Townshend Seismic Isolation Pods

Positioned under any piece of equipment, four Seismic Isolation Pods will dramatically improve the sound by breaking the acoustic connection between the audio system and structural vibrations in the room.

Overview:

• Eliminates structure-borne feedback between speaker and vibration sensitive equipment
• Enhances clarity throughout the whole frequency range.
• Improves bass definition.
• Produces a wider and deeper sound stage.
• Neighbour friendly high level listening.

In More Depth:

The Seismic Isolation Pod is a Seismic Load Cell™ with a circular foot attached to the lower end cap for stability. The length may be adjusted by turning the top end cap, which allows easy levelling of audio equipment placed on a set of four Pods. There is a soft felt protective piece on the top and bottom faces of the end caps to allow for easy positioning and to prevent scratching.

The singular Seismic Isolation Pod is available with seven different weight capacities, ranging progressively from 1kg up to 64kg. Depending on the weight of the device they can be used in sets of four, eight or more to isolate any piece of equipment, of any weight from any vibration.

For asymmetric components such as a valve (tube) amplifier with the transformers at the rear, different load capability Seismic Load Cells™ can be used to balance the load.

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.