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- Jan 27, 2019
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- #21
I have no direct thoughts on that product and the effect you experienced. But I do have a SQUIRREL!
Unfortunately, I lost the mesasurement data for the following:
I have a pair of KEF Q100 speakers sitting on the top of a built-in cabinet base in my living room. The speakers resonated that cabinet, creating a huge wall of muddy bass. This presented the perfect opportunity to measure different affordable isolation products.
The methodology was to place my UMIK-1 inside the cabinet, play a series of test tones while recording with the RTA, and capture the results for each set of isolators. The isolators were:
1. Little gray feet included withe the Q100s
2. Harry's Square Fat Dots
3. IsolateIt! Sorbothane hemispheres
4. Gray foam pads
The results were that the foam pads made the most difference with near complete isolation, and all the other isolaters performed similarly and poorly. The more expensive isolators were no better than the free feet that came with the speakers.
The curve ball is that treating the bottom of the cabinet base top with a double layer of the extreme version of that aluminum backed asphalt product made more difference than any of those isolators alone, save the foam pads.
Since the foam pads are ugly and not flat, the speakers currently sit on the Sorbothane hemispheres. Why? They were the last things stuck on the speakers, and there was no point in pulling them off for one of the other three.
I would re-run the test to get the data to post, but that would require me to pull the asphalt off, and I don't want to do that.
That's the conclusion I came to when I tested a bunch of isolation devices and materials. A foam-based subwoofer platform was best, most other materials, squishy and otherwise, were underwhelming. All were handily outpaced by spring-based isolation.
That said, I do have some sorbathane under several of my external hard drives. They tended to mildly vibrate the cabinet they sit in, which was amplifying the buzzing sound. The sorbathane killed that sound. But I was looking for more significant results in my quest for audio isolation stuff.