardware stores. But after about 8-12 months the rubber balloons start to break, leaking out sand. Also, the rubber will attach itself to the component foot; when you lift up the gear the rubber will fully tear (if it's already beginning to tear), spilling sand and creating a mess. To get around this, place each newly-filled balloon in a small, 'snack'-sized plastic zip lock bag. I then cover each baggie with a thin black sox (cutting off excess sox length with scissors) and then place under each foot. Also, with the soxs in place it's more easy to position gear on the shelf since it slides easily.

Audiophile Amplifier for USD 80

Tripath was a company started by inventor-entrepreneur Adya Tripathi in the USA, that manufactured these revolutionary digital amplification chips that provided very high levels of efficiency and performance at a very low cost. These chips found their way into many consumer electronics products by the big-box brands, but more importantly found a passionate fan following amongst the audiophile community. Tripath, unfortunately, went out of business, with a large inventory of the chips still lying with them.


This large inventory was snapped up by various people including several Chinese companies, for peanuts.

Enter Topping. These guys evidently picked up a whole bunch of Tripath chips including the celebrated TA2020 chip, that has found its way into the Topping TP20 amplifier. The TP20 is available for order on eBay, for roughly USD 80 including a 12v, 5A power supply and shipping to your doorstep anywhere in the world.


Sound

I won't beat around the bush here. This is a dazzling amplifier. Full disclosure here, that I own this baby, but prior to this I was using an NAD C320BEE (the equivalent of which now costs of USD 600-650) and I sold off the NAD after hearing this. Paired with the Odyssey Epiphony (86 dB, 8 ohms) and a fully modded CD63SE, it paints a revealing and involving sonic portrait. Superb detail, excellent soundstaging and imaging. Excellent transients, nice airy extended highs, tight, tuneful bass, and some seriously liquid midrange.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Detailed, airy, dynamic sound
- Superb imaging and soundstaging
- Ridiculous price-to-performance ratio

Cons
- Needs sensitive speakers
- No remote
- Only one input


Bottom line, if you can live with only one input and no remote control, and you are looking to spend less than USD 700on a stereo amplifier, you owe it to yourself to at least consider the Topping TP20 seriously.


Source: http://playitclear.blogspot.com/2010/10/topping-tp20-mark-2-audiophile.html

A note about ferrite clamps and grounded analog components

Try experimenting by using a ferrite clamp on the safety ground only at the load end (the end with the IEC plug). Many people have suggested that use of ferrites help filter out garbage in power cords, but I have found that ferrites constrict the dynamics of the system and they ADD inductance to the hot/neutral (rather than lower it- which is our objective). By putting the ferrite on the safety ground only, we are able to attenuate any unwanted nasties that try to make it into the component via the ground.

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Introducing the mind blowing EVS Ground Enhancers!

Enter tweaker supreme Ric Schultz and his company, Electronic Visionary Systems (EVS). Ric’s work speaks for itself, so I won’t go into detail about his accomplishments, other than to say he is a respected member of a bunch of different audio forums. Ric now offers a device called the Ground Enhancer (GE), which bears a similarity to Audioprism’s Ground Control. I’ll let other, more tech-savvy minded folks get into the technical nitty gritty about how they differ, but the one major visual difference that I notice is that the Ground Control uses spade terminations, whereas the GR uses simple bare wire that wraps around the negative binding posts of one’s speakers. This, in theory at least, should give the GE an advantage over the Ground Control.



Don’t ask me how devices like this work, or exactly why I gave Ric’s GEs a shot after my experience with the Ground Controls, but I’m glad I have an open mind about these things. At $30/pair, the GEs are a minor expense for many audiophiles, so I decided to take the plunge and check them out, fully expecting to take advantage of Ric’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

I wound up not exercising that option. After a settling-down period of a few hours, I started to realize that these things were pretty special. I used just two of my most familiar discs—Badfinger’s No Dice and Dire Straits’ eponymous debut—for evaluation. With the GEs attached to the negative posts of my Definitives, the music adopted a weight and vividness that startled me. From the opening bars of Badfinger’s “I Can’t Take It,” guitars popped and snarled and bass throbbed like I hadn’t heard before in my second system. It wasn’t on the scale of a component change, certainly, but the improvements in dimensionality, rhythmic force, and soundstage focus were eye-opening. On the Dire Straits disc—especially on the bass-heavy opening of “Water of Love”—the low end was audibly tighter and more powerful, and Mark Knopfler’s usually hazy vocals adopted a focus and dimensionality that left me smiling.



Simply put, the Ground Enhancers have elevated my enjoyment of music at least a full notch or two. Considering their price of $30/pair, what they do borders on the near miraculous. They are very highly and unreservedly recommended. I can’t think of a way to better spend $30 on this hobby.

Stillpoints ERS Tweak

In theory, we can protect our systems from the negative effects of RFI by careful screening. Metal cases for the equipment that are connected to mains earth, and screened interconnects and speaker cables are obvious examples of such protection. But RFI will be picked up by anything acting as a suitable aerial! Even a small length of track on a PCB can and will pick up RFI. And what about the power cables? That trail of wire going from your Hi-Fi back to the power station makes a mighty large aerial!

Stillpoints ERS redirects, absorbs, and diffuses EMI/RFI frequencies. The benefits of ERS for audio/video are best heard with digital circuits due to the RFI creating aspect of the circuitry itself. Benefits of ERS can also be heard with AC power lines, signal cables, loudspeakers, and electronics of all types. However, in some analog circuits, the presence of EMI/RFI was tuned into the frequency response of the device. ers can effect of the amplitude of the high frequency and/or the low frequency extremes resulting in a less than desirable balance.

The core of ERS is made of a blend of carbon fibers of various lengths and sizes. Using a proprietary method, these fibers are coated with metals, such as nickel. These fibers absorb, reflect and diffuse RFI/EMI. ERS has on average about 66 db noise reduction in it's 10meg to 17 gig range.



A simple demonstration of the potential effectiveness of ERS is to lay it near any digital circuitry, for example, on top or underneath or at the sides of a CD player or DAC or digital amplifier. Wrapping AC cables or placing ERS near any AC power strips will also quickly show its potential. However, its effectiveness will be maximized when placed internally near either EMI/RFI generating or EMI/RFI susceptible circuitry within the enclosure. The enclosure itself, traps on board generated EMI and RFI which ERS absorbs, deflects and diffuses. ERS does not operate under the same principles as a shield thus it does not require grounding.

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