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Special turntable mats? Improvement?

Azimuth

Azimuth

Well-Known Member
There are quite a few mats sold on the auction site and elsewhere that promise huge improvements in soundstage, elimination of static, better damping, etc. Do any of these work? Does anyone have an experience, positive or negative to share? Is this just snake oil? I do have two carbon fibre mats, which cling to the underside of the record in low humidity. I can't say what they do. LP Gear sells a Z mat and there is a Tonar one on the auction site made in Britain. Thoughts?
 
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Look at a Herbies Mat I have one and while I can't ID any big sonic improvement the improvement in static and cleanliness is well worth the price.
 
My favorites are the mats that came out of Audioquest made of Sorbothane. Combined with a clamp, they couple the vinyl to the platter like no other mat, and in my system, the mat makes a large audible difference. Bass in particular is improved.
 
My experience has been that I have not encountered a mat that could significantly improve performance over the average stock TT mat, but I have encountered many that can significantly degrade it. If your TT's stock mat has issues, either from age or from just being a bad mat, you can probably upgrade performance with a new one, but if you don't hear anything you think might be caused by a bad stock mat, you probably won't notice much from a "special" one.
 
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PacificStereo said:
Combined with a clamp, they couple the vinyl to the platter like no other mat....
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I thought the point was to decouple the record from the platter. That way you don't pick up vibrations from the motor or spindle bearings and such. :dunno:

John
 
Sure, they are very likely to cause a change in sound, if from nothing else, the change in VTA, unless the arm height on the turntable is adjusted to compensate for any additional thickness over the stock setup. Otherwise, if place a piece of sorbothane, or whatever its likely thicker than what was there. This will result in raising the front end of the arm and lowering the rear. Result? More bass, usually more sluggish until proper VTA is regained.

I have tried a number of commercial mats over the years with various results.
The results spoken of here are my own opinions and nothing more, and particular to my listeniing apparatus! The Audio quest sorbatane seemed to dampen everything to much in my sprung table. The ringmat changed the sound, but was a little dry to me. The herbies was a nice mat. Worked nice, felt nice, sound was fine. On my Merrill/Scillia platter and hub I've tried a few different ones, but the lead mat ( yes, itsa thin sheet of lead ) they supplied for it just sounds right.

I've seen a lot of DIY mats incorporating all these others construction tecniques and I'm sure they likely work at least as well for a lot less money. That's another thing Iliked about the Herbies, it was not the most expensive one, pretty reasonable I recall.

Your results may definately may vary,

Russellc
 
Mark W. said:
Look at a Herbies Mat I have one and while I can't ID any big sonic improvement the improvement in static and cleanliness is well worth the price.
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Decent looking mat. I also noticed that Herbie's SuperSonic Record Stabilizer weighs the same as a hockey puck. :lmao:
 
+1 on the Herbies mat.

Make sure you measure the thickness of your current mat and order the same thickness from Herbie. That way it doesn't affect your VTA etc.

Dave
 
Mats are just like any other tweak. The best one to use depends on the table, cartridge, or any other part(s) of the system, but be assured, they do work. Nothing in this hobby is inaudible! I used to have a lot of mats, like the Fulton Kinetic Barrier, Ringmat, Platter Matter, Oracle, etc. I have to admit that when I got my Luxman PD300 I rarely thought about aftermarket mats again, but some tables work well. with them. For example, the ARs (new and old work quite well with the Ringmat and I've been told that the Regas also greatly benefit from the Ringmat. Don't ask me why, but the HK T60 sounds best with the factory supplied mat. (put the silly weight in a drawer. All it does it put unnecessary strain on the motor. I could go on and on!
 
boreas said:
I thought the point was to decouple the record from the platter. That way you don't pick up vibrations from the motor or spindle bearings and such.
Click to expand...

Unless you can suspend a piece of vinyl in some sort of magic vacuum where sound can't be transmitted, I don't see how you can isolate it acoustically from the platter with any real degree of success. Records are just one big microphone diaphragm, and if you have a noisy table for whatever reason, you've got problems.

They're also quite resonant. Coupling to the platter lowers that frequency and stops that vinyl from chattering. As always, any tweak is as individual as the system it's made on. In my case, the Sorbothane mat makes an audible improvement. In your case, it may not.
 
+2 for Herbies....works great on my Sondek, Yamaha PX-3, and on my Micro Seki BL-51...

I like it better than my Fulton Kinetic Barrier, the Ringmat XLR, and the stock Linn felt mat...tried the AQ sorbothane one and I, too, felt like it robbed the music of life...did great for bass because everything else was way over damped....

Adding clamps or weights may also change the outcome...

But hey, it's your table, it's probably different than mine, and to each his own...
 
As has been pointed-out,much depends on the system.
Putting aside for the moment those 'improvements' which come from accessories/tweeks which synergistically ameliorate frequency balance problems in the system(ie a 'dull' mat compensating for a harsh sounding turntable ).
There are definitely some high quality after market mats out there.whether any one of them is 'right' for your system,only the actual experience of using one of them will tell. :scratch2:

I use an aftermarket mat,and I love it.
 
IMO this subject should be a sticky. It gets asked every month and the same guys say the same thing everytime.

marc mc
 
PacificStereo said:
Unless you can suspend a piece of vinyl in some sort of magic vacuum where sound can't be transmitted, I don't see how you can isolate it acoustically from the platter with any real degree of success. Records are just one big microphone diaphragm, and if you have a noisy table for whatever reason, you've got problems.

They're also quite resonant. Coupling to the platter lowers that frequency and stops that vinyl from chattering. As always, any tweak is as individual as the system it's made on. In my case, the Sorbothane mat makes an audible improvement. In your case, it may not.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. The finer points of turntable mechanics are a bit new to me but, applying what seems to me like logic (if uninformed logic) to the situation, it occurs to me that the purpose of a turntable mat is to isolate, or decouple, the disc from the platter and, thereby, from unwanted vibration/resonance from the mechanism. Otherwise, why have a mat at all? It strikes me that if you wanted to couple the record to the platter the thing to do would be to take off the mat and put the disc in direct contact with the platter.

Of course, the record can and does resonate by virtue of the needle tracking the grooves. Wouldn't the mat tend to damp those as well and wouldn't a clamp or weight provide further damping? It strikes me, therefore, that the purpose of a mat is to absorb vibration from the turntable before it reaches the record (decoupling?) and to damp vibration generated by the stylus tracking the groove.

I recognize I may be all wet here. Really, it's why I've written this out so that wiser heads can shoot holes in my "theory".

Thanks.
 
Mats are trade-offs and it comes down to picking your poison. On an expensive deck I would tend to believe that the manufacturer is not willing to skimp on musical performance by installing a mediocre mat. You can try a different one and find it more to your liking but in my experience with high end decks, most of the time, the best sounding mat is the one it came supplied with. I wouldn't even consider anything but Linn's felt mat on my deck.

I've played with mats when I was in retail and felt they upgraded entry level decks because of the compromises needed to meet a price point. Sometimes you get more bass at the expense of thin and muted vocals... If music loses its sense of "life", the aftermarket mat may be the culprit. It's still a case of buyer beware and listen with your ears.
 
boreas said:
Thanks for the explanation. The finer points of turntable mechanics are a bit new to me but, applying what seems to me like logic (if uninformed logic) to the situation, it occurs to me that the purpose of a turntable mat is to isolate, or decouple, the disc from the platter and, thereby, from unwanted vibration/resonance from the mechanism. Otherwise, why have a mat at all? It strikes me that if you wanted to couple the record to the platter the thing to do would be to take off the mat and put the disc in direct contact with the platter.

Of course, the record can and does resonate by virtue of the needle tracking the grooves. Wouldn't the mat tend to damp those as well and wouldn't a clamp or weight provide further damping? It strikes me, therefore, that the purpose of a mat is to absorb vibration from the turntable before it reaches the record (decoupling?) and to damp vibration generated by the stylus tracking the groove.

I recognize I may be all wet here. Really, it's why I've written this out so that wiser heads can shoot holes in my "theory".

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Man that is a refreshing post. boreas, keep asking those questions and chart your own course. I learned long ago that the dogmas in audio are based more on tradition and repetition than trial.

I finished this up a couple weeks ago. It has no platter! just a weighted sub platter and weighted clamp. Consider it more food for thought. And yes, it works :thmbsp:

turntable2006.jpg


turntable2002.jpg


marc mc
 
marc mc said:
I finished this up a couple weeks ago. It has no platter! just a weighted sub platter and weighted clamp. Consider it more food for thought. And yes, it works :thmbsp:
marc mc
Click to expand...

Holy $h1t! That is really wild! (Actually, it looks a lot like my table. I've got the same bullseye level on mine.) ;)

By the way, how do you cool the motor?

John
 
Lots of dynamics going on here. The LP weighs many 100,000's of times the stylus, so it should dampen (absorb) the tracking vibrations? But, since we can hear the stylus tracking if we listen near the record when it's spinning, the equation does not work as a simple model.

As far as de-coupling, you can't really do that since the LP fits the center post/spindle pretty tightly - anything that the spindle bearing sends along is going to get transferred to the LP. So what are we trying to actually do?

Sorbothane is good at killing some frequencies, so it may help. One of the owner built mats that seems to be quite interesting is the dual layer cork and suede composite. Since many folks find that cork is a good mat material, and others find high density "dead" materials helpful, some folks have been gluing them back to back. Depending on the need, flip the cork or leather side up and have at it.

This is an area where experimentation with basic materials may pay dividends. It all depends on your time and willingness to try? And, maybe your stock mat IS the best match to your arm & platter?
 
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