Townshend Seismic Isolation Bars

Seismic Isolation Bars are designed to break the acoustic connection between the speakers and the floor, thus preventing the passage of unwanted vibration between the two. Used in pairs under any speaker, be it floor standing, stand-mounted or sub-woofers.

Overview:

• Produce a wider and deeper sound stage.
• Enhance clarity throughout the whole frequency range.
• Improve bass definition.
• Eliminate structure-borne feedback between the speaker and vibration sensitive equipment.
• Allow for neighbour friendly high level listening
• Eliminate irritating boom caused by coupling through the floor to adjacent rooms.

In More Depth:

Because of the very compliant nature of the Seismic Load Cells™, the speakers effectively float in the room at frequencies above 3 Hz. Each bar comprises a very strong steel cross-piece with raised ends under which are attached two Seismic Load Cells™.

When installed you experience The Seismic Effect! The sound improves dramatically, with wider stage width and greater depth and the sound becomes independent of the speakers. Bass becomes tighter and more real, with thuddy boom greatly reduced. A major plus is that the sound of the speakers is no longer transmitted through the structure of the building with the same intensity so your neighbours will probably not hear your music!

Conventional so-called rigid supports (spikes or cones) aim to hold the speaker cabinet ‘still’ at audio frequencies. However there will be coupling between the speaker and the floor and myriad resonance set up by the mass of the cabinet reacting with the unavoidable springiness of the floor, which can cause vibration of the building structure in the audio band.

Rigid coupling also transmits ground-borne vibration into the speaker cabinet and thence to the speaker driver baskets where it is superimposed onto your music.

By using Seismic Isolation Bars you will be able to enjoy your music at its natural volume level, – as if you were listening to a live performance – without annoying the neighbours!

To install, first remove any spikes or cones from your speakers and slip one bar under the front of the speaker. Then tilt the speaker forward and slide the second bar under the rear. Very small adjustments allow for setting the speakers vertical. Even though the speakers are floating, it takes a very big push to topple them.

The Importance of Vibration Isolation

Mechanical vibration degrades the sound of all high fidelity systems.

Vibrations affect the reproduction of sound through hi-fi systems. Although many of these are small and may go largely unnoticed, vibrations have a negative impact on the quality of sound in virtually all hi-fi components.

• Turntables are highly sensitive to vibration, which raises the noise floor, degrading the sound not to mention stylus jump due to footfall.

• With silver-disc players vibration affects the laser mechanism and the crystal oscillators introducing severe sound-degrading jitter.

• With tube or valve amplifiers vibration rattles the microphonic electrodes, especially the grids.

• Transistor amplifiers have microphonic components, including capacitors and connecting wires which move relative to one and another generating rogue voltages. All of these mechanisms will degrade the delicate audio signal.

• Computers, streamers and DACs are highly susceptible to mechanical noise as they all contain vibration sensitive crystal oscillators.

• Rigidly spike or cone mounted speakers transmit energy into the floor radiating vibration throughout the room and ultimately, through your rack and into your equipment. This seriously degrades performance as described above. Spike and cone mounted speakers cause the whole room structure to vibrate, often resulting in an unrealistic boomy bass whilst masking subtle detail. Further, this unwanted structural vibration can seriously irritate your neighbours.

Complete vibration isolation transforms sound quality.

The secret is to fully float your whole Hi Fi System independently from the speakers and the floor. Townshend have devised a complete solution that to allow this to be done in an optimum way.

The key component is the Townshend Seismic Load Cell™.

The Seismic Load Cell™ consists of a high quality alloy steel compression spring surrounded by a flexible synthetic rubber jacket with two end plates.

Screw threads in each plate facilitate height adjustment and provide attachment points. A movement-sensitive, air-resistance damper rapidly dissipates low frequency oscillation caused by disturbing the suspended equipment.

Seismic Load Cells™ are very ‘soft’ and allow free movement in all three dimensions; up/down, left/right and back/forth.
This unique solution blocks all deleterious vibration from 3Hz upwards and from all directions.

As the frequency increases, the isolation gets progressively greater, ensuring that virtually no vibration can pass from and to the suspended equipment.

As each hi-fi component is isolated, the sound progressively improves.