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We continually wrestle with this section. That some listening rooms sit on concrete slabs while others have suspended floors means that there is no universal solution.

We have witnessed stunningly good reproduction from a stand so wobbly as to raise doubts as to its safety. Generalizing is simply not possible.

Our main listening room sits on a concrete slab, but we have had success exhibiting in various hotels with suspended wood-joist floors as well.

Our traveling setup has for the most part consisted of a sandbox sitting on top of a threaded rod type of stand - due its portability.

For a more timely commentary on this subject, visit this thread on our forum (opens in new window)

Bear in mind that bouncy floors with foot fall problems will give the turntable owner fits irrespective of the turntable architecture - suspended or unsuspended.

Our experiences with suspended 'tables on bouncy floors (e.g. Thorens, AR, Merrill, Linn, and Sota ) have been more problematic than those with unsuspended 'tables. As the suspension is set into motion by the rocking, it continues to oscillate long after the floor has stopped moving.

Ultimately, shaky floors involve implementing one or more of the following solutions:

• Supporting the floor joists from below (using floor jacks)
• Locating the stand directly over floor joists, and if possible, at a point near where the joists are anchored to a structural wall.
• Anchoring the stand to the wall in some form - either by bracing the stand against the wall or by using a wall-mounted shelf. Look at our DIY Section below, where we document a hybrid wall/floor supported stand.

Turntable Leveling

If your shelf is narrower than the recommended 18" x 24" dimension, you can add a larger shelf to the top (e.g. Adona shelf, maple slab, sandbox, etc.), while at the same time adapting it to the footprint of the smaller rack on which it sits.

• Fit the shelf with leveling spikes
• Space the spikes so that they fit comfortably inside the footprint of your existing top shelf (example - space the spikes on a 14" x 16" rectangle for a top shelf measuring 16" x 18")

Note that we machine 1/4" x 20 TPI threads into our turntable bases and motor pods. Aluminum cones are installed into these threaded holes. The cones are used to firmly locate the motor pod for speed stability, and the base sits on matching cones so that the belt tracks at the proper height.

We don't recommend that you use the cones for leveling adjustment. This can be tricky from the perspective of maintaining alignment for proper belt tracking, but you are welcome to try. We'd recommend that you implement a leveling feature on your shelf as described above.

Shelf Size:

Minimum shelf sizes:

• Stelvio-II: 19"d x 24"w. Add a couple of inches in each dimension, expecially if you're mounting a long tonearm (drawing to follow).
• Gavia-II: 18"d x 24"w (drawing to follow)
• Legacy models: minimum shelf size is 16"d x 22"w for a 9" arm (18" x 24" is better if possible). A drawing of this layout can be seen here (opens in new window).

We recommend specifying something on the order of 18" x 24" if this is feasable.

If you're building/commissioning a sandbox, consider providing for a retrofit of an Adona shelf as a top plate for your sandbox. Reference the links below. Adona's standard size is 19" x 24", but they will make one that is 18" x 24".

Also, reference the section above - adding a leveling feature to a top shelf having larger dimensions than your equipment rack.

Implementations:

To date, we have implemented the following:

• The Adona shelf (see below).

• A sandbox.

  This is a cost effective solution that can achieve very good results.

  Whether it has an aluminum top plate or one of wood/MDF, we've found that stiffeners affixed to the under side help. Key to all of these stiffeners is that they bed into the sand the way a heat sink would.

• Air suspension.

  We have tried only one highly regarded commercial air suspension device. While it works well, there is no improvement over a sandbox. This is not to say that it won't help other turntables.

  If this concept fascinates you, we suggest you search ebay using "optical isolation tables" as a search term. Many of them are quite large, but occasionally a domestically "acceptable" size turns up.

• Slab maple or alternatively, butcher-block.

  This tends toward the over-damped side of the spectrum.

  If your system tends toward the bright side, you may to prefer this, but we recommend addressing your problems at their source and not with "band-aids".

• A machinist's granite surface plate.

  Granite (at least untreated) tends to err on the opposite side of the spectrum from maple - tending toward the bright side. Again, we recommend fixing any dull sound at its source and not by adding resonances.

Bear in mind that if you use wood or granite as a tuning device, a future system change can send you back to the drawing board. It is for this reason that we recommend sandboxes - the most neutral solution.

Commercial Products:

The following products are worthy of your consideration. As we learn more, we'll update this list.

In reading these comments, please realize that there is likely no universal solution. Your floor, your system, your tastes, and your arm/cartridge match will all factor into your solution.

Please follow the link to the bottom of this page to our comments on Kevin Brooks' rickety stands to regain perspective on this topic.

• Adona Corporation (opens in new window) - MDF / Granite composite shelves.

  Note Adona maintains an old link which shows an 18" x 24" shelf (opens in new window). Verify that you can retrofit an Adona shelf if you're doing this in

  This two-layer shelf is bonded together with an adhesive. One can't always depend on a complimentary relationship of contrasting materials being successful, but they seem to be on the right track with this product.

  One benefit of the Adona shelf is that it can be used with either the MDF side facing up (more restrained sounding), or in the "standard" implementation with the granite side facing up livelier sounding).

  A customer of ours with excellent hearing and a broad range of musical taste happened on these stands and recommends these as a viable solution for many.

  These are the four configurations he's tried - in order of his current preference:

  1. A 2-layer maple butcher-block laminate (2 cutting boards from Bed, Bath and Beyond screwed together).
  2. The Adona shelf
  3. A 3" maple butcher-block
  4. A 3-layer Baltic Birch laminate with 11 lbs of lead shot in the middle layer

  He comments:

  "The colorations are different for each platform. I honestly can't say that I prefer one set of flaws over another. The bottom line for me is that I always seem to return to some version of the Bed Bath and Beyond cutting board. Again, it has obvious colorations, but somehow I am able to listen through them more easily than the other things I have tried. The BB and B board seems to stay in the system after I have gone through a bout of trying other alternatives. For instance, it's been in place for at least the past two months."

  "So anyway my feelings about the Adona are not that it is a "final" solution but that it is one alternative, one that many people may find wholly acceptable and need look no further. It is certainly a turnkey solution to the immediate issue of what to put a new table on. I think it sounds distinctly better than my 3" granite slab for instance. The Adona clearly is not as resonant as the 3" maple or the Baltic Birch platform."

  "Note that I still haven't tried a sandbox and/or aluminum mounting platform."

  While he has most recently been gravitating to his 2-layer butcher-block implementation, this is perhaps the first time that his and our observations about maple have diverged.

  This speaks to the absence of a universal solution. Don't let this trouble you too much. Re-read our rickety stands comments below. It's not a life and death decision, and you will most certainly enjoy any solution you implement. Have fun with this.

  Note that some customization is possible with the Adona shelves, Here are our customer's comments about this:

  "He made mine with straight sides rather than the beveled sides shown in the photo. The 18 x 24 size fits perfectly on my Sound Anchors stand, and either surface, granite or mdf, can be used as the top side. The granite looks beautiful but doesn't sound as good as the mdf surface."

  It behooves us to evaluate one of these shelves ourselves, and when we do so, we'll update this section accordingly. We will also contact Adona about additional customized solutions - such as alternate leveling options.

• Bright Star Audio (opens in new window) - The first guys to popularize sandboxes in the commercial market. Big shelves are the norm for them as they've been making shelves for the large VPI turntables for years.
• HRS - Harmonic Resolution Systems (opens in new window) - These folks treat granite (as does Adona) and reportedly have tamed its nasties.
• Skylan Manufacturing (opens in new window)
• Ginko Audio (opens in new window) - custom acrylic dust covers, isolation shelves

Do it yourself and commissioned solutions:

• A sandbox can be built by the home constructor, or alternatively commissioned.

  Click this link for plans (opens in new window) to build your own. You can adjust these dimensions to suit your needs.

  
  
  Sandbox commissioned by one of our customers

  Design Notes and Caveats:

  • Our design employs a technique that no one we are aware of has implemented. It involves a stiffening technique which takes the level of performance to that of shelves costing many multiples of its price.

    

  • The photo shows the layout with critical points located directly over a support "beam" (the three footers on the turntable, along with the motor pod). The stiffer the material, the better.
    
    
  • These "beams" act both as stiffeners and vibration sinks - providing surface area to drain vibration into the sand. The problem with "normal" sandboxes, is that there is very little surface contact between the top plate and the sand.
    
    
  • Employing a top plate that is stiffer than wood/plywood/MDF takes this design a bit further, by removing some blur and enhancing low level detail without adding any harshness.
    
    
  • Use a 1/2" sheet of aluminum along with a bracing pattern as shown above (or alternatively bolting large, stiff heat sinks to its under side).
    
    
  • The Adona shelf referenced above is a viable (and turnkey) alternative to aluminum.
    
    
  • For all sandboxes, the dimensions of the sidewalls should provide for 1/8" clearance between the top plate and the inner walls of the sandbox - the inner dimension of the sandbox walls should be 1/4" greater than the top plate's dimensions.
    
    
  • Consult Adona, if you expect to try one of their shelves, so that you can design accordingly.

• A hybrid, floor/wall-mounted stand: This is a variant arising out of a discussion with Frank Schröder. It works in situations where you have a bouncy, suspended floor which needs assistance from a more rigid wall - hopefully a structural wall. If you're lucky, the wall is masonry. Click this link for a diagram (opens in new window). For this solution, you'll need to find a welder who can work with square section aluminum tubing.

Sources for 18" x 24" x 3" granite surface plates:

We leave these references for historical interest and don't recommend granite (see above), and especially in light of the Adona shelf and the Sandbox/Adona hybrid.

• Grizzly Industrial (opens in new window) - search on part #G9654 for this 154 lb. plate. Shipping is extremely reasonable. Total delivered cost is under $100 (continental 48 states). They also carry a steel table to support the plate (part #G9658). See note, below.
  
  
• Enco Tools (opens in new window) - search on model #640-0140 for this 180 lb plate (also selling for about $50).
  They also sell stands at a slightly higher price than Grizzly - see model #640-1010.See note, below.

Note: While the stands offered by Grizzly and Enco will get you running at an attractive price, their fit and finish runs from very poor (Grizzly) to poor (Enco) - even if your taste runs toward the industrial look. You will probably find yourself sanding it and either priming/painting it or paying to have it powder coated. Consider this before ordering.

What about tip toes?

Contrary to popular "wisdom", tip toes are not mechanical diodes. Tip toes couple vibrations traveling in both directions. They can be useful in certain circumstances however, and their positioning does alter the sound.

If you think of a vibrating string, its peak vibrational excursion is at its center, and its minimum excursion is at its ends (the nodes).

A surface like a turntable base or a shelf has complex vibrational behavior - with numerous peaks and valleys (nodes).

The idea behind locating a tip toe is to connect two vibration nodes with each other, avoiding connecting two peaks. This will minimize motion (vibration).

The Strangest Things Can Sound Good ... or ... Everything We Know is Wrong.

Here is the partial text of a post we made on a forum about stand selection. While the main topic was about maple, the topic of Kevin Brooks' rickety stand came up. Even the most extreme members of our tribe needs to call a "time out" occasionally and just enjoy their tunes. Read the following at your own risk.

I have great respect for Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade. I think he puts out some very fine products.

Please note in my comments below, that I have never used the massive (and monolithic) maple slab sold by Mapleshade. I have done quite a bit of experimentation with maple butcher-block, which is a very different animal. I think my comments are still instructive however, or at a minimum, can serve as a data point for further exploration.

In all of our experimentation with platter design, we learned that what you glue a material together with (or what you glue two different materials together with) is just as important as the material(s) itself. So, in the case of the butcher-block, I may be hearing the glue as much as the maple.

Having said that, I've never found maple to contribute to my musical enjoyment. I think that this is not a universal characteristic however, and suspect that there are system contexts in which maple will work wonders.

You can well imagine that I go through this "turntable shelf dialog" with my customers on a regular basis. My #1 piece of advice to them (in the context of a Galibier, of course) is for them to take it very slowly, and to be prepared to start over.

One particular customer of mine has perhaps the best horn systems I've ever heard - with a price to match - Kevin Brook's Ales-based compression drivers.

Upon first delivering and setting up Kevin's turntable, he was shy of a turntable stand - having sold it along with his Platine Verdier.

Your jaw would drop at the temporary stand we pressed into service - fabricated of 2" x 2" oak struts, it was never intended for turntable use, but rather for prototyping horns. I literally feared for the safety of anyone passing within 3 feet of it!

It was all we had available.

I have to tell you that the sound in Kevin's system was nothing short of amazing. Surely, his entire signal chain is world-class, but if there had been a problem with the stand, it would certainly have proven the philosophy that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Would I recommend a wobbly stand for anyone (or for Kevin for that matter)? Of course not. Like all of us however, Kevin has many priorities to deal with in both his audio business as well as in his own system setup, and the sound he's getting out of his rig on that shaky stand is not to be believed.

We all play triage with our system mods by addressing the highest priority (weakest link) first. The issue of a good stand (whatever that is) continues to sit below other system priorities for him. Were this my system, I suspect it might also be the case for me.

I am at a loss to explain this ...

This commentary isn't about how you can site a Galibier on anything and get world-class sound, but rather to point out that you sometimes make progress in the strangest of ways ... and most certainly not in a linear fashion.

Would I be inclined to try maple again? Likely, although I suspect I'd have the same results in the types of systems I find myself assembling for folks. Is maple necessarily bad? I don't think so. You need to look at turntable shelves in the overall context of what frequency range your turntable and stand are best at filtering out.

In the systems I've tried, I've found maple (butcher-block) to have a mid-bass centered resonance that I find to be annoying. In other systems, this might be exactly what the doctor ordered.

I tried an interesting experiment - fabricating a 3 layer shelf - two layers of 1-3/4" butcher-block sandwiched around a 1/2" thick piece of aluminum ... all held together by 50 wood screws (what a chore!).

I expected the stiffening effect of the aluminum to shift the resonant frequency upward, but the "tap test" was quite surprising, and was and an indicator of what I heard when I put it into service.

The sonic signature of this stiffened shelf was very similar to that of maple alone. I was fairly well shocked at how the maple's effects dominated the stiffening effected by the 1/2" sheet of aluminum.

So, I think we can conclude (at least in the case of butcher-block), that the maple's resonant characteristics tend to dominate everything else.

I don't know how this translates to a monolithic slab, but I suspect that this is what the good folks at Mapleshade are hearing.

I further suspect that they are using it to good advantage in systems that benefit from this type of tuning. Is maple a universal solution? Of course not ... what product is?