Mr. Lin
Lunatic Member
These footers just arrived in the mail today, and my original plan was to put them under my CD player first, but I'm currently listening to records, and my phono preamp is relatively small and uses tubes, so I wondered whether the Iso-cups would make any immediately noticeable difference if placed underneath it.
There are pictures below if you've never seen these. Basically just a silicone cup with one of a number of balls all made from various gemstones, and all allegedly having slightly different sonic characters. As you can see in the pictures, they're meant to go ball-side up (I confirmed this with Steve Herbelin, founder of Herbies Audio Lab).
So I started playing a record, and once the first song was over I stopped it and put the Iso-cups underneath the phono preamp with the "Lampblack" balls they come with (you can order various types of other balls separately). I was skeptical beforehand, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard what a difference something like this could make. Everything sounded tightened up and crisper, very clean. But most surprising of all, sibilance once present on certain parts of records I played today, regardless of which of my turntables or cartridges I use, was greatly diminished if not altogether defeated! I tested this with some of my most problematic lps, where I'm quite sure the issue is groove damage and not something about my setup. In the worst cases there were still issues with somewhat-harsh vocal sibilants, but even those now held in check, and much easier to listen to than before. I speculate that these dampers eliminate much of the sibilance that's the result of distortion, though naturally they can't help when the source of the problem is all groove damage.
The description on Herbie's website mentions that the Iso-cups reduce sibilance, among other types of distortion, and it's not nonsense from what I'm hearing. I don't totally understand it, and if anyone thinks they have an explanation for this I'd love to hear it, but in the meantime I haven't been able to tear myself away from listening to records, which we all know is the big indicator of success when tweaking one's system.
The pictures below show the isolators under my Wright 200C, where only three of the four I ordered are actually needed. Those fat things wrapped around the 12AU7s are Herbie's tube dampers, but that's a whole other subject that many of you are probably already familiar with. The other picture gives you a close up look at an Iso-cup with the standard ball in it, plus a couple other loose ones, a Lampblack and an extra Mexican Agate.
I'm ordering more of these for my integrated amp, end of story.
There are pictures below if you've never seen these. Basically just a silicone cup with one of a number of balls all made from various gemstones, and all allegedly having slightly different sonic characters. As you can see in the pictures, they're meant to go ball-side up (I confirmed this with Steve Herbelin, founder of Herbies Audio Lab).
So I started playing a record, and once the first song was over I stopped it and put the Iso-cups underneath the phono preamp with the "Lampblack" balls they come with (you can order various types of other balls separately). I was skeptical beforehand, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard what a difference something like this could make. Everything sounded tightened up and crisper, very clean. But most surprising of all, sibilance once present on certain parts of records I played today, regardless of which of my turntables or cartridges I use, was greatly diminished if not altogether defeated! I tested this with some of my most problematic lps, where I'm quite sure the issue is groove damage and not something about my setup. In the worst cases there were still issues with somewhat-harsh vocal sibilants, but even those now held in check, and much easier to listen to than before. I speculate that these dampers eliminate much of the sibilance that's the result of distortion, though naturally they can't help when the source of the problem is all groove damage.
The description on Herbie's website mentions that the Iso-cups reduce sibilance, among other types of distortion, and it's not nonsense from what I'm hearing. I don't totally understand it, and if anyone thinks they have an explanation for this I'd love to hear it, but in the meantime I haven't been able to tear myself away from listening to records, which we all know is the big indicator of success when tweaking one's system.
The pictures below show the isolators under my Wright 200C, where only three of the four I ordered are actually needed. Those fat things wrapped around the 12AU7s are Herbie's tube dampers, but that's a whole other subject that many of you are probably already familiar with. The other picture gives you a close up look at an Iso-cup with the standard ball in it, plus a couple other loose ones, a Lampblack and an extra Mexican Agate.
I'm ordering more of these for my integrated amp, end of story.
