Mechanical vibration degrades the sound of high fidelity systems.

Vibrations inside and outside the home effect the reproduction of sound through your hi-fi system. Although many of these are small and may go largely unnoticed, both large and small vibrations will have a negative impact as they transfer to the support legs and thence to the shelves upon which the hi-fi equipment sits.

Vibration effects record players directly where it raises the noise floor and add distortion to the audio signal. With silver disc players vibration in the laser introduces sound degrading jitter. In vacuum tube amplifiers vibrations rattle the microphonic tube electrodes, especially the grids, again degrading the delicate audio signal.

Transistor amplifiers, computers and DACs all have microphonic components, including conductors and connecting wires which can move relative to one another. This movement undermines performance.

Wherever you have rigid coupling the reproduced sound becomes closed-in, grainy, edgy, hard, sibilant and blurred. The sound stage is narrowed, depth is reduced and subtle reverberant detail in recordings is masked. In the case of video systems, the picture loses focus, colour purity degrades and picture grain becomes more noticeable.

The amount of vibration present varies from day to day, hour to hour and from place to place. Many have noticed how much nicer sound can be late at night when all is quiet. It's not simply due to 'less radio frequency interference' or cleaner mains' as is commonly thought, but to the reduction in vibration due to the lack of human activity at night.

A surprising effect of low frequency isolation which flies in the face of the established practice is the case of loudspeakers. Spiking speakers drains energy into the floor, so much so that the floor in turn vibrates. This causes all manner of distortion and resonance

in the bass and re-radiation throughout the building, including to your seat and the hi-fi, not to mention the neighbours.

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

Break the rigid link between the speaker and the floor and the results are amazing.

Vibration degrades, Isolation improves.

Townshend Audio pioneered the principle of seismic vibration isolation for all audio equipment by breaking the mechanical connection between hi-fi components and the floor. We can do this at very low frequencies with very softly sprung platforms and stands.

The Townshend range of Seismic Isolation products incorporates the ground breaking Seismic Load Cell™.

We make these in different strengths to support various weights of equipment and construct them from high quality springs enclosed within a tensioned rubber jacket which has stainless steel a cap at each end.

The mass of the equipment and the spring support combined with progressive air damping forms a mechanical low pass filter that blocks ground borne vibration and allows your equipment to work at its best.