Since this is my goto thread for development news here on the forum, I am happy to announce that I am in the final stages of development with our anti-vibration platforms and it's going really well. So I'm going to literally just ramble about it while the thoughts are in my head.

As is my preference, when I approach a problem or in this case design a solution to the problem I prefer to keep my mind clear of distractions. Distractions would be doing research on what the industry is selling, or in my case what my competition is doing. Knowing how everyone else is approaching it and then trying to figure out a way to do it better is certainly not a terrible way to design, but the energy is not as pure and the resulting design is not really you, it's just an upstage of everything you saw. If you really want to tackle a problem, have some faith in your Devine ability to think for yourself. Do not cloud your mind with everyone and everything. Focus on the problem and design a solution.  When you are done, then see how your solution differs to everyone else's.

Now after having played around with the basic platform design for two years, and being fully committed to it I did a Google image search on anti-vibration platforms and frankly at least half of what I saw I would be really surprised to see it work as intended. Much of it creates a conduit for vibration that can work both in your favor and against it depending on a myriad of variables.

A big part of the slow development of this product is trying to figure out how I'm going to explain it.  It's going to take a video or two because it's something you really have to see and people don't read web pages until they a mining for information about something they already want.

I have to figure out a way to explain where the main source of environmental vibrations are coming from and then how to deal with them by designing platforms specific for the four sizes and weights of our amplifiers.

How the vibrational energy enters the amplifier, and ultimately the tubes and the effect the chassis design has on that I think will surprise a lot of people.  

The bottoms of audio gear and the chassis design make many isolation product choices a bit of a crap-shoot because of where the coupling takes place...  the goal is to drain vibration away from it's source in one direction only so that it does not create a standing wave pattern of modal resonances in the chassis that is then reflected into the tubes primarily through the tube pins.

There are several sources of vibration, the sound in the air which enters the tubes directly through the glass, seismic vibrations from the ground and building and floor, and then there are mechanical vibrations from the sound in the air that resonates the floor and amplifier rack and finally the 50 or 60 cycle power transformer on the amplifier itself.

Forgetting about the transformer itself, the sound in the air entering the tubes directly and the sound in the air entering the tubes by first vibrating the floor and audio rack and then amplifier chassis are not arriving in the tube at the same time so the smearing effect is repeated several times.  If the tube amplifier uses circuit boards these vibrations are usually increased and compounded with another vibration introduced from the resonance of the circuit board itself adding another complex layer of smearing effect... not to mention the circuit board is like a giant solar panel that instead of collecting sunlight, it stores heat and collects vibration so it's basically a large amplifier to the problem.

I have in my lab, the ability to put around 100dB of pure gain into a tube at a variety of operating conditions and listen to noise on headphones and watch it on the scope. Even the quietest tubes made I can turn up to a point where I can hear people talking in the other room. If a fly goes by it sounds like an F16. This where tube dampers can be tested to find out what really works and what doesn't.

Anyway I bring all this up because while all these sources of vibration from the music, a type of feedback that causes a smearing effect on everything is bad, it pales in comparison to the vibration the power transformer of the amplifier is putting into the chassis. This 50 or 60 cycle vibration I would guess is 10 times as strong as the music in the air vibration even at louder volumes.  It's only saving grace is that it is detached from the music but will still smear the sound so draining this away from its source into a graduated level of higher and higher mass and then converting the energy into heat is the only way to actually reduce its effects in an audible way that more than justifies the cost of the platform.

I have found that a solid block of wood, no matter what hardness, or how it's layered together, is still a very solid conductor. Solids are a far more efficient transducer for sound and vibration than air. The only thing a large block of inflexible wood can do is move vibration from one place to another. If you can tightly couple an audio component to a high mass block of wood you will change the mass of the components chassis to a lower frequency which is less offensive sounding than having the resonance in the higher midrange frequencies.

The platform needs to have some flexibility to it as well as extreme stiffness in the right places to drink vibration from the chassis and that means it has to be designed for a specific size and weight of amplifier setting on it. Also by definition it has to be at least two or more components with different densities to create a co-mass layer dampened effect of turning stored energy into heat before it can rebound back to its source. This means the platform has to be heavy, rigidly and directly coupled to the highest mass points of the amplifiers chassis and then drain that vibration through each of it's layers while all the while floating on "Sorbothane" discs of the right density which are coupled the  platform and de-coupled from the audio rack or table or floor or whatever you have it setting on.

A one size fits all approach will have wildly varying results... so for Decware customers it is going to be very easy since the platforms will be specific to individual products. Once we get through this mass of amplifier orders, you'll see the first ones become available this summer. It will be a complete package. The platform will come with the correctly designed and integrated wood cones and correctly sized Sorbothane pads for the platform to set on. Set up in minutes, enjoy for a lifetime. The difference is very audible on all Decware products, perhaps more so than normal because of the resolution that comes with simple circuits.

I'll post some mechanical drawings and teaser pics on my next update.  Besides different density plates coupled together we have a lot more going on inside this platform.  The graduated flex that absorbs the energy from the chassis is created by combining a a rectangle with a circle so we separate the two plates with a brass ring.  The ring becomes the seal between the two plates and a graduated pivot point for the four wings of the plinths.  

To bond the two plinths together an organic resin is poured into the gap which bonds the two components in a way that can not be forced apart under any amount of stress.  This disc is then filled to form a cylinder in the second lower plinth which accomplishes two goals; 1) increases the mass of the second plinth facilitating the co-mass-layer-damped equations requiring different densities to create heat in the bonding layer.  The resin in the cylinder as well as the disk is heavy saturated with quartz crystal, copper, iron, aluminum, brass and organic resin which when cured compress the quartz crystal creating a piezoelectric effect in the crystal resulting in scalar waves. The metals in the resin add density which increases the mass between the two plinths but also the metal shavings suspended in resin become antennas that collect RF frequencies from the air in your listening room.  They do not absorb RF frequencies and even carbon can not absorb enough RF and turn it into heat to make a meaningful difference to the measurable levels pf RF in your room.  RF can be shielded and is in audio components so there are no real issues there, but RF can effect the listener, a human life form that becomes stressed when bombarded with magnetic energy at high frequencies.  

Interestingly enough 5 years of research on scalar energy and RF has proven to me that scalar energy can nullify the negative health effects of RF on the human body.  Now, you can bet that if during your listening session you are being molested physically by RF from WIFI, stereo, tv, all electric appliances in your home... even your (God forbid) amplifier's power supply... the listening experience is slightly poisoned and therefor slightly diminished.  Having the naturally occurring scalar energy provoked by the RF seems to nullify the negative effects of the RF on the human body and therefor the listening experience not to mention general health improves.

There is no reason when creating the high-mass plug to couple the two plinths together not to use these ingredients since the plug sets just below the center of the amplifier where the magnetic field from the transformer is still very measurable and strong.  So we actually kill two birds with one stone here...  The magnetic field from the power transformer stimulates the crystal laden plug which in turn generates a scalar wave that saturates your environment.  The field is from what we can tell well larger than listening room, and probably your whole house so the more you listen to your stereo the better.  Even when the stereo is off, I am certain there is enough WIFI and bluetooth and cell phone 3, 4, 5G crap in the air to keep it active. You can learn more about this scalar technology by researching "orgon" and "orgonite".

I was going to post a teaser pic of the first model, sized for all the 6.5x14 inch plates like the SE84UFO2, 3 and the CSP3, ZP3, TABOO, etc, but my damn phone is having a spat with the blutooth on my iMac here on the bench, so it will have to wait, sorry.  Damn technology. I hear in the year 2050, technology will actually save time instead of waste it.

Happy listening!

Steve

Interesting Steve. Looking forward to the pics and impressions.

Quote:


Steve, I didn't see in your post where you discuss the mitigation of the vibrations induced by the sound into the structure that the amp sits on.  In my experience, these are orders of magnitude greater than air induced vibrations certainly and possibly the self induced vibrations.  I've posted many times how when my ZMA sat on its counter top when I first got it that these induced vibrations caused constructive resonance feedback.  Regardless of the materials layering of a platform, I don't see how these vibrations are being eliminated given the width of the audio vibration spectrum.

Have you measured RF fields with and without your platforms to see if they have a measurable effect?  I agree on the detrimental effects of RF energy that is all pervasive these days (really ever since humans started manufacturing electricity -- but vastly worse with WiFi devices) but sadly, I fear our stereos are only adding to the problem.

THAT..., IS COOL
no pun intended.

I've never measured vibration without and with the isolation platforms that I use but I feel a huge reduction.  Are there any cheap and easy ways to measure this?

RF effects living beings in such fundamental ways that avoidance is the only real solution.  Good luck with that!     One of the many reasons I don't have a "smart" phone and I keep my wireless function off on my router.  But even our shops full of power tools are a problem.

Steve, cannot help but wonder what caused you to do that experiment? Did you have a ZENphany?

Developing intimidating electro sensitivity during a serious illness, I ended up with several filtering and compensation tools for our house wiring. One is a Schumann/Scalar resonance device that uses diodes to channel house power through it's circuits, creating the Schumann/Scalar waves that then pass throughout the local "grid" associated with our transformer (our place).

My Trifield EMF/RF meter does not measure these. But retesting sound today, the Schumann/Scalar rig causes subtle in some ways, but quite noticeable musical improvements. Without, the sound is more peaky, textured, seeming more harmonically rich at first, but ending up edgy, and with denser music, more "cluttered." The leading edges and some ambient info seemed more pronounced, but also a little irritating, so I am assuming not-good harmonics were adding the sense of hotter edges and texture.

With it in, the sound is smoother/less edge, more liquid, less congested, more space, more nuanced and refined.

Also for house circuits, I have active higher frequency transient/harmonics filters that are measurable with a tool designed to read "dirty electricity"...I think it measures the intensity of spikes and speed, readings showing combined voltage and frequency levels.

In the audio/living room are two Schumann resonance units. Also I changed to wired internet and have a few other filters, active and "peizo-like" to clean up the RF/EMF environment, living and audio.

In the audio setup, the Schumann resonator wires/antennas are carefully placed in stereo, and adjusted for best sound, dialing in optimal space-to-density, and associated soundstage refinements...all by changing the intensity of 7.83 hertz. Can't read this with my meter either, but it is quite audible, and I recall its causing the space to "feel" more calm and relaxed when I first got used to them.

Though there is likely better tech now, these things improved my sound as well reducing electro pollution symptoms.

I have a pretty wide combination of vibration mitigation tools, starting under my cabinet with Herbies Large Dots, teak shelves cut a little short to avoid contact with the cabinet sides, and floated on a combination of soundcoat and Herbies thicker grungebuster pieces, 1/2 squares glued together. For a number of components, but not all, there are more of these same little "feet" between the shelves and bamboo cutting boards. Then various nice feet or Archie's platform between shelves or cutting board and gear. Chosen for each component by sound, all in all, this is a pretty massive improvement in every way over no electronic treatment, an untreated cabinet, and stock feet.

Additionally, in my amp experiments, weight/damping on top of the transformers having helped electro vibration and noise, I decided to try and damp the transformers specifically, and got a really nice refinement.

I had tried soundcoat and SD40AL, lifting the transformers and making gaskets of the damping material between amp plate and transformer. Generally finding the SD40AL quite neutral I was not surprised to like it best, smoothness and clarity more complete and balanced from it. First I made gaskets a little less than the size of the transformer tabs. It really sounded good, but the damping material being vulnerable to pressure and heat, it too easily squeezed down over days, transformers becoming a little loose.

So I tightened the transformers back to the plates with no "gasket" and tried different strip sizes and locations of the SD40 on the transformer's laminate cores. I ended up liking ±1/8" x 3/4" strips pressed on close to the transformer bottoms on both sides of each transformer. This was a great solution, smoothing and clarifying.

From this experience, I would guess this method would help any Decware amp, regardless of platform or feet used.

All these efforts were fun, and collectively inclusive house-wide and system-wide. On the other hand, these coming Decware platforms sound really interesting to me, doing all the right things for a given piece of Decware gear in a single package! I look forward to seeing/reading more about them and hearing impressions.

Hey Dom,

I am thinking those compromised enough to be made noticeably ill by EMF/RF are just more sensitive...like the canary in the coal mine...

A related story...When we lived in the back mountains of NC for many years, adjacent to some remnant old growth forest, my wife and I worked with a local group of foresters, botanists and other biologists, loggers, hikers, hunters, etc...to try and slow down the US Forest Service practice of clearcutting on public land. More, or less destructive in different habitats, with our wildly complex mountain ecosystems, steep, and used to being shaded and wet...going to full sun in a day was a profoundly destructive and off-balancing shift to all who make up, and those who benefit from the ecosystem. We were fine with careful and sensible harvesting, but not wholesale clearcutting.

Anyway, our group had an office, and when we would go there for meetings, we noticed the staff had noticably more articulate cognitive and emotional function in the morning, and a lot less in the afternoon. Having worked and lived without electricity for a number of years, not being used to electro-polution, my wife and I became more aware of its "side-effects." We couldn't tolerate flickering computer screens or fluorescent lights for long, getting eye strain, head and neck aches, and dullness of mind. Recognizing these symptoms, we wondered if the problem in the office could be related. To test it, we bought a few incandescent lights for our meeting room, and set meetings for the worst time in the office, late afternoon.

After 10-20 minutes out of the main office room, the staff started to settled down, less "bouncing off the walls" and reactive...more measured and thoughtful. And not just them, we all became more cohesive, more effective.

A few decades later, our house and workshop pretty good with no florescent lights, adobe walls that "resist" wifi from outside...then, I did not notice symptoms, though I did like the calmer, more relaxed feel from using my stereo Schumann units.

It was in starting to take regular classes elsewhere I developed relatively full blown symptoms my doc friend recognized as possible electro disruption, and he loaned me some test gear to check it. My teacher's room had a fat, high voltage wire right outside the window, and it turned out there were a few big cell towers nearby, as well as worse-than-usual EMF/RF from building wiring issues. By the meter, the room we used often had levels of EMFs considered to be high enough to correlate with childhood leukemia. These levels were determined by studies in northern Europe where there actually seems to be some objective EMF/RF research.

So I started researching mitigation tools, and though I could not fix that room entirely, we all felt better there with some filters and resonance devices to help us "ground out." I tested this at first without classmates knowing what I was doing.

If your old 3 stage Schumann/Scalar device is by Earth Calm, it is likely a version of the one I mentioned above, and it would be interesting to pull the plugs and listen to music, then compare with them back in. It is cool that effective power cleaning, making audio better, can also be good for us, and I am glad Steve has integrated it into his platforms.

Also while I work on these vibration platforms, the 25th Anniversary CSP325 chassis arrived this week, and I am well into the build on #001.



Boy it's a lot of expensive caps -- but those who have had their CSP3 preamps upgraded with the anniversary mods already know it's worth it.

I'll post more picks as I get it completed this weekend.

Steve

SWEET!

Beautiful! Those are some interesting voltage regulation tubes!

The front input jacks are a third pair of inputs.

The voltage-regulation tubes are internal just exactly like the CSP3's that we do the anniversary mods to.  The tubes you see in the back are VU meters that show what sources have signal on them so visually these tubes groove to the music.

Steve

I want some of those on top of my ZTPRE!
Very Nice.
Scott

If you recall, the OA3 tubes on the back of the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier are like current meters when the amp nears clipping. You can see them begin to flinch across the room.  I like this, because I am often setting 15 feet away from the actual amplifier and when I think I hear distortion I want to know if it was the amp or the recording.  The OA3's tell me 15 feet away.  I've gotten spoiled by that, so in a similar tradition the CSP325's tube VU meters show me there is a signal and. how hot that signal is at all times, and I can see it at a 15 foot distance and without my glasses on.  This is important, because I don't want to find my frikin glasses and put them on to see what's going on.

If I had a dollar for every time I hooked up a preamp, turned on the amp and silence...  the time you waste checking everything... all because there actually was NO signal was the reason you heard no sound.  Now, you can see that you have signal even before you begin, and you can see if that signal is small or large.  It takes so much wonderment out of set up.  

I think these tube VU tuning eye meters will be a big hit.  Myself, it's only the first night and I love them.  They match the green chassis and are subtle... unlike the hateful BLUE glow of an LED screen.  ; ). You know, gotta bash solid state at every opportunity. : )

Getting through the break-in on this preamp is a bit tedious on the first day, but now after 24 hours it is starting to sound spectacular.  All the CSP3's that I have done the 25th Anniversary mod on did not present this level of break-in because they were already broken in when I got them to do the mods.  Only the mods had to break in.  Now the entire thing has to break in and it's a bit scary for the first day as things slowly lock together.

I can say that the classic sound of the CSP3 is maintained but the performance and resolution is easily doubled.  Its ability to take a lifeless recording and make something wonderful with it is unparalleled.  Right now I am still using the TORII MK4 with mods as the amplification since that is what I have been listening to for the past few weeks.  Soon I will pair it with the SE84UFO25 and velcro myself to the listening chair because otherwise I will be running around saying holy crap over an over throughout the evening and missing at least half of the show!

My guess is that this preamplifier will be the holy grail in hidden solid-state circles as everything it excels in is literally everything that solid state fails at.  Really I can't see even a single tube system that wouldn't elevate dramatically with this preamp, especially with digital.

One of the reasons the original CSP3 has been so successful with digital is the single node power supply design where all tube stages are fed by the same voltage source at the same singular point making the speed exactly the same for each triode.  In the 25th Anniversary version (model CSP325) the same is true except that it has been split into two nodes, one for each channel.  These nodes are also now feed with the Voltage regulation tube in series with the plate resistors.  That puts the power supply design at a whole new level.  In addition, the power supply for each channel is now heavily bypassed with the same cryo-treadted beeswax caps, in fact a power supply that originally had two capacitors, now has twelve, and instead of them being $12 electrolytics each one is between $50 and $100.

This preamp in the first night has taught me an new audio adjective if you can believe that!!!!  After 30 some years of doing this stuff for a living, I find out there is such a thing as "inner meat" when referring to "meaty" that I didn't know was there. It's exquisite tone and density... it sounds like a really good record on a really good cartridge.  What more could you possibly want than that?

Steve

Quote:


Is this statement true for "stock" CSP3 versus modified CSP3 and/or just the CSP325?

Love the way it looks! Not sure I need it with the ZROCK2 25th but ......??? Wonder how the nice mellow green color would look sitting next to the crazy red of my amp?????

Well, I am pleased to say that the first prototype I showed you is now fully burned-in and the word that comes to mind to describe the sound is 'exquisite' with a side of 'refined'.  Yes, the sound is glorious.

The only drama so far in the design is the vacuum tube VU meters made from tuning eye tubes.  A lot trickier that you would think...

I have the option of using them to show the output of the preamp, or the input of the preamp.  My original intention was to show the input of the preamp because it is VERY nice to be able to SEE that there is a signal coming into the preamp and know how loud that signal is, especially when troubleshooting!

Here's the rub... the preamp has three inputs.  The tube VU meter has to be calibrated to something...  You want to see it jumping around when you have a healthy signal coming in, that way you know to expect a healthy sound when you turn up the volume.  Problem is, some sources have 1 volt, some sources (most) have 2 volts, and then there are those Decware ZBIT enhanced sources that have between 3.5 and 10+ volts.  

If I set the sensitivity of the VU meter to 0DB at 2 volts, that will be really great at 2 volts.  At 1 volt it will look like there is almost no signal at all coming into the preamp.  At 3, 5, or 10 volts it will look the input is severely clipping.

For the burn-in period, I have it set so that the VU meters will hit +3dB (clipping) at the actually maximum input voltage the CSP325 can handle without distortion, which is pretty high, I think around 6 or 10 volts.  Problem is, when you have a standard 2 volt source or less, the VU meters hardly move.  So you see that really no matter where I set it there will be a circumstance where it will be inappropriate.

If I put it on the output, the same thing will happen because a CSP325 has adjustable output between 0 and 30 volts!!!

It's this whole magic of 'riding the gain' that we're so fond of doing over here at Decware that makes this so complicated.  (Type riding the gain into the search bar above for more info)

Even if we could make a choice on one, the preamp has 3 inputs.  The only way all there inputs would be the same is if there were industry standard 2 volt sources which most line level sources are.  Exceptions are iPhones, laptops, and those kinds of devices which are lower, and some high output dacs which are higher.  The DECWARE ZBIT, ZSTAGE, ZROCK2 are some ways to take a 2 volt source and supercharge the shit out of it taking it to somewhere between 0 and 5 an 10 volts on the high side.  If you have one of these supercharged sources and then a regular DAC or phono stage on the other two inputs, the VU meters will only work well on one or the other - whichever it was calibrated to.

At this point I'm thinking the best setting is going to be to set the meters up for the industry standard 2 volts.  If you are using a ZIT, or ZSTAGE, both have adjustable output levels, so simply set the output level to 2 volts.   If you are using a ZROCK2, simply put it after the CSP325 and keep the output levels of the CSP325 down close to unity gain.  That should actually be about the best sounding settings, and keep everything nicely consistent across sources.

Steve
.

Still playing with the meters...  before I can contemplate a switch or external adjustment, I have to get past a few other issues which turned out to be two main things:  A) I could detect the sound of the preamp change for the worse when the meters were engaged and B) It only worked great when the source had well over 2 volts.

To fix both issues an additional gain stage to drive the VU tube is needed. It can be either a tube or transistor.  I am making prototypes of both and will see what works best.   This will allow me to isolate the device from the audio signal so it has zero effect on the sound and give me a wide range of input voltages from as low a 1 volt to as high as -- well we will see.

Steve

I just spent some time looking into Scalar Waves and from what I can tell, I won't be putting my faith (which is what it seems to take) into them for mitigation of negative RF affects.  Rather, I'll be doing what I can to avoid -- which I realize is just about impossible these days.  However, with my wireless turned off and no "smart" phone, I'm a little better than average.

I do have another method but I won't share it on the open Forum since I don't want to be ridiculed as I am sort of ridiculing Scalar Waves.  

Victor Shauberger, Wilhelm Reich and Dr. Royal Rife.  Amen. Point of view changers.
The book: "Lost Science" by Gerry Vassilatos has biographs of more men of the similar sort.

Brian