Seismic Vibration Isolation Stand





    • Versatile design with adjustable shelf height
    • Enhances clarity across the frequency range
    • Delivers wider and deeper soundstages
    • Improves bass definition
    • Reduced muddiness and time smear
    • Makes transients clearer
Seismic-Isolation-Stand-Townshend-Hi-Fi-rack

The Townshend Audio Seismic Isolation Stand is an equipment support system designed to fully isolate all hi-fi, audio and video components from ground borne vibration. The concept for the Stand is derived from the original multi award winning Seismic Sink Stand introduced in 1997.

This radical product re-wrote the rules on equipment support, rules which had always insisted on rigid coupling to the floor to ‘drain away unwanted energy’.
The performance of the soft suspended Seismic Vibration Isolation Stand compared with all rigid designs showed the hi-fi world how absolutely vital it is to thoroughly isolate all source and amplifier components from ground-borne vibration.

The Seismic Sink Stand sets a new level of performance, style and practicality. Minimalist in design it has height adjustable smoked glass shelves held on support poles and mounted on a platform that includes eight Seismic Load Cells™ in-between two rigid steel plates. This arrangement, in conjunction with the mass of the stand and equipment, forms a stable suspended low-pass filter with an attenuation of about 20dB per decade above 2Hz. This ensures that deleterious ground borne vibrations from 4Hz and above are virtually eliminated.

Isolating audio and video components from vibration increases fidelity and imparts an openness and clarity to the sound, with gains in focus and solidity of image.
A result that non-suspended stands simply cannot approach. 100% maintenance-free, the stand is manufactured to a high standard in order to last a lifetime.

Standard shelves are made of polished and toughened safety glass that looks great and provide durability. The four point mounting clamps have vibration absorbing pads which form a constrained layer damped assembly with virtually no resonance once the equipment is in place.
Rubber or felt feet on the supported equipment completely eliminate any possibility of ringing. The stand rests on soft plastic feet that will not harm wood or carpet floors and are easily adjustable for precise leveling.

The Seismic Isolation Stands are manufactured in the standard following sizes:

• Size 1 equipment width up to 45cm (18”)
• Size 2 equipment width up to 50cm (19.5”)
• Size 3 equipment width up to 53cm (20.75”)
• Wide equipment width up to 100cm (39”)

The Seismic Isolation stand can be levelled with the supplied spanner when fully loaded. The Load Cells™ come in a range of strengths to suit the weight of the equipment suspended. In the standard range the maximum equipment weight is between 150kg and 200kg (330 & 440lb) depending upon the number of shelves.

The final product is custom built to suit your needs, to make this possible we need to know the following:

• Weight for each piece of equipment starting from the bottom shelf.
• Width, depth and height for each piece of equipment starting from the bottom shelf.

The length of the support poles is relative to the number of the shelves and the height of the gaps between them.



BESPOKE DESIGN STANDS

Special stands of any size can be made to order for a nominal charge.

It is possible to have a stand with the top shelf rigid to the ground and the lower shelves isolated.
DELIVERY AND SET-UP

The stands are delivered flat packed with comprehensive easy-to-follow instructions. Alternatively, the stand can be supplied ready assembled for a nominal charge.


  • Specify-stand
  • Real stunners - Accessory of the year 2020


    “The Seismic Podiums become so fundamental to the listening experience that calling them mere accessories fails to give them enough credit.”

    Neil Gader – The Absolute Sound

    [ Full Review ]


    Good Vibrations - Hifi-choice 5 stars - Recommended product

    “The way it removes the speaker’s interaction with its surroundings is mind blowing, bringing clarity to the entire frequency range that enables it to communicate more effectively with the listener. You haven’t truly heard how your speaker can perform until you’ve placed it on one of these. Enthusiastically recommended.”
    Lee Dunkley – Hi-Fi Choice

    [ Full review ]


    Product of the year 2016 awarded by "the ear"

    “So what do Seismic Podiums do for sound quality? If I said “everything” you wouldn’t believe me, but the answer is not far off. They dramatically increase low level resolution so you can hear more detail, they clean up the bass like you wouldn’t believe and the improve dynamics and speed.”

    Jason Kennedy

    [see full review]


    Seismic Podium, HiFi+ Accessory of the year award 2016

    Podium producdt of the year

     

     

    “The Editor and two other HiFi+ reviewers already use Podiums under their loudspeakers, and speaker companies are taking note, too. This is a real loudspeaker game changer and could spell the end of loudspeaker spikes for many listeners.”
    Full award article as well as a full product review in January’s edition downloadable here: http://www.nextnewsstand.com/products/hi-fi-plus/hifi-131/


    Seismic Waves

    What is it that distinguishes the sound of a great hi-fi system from a merely good one? Is it how loud it will go? Does it depend on the amount of bass energy it can pump into your listening room? Is it something to do with pace, rhythm and timing or what hi-fi reviewers sometimes refer to as the sound being ‘fast’? These are a few audible characteristics among many. Some can be emphasised or attenuated to alter the sound, and there any number of cable and ‘accessory’ manufacturers out there that will help you achieve such an ‘effect’, some arguably desirable, some less so. Either way, and however beneficial the changes might seem, they are most likely benign distortions, and minimising distortion, in all its forms, is a principal goal of hi-fi. Only then will a true sense of realism be won.

    So here’s the sobering fact. Every hi-fi system, from humble to high-end, has its performance ceiling set not by the cost and quality of its individual components but by how completely those components – the source, the amplification, the loudspeakers  – are isolated from the world around them. And when we say ‘world’ we mean that literally, as we’ll explain in a moment.

    Vibration.

    Without it, we wouldn’t hear a thing. Yet, as interference, it can destroy the realism – critically realised in the finest, low-level detail – of the music we love. The aim, therefore, is to preserve the good vibrations (something worth signing about as the Beach Boys would no doubt agree) by preventing contamination from the bad ones.

    This used to be thought of as a singularly circular problem. That is, it was all the fault of the loudspeaker, as it was both the means for converting electrical signals into the vibrations we perceive as music and (because it was physically coupled to the room in which it was being played), also the culprit for resonant interference – not only to the detriment of its own performance but also everything else in the playback chain.

    Nothing much has changed in this respect. If unchecked these unwelcome resonances are a fundamental cause of under-achieving sound quality, and well recognised as such – to the extent that, over the years, the burgeoning ‘isolation’ business has spawned myriad ‘solutions’ to the problem, ranging from the widely favoured spiked speaker stands and equipment racks to simple, cushioning elastomers and, more recently, exotic, expensively-encased ceramic balls with mysterious ‘energy-draining’ properties. We wouldn’t dispute that they all do something to change the sound – maybe enough, in some cases, to persuade the listener that unwanted vibrations have been vanquished and all is well with the world. It isn’t.

    Microtremors.

    Any group of components brought together with the aim of accurately reproducing music or a film soundtrack is at the mercy of our planet, and the consequences truly are seismic. Every moment of the day and night, global activity is occurring, mostly manifested as a phenomenon known as microtremors. These ground-borne seismic vibrations are always present, everywhere, all the time. They are Mother Earth’s never-ending backing track, the residual noise recorded on seismographs between earthquakes. Unless filtered out, the microtremors join in and wash away crucial fine detail.

    So how come we can’t feel them? Their amplitude is very low, measuring between force -1 and force 2 on The Richter Scale, as shown (fig. 1) from the US Geological Survey. No, you can’t feel them and the only way you can see them is as a graphic trace. But you can hear their degrading influence. The presence of low-level seismic activity 24/7 is responsible for undermining your hi-fi’s potential to give true musical satisfaction and ultimately compromises your financial investment in whatever hardware you own or choose to own.

    The solution.

    Townshend Audio is the world’s only manufacturer of isolation systems that protect hi-fi and AV equipment from seismic microtremors. The first line of defence is the Seismic Podium. Designed as a range to accommodate any size and weight of speaker – standmount plus stand, floorstander or subwoofer – the Seismic Podium breaks the acoustic connection between the floor and the speaker, preventing the passage of deleterious vibrations both to and from the speaker cabinets. For a detailed explanation of why this is an absolute necessity before any speaker can perform to its true potential, read ‘Earthquakes on hi-fi’, http://goo.gl/sv3GsX.

    Floated on Seismic Isolation Podiums, speakers are freed from the ever-present seismic activity and room/floor interactions that seriously degrade sound quality. The result is simply magical, allowing listeners to hear into their favourite music in a way they were never able to previously. When under your speakers, they will give you immediate improvements in overall sound by preventing speaker generated vibration from entering the floor and sound from entering your speakers. By eliminating the resonance between the speaker-cabinet mass and the floor, the sound will be noticeably clearer, much more tuneful, controlled and natural.  Bass boom is significantly reduced and there will be a far larger, much deeper and wider sound stage. The sound becomes natural and more enjoyable.

    As many have already witnessed, the improvements are a revelation and a true pleasure – not least because severing the acoustic link between the speaker and the floor allows playback at more realistic volume levels without annoying the neighbours!