Apexorca systems

[Apexorca]

Originally Posted by johndoe21ro

I am curious... Does the Gryphon stay completely between the boundaries of the Solid Tech rack? Does its back hang out of the rack? My BAT is pretty deep and I'm interested in such a solution..

Good question!

The normal Solid Tech rack is to small for my gear especially for Gryphon. I'v let a carpenter's workshop build deeper and wider shelfs so that my gear fit into it. My shelfs are deeper and wider than Solid Techs own shelfs.
Gryphon Antileon does fit perfect into the rack now.

[johndoe21ro]

Originally Posted by Apexorca

Good question!

The normal Solid Tech rack is to small for my gear especially for Gryphon. I'v let a carpenter's workshop build deeper and wider shelfs so that my gear fit into it. My shelfs are deeper and wider than Solid Techs own shelfs.
Gryphon Antileon does fit perfect into the rack now.

That solves the problem! Thanks for the clarification.
__________________
Amp: BAT VK-655SE
Pre-amp/Digital: exaSound e32 w UpTone JS-2 Power Supply; SOtM tX-USBultra w UpTone LPS1.2; Apple Mac Mini w UpTone DC Conversion Kit & UpTone JS-2 Power Supply; Squeezelite w Logitech Media Server 7.9.0
Speakers: Triangle Magellan Cello II
Cables: AudioQuest WEL XLR, AudioQuest Everest, AudioQuest Hurricane HC, AudioQuest NRG-1000, AudioQuest Diamond USB
Rack: Solid Tech Hybrid
Tweaks: Omicron Stabilizzatore Armonico & Gold Evolution SE; IsoTek Sigmas GII w Optimum EVO3; Furutech FT-SWS (R) AC Outlet; Synergistic Research Blue Quantum Fuse

[brad225]

Absolutely stunning system and room. I imagine the image and presents is amazing.

[Apexorca]

Originally Posted by brad225

Absolutely stunning system and room. I imagine the image and presents is amazing.

Thank you brad225!
I think this system presents music quite well, so you are probably quite right!

[Apexorca]

Vinyl is all about vibrations! But just the wanted ones. The ones that comes from the grooves.
The turntable has to stand still and not add any unwanted vibrations. Hopefully Helmut Brinkmann has minimized the vibrations in the Balance construction as good as it gets.
My task is to prevent other vibrations from the air and through the HiFi-rack to reach the stylus.
How your turntable sounds can be due to how it stands.

My new project is to find out the best way to optimize how Brinkmann Balance stands.

My idea is to isolate it from the hard parts of the room. Floor, rack and so on. I don't want any vibrations started from the air or other parts of my system to reach Balance.

I know that Helmut Brinkmann designed all his turntables to stand directly on a hard heavy surface. A black stone, Nero Assuluto. This will make a firm ground and heavy mass to let Balance produce vibrations from the vinyl as good as i gets.
Though, I wanted to try to isolate this system even more.

Solid Tech's Disc Of Silence isolates many frequencies from coming up to the turntable. Its adjustable to the load. My load is 85Kg.





This upper part is to be replaced...



... with this.







I also added one 25 kg Diabas (extremely rigid and high density stone). The one below.





How does it sound?

Black background, more detailed micro dynamics, more air. And the hole family can dance and jump next to the turntable without any interaction with the turntable.



I still think it can be even better. But I don't really need it, it's just for fun.

I founded a material that is possible to taylor made due to load and wanted vibrations resonance frequencies.
I'v been in contact with professional vibration hunters that is helping me to make t´this optimal.

I want the stone underneath to stand on this material. The tricky part is not to calculate the optimal isolation from vibrations but to make it sound the best and that is not necessarily the same. Though it's probably quite close to it and probably with a little higher resonance frequency. But that has to be chosen with the my ears.

Just something to start with...





Need some recreation to...

[bart]

No half measures!
Thank you for sharing.

[Apexorca]

My old rack had Nero Assuluto on top. My new rack is i three parts that is not connected to each other. The TT-shelf on top would be better looking with Nero Assoluto as well.
After some months they arrived. 30kg each.
I think it looks better and I like the idea of having very heavy materials underneath Balance and at the samt time have control of vibrations in the rack.

Since I have had contact and help from a company that kill vibrations for a living I'v got calculations on how to fix this with the loads of each unit and all my parts concerning the vinyl part of my system. All with resonance frequencies around 20hz and below.

One thing is to calculate the optimum isolation and another is to get it sound great. The calculation is at least a very god start to try this out.

My plan was to increase the mass and isolate it from vibrations. And now my turntable as a unit with the stones is 116kg.

Every stone is isolated from each other ant the whole system i isolated from the
rack with Solid Tech Disc of Silence. The heavy load made me us all damping parts possible in Disc of Silence.



The damping material, Sylomer, had to be customized by myself.





Yellow Sylomer under RIIA, RIIA power supply and Brinkmann Balance power supply.





Brown Sylomer under Balance.









Though, I painted them black...





Sylomer works best if they are placed on a firm rigid surface. Disc of Silence is not that kind of support. That was the case before the new heavy stone got in place, but after that it sounded very good.
The music sounds more real.
1- More open, airy and clear lower midrange and midrange.
2- Sounds like higher resolution.
3- The lower frequencies does not interact with the higher frequencies in the same way. This turns out to be very important, I think.
At first I thought the music lost some warmth in the midrange, but quite soon I realized that this was a coloration from vibrations in that frequencies through the rack.
This is better.

I have to say that "soft" vibration isolations materials can have problems like lack of micro and macro dynamics and a muddy sound. But a high mass compensates for this and you keeps the sounds good parts and get rid of the bad parts.

[Catcher10]

What a total mind freak this system has become, thanks for sharing your journey.....Now sit back and spin the records and enjoy!

Cheers

[vinod_david]

Great photos, as usual.

[Apexorca]

Originally Posted by Catcher10

What a total mind freak this system has become, thanks for sharing your journey.....Now sit back and spin the records and enjoy!

Cheers

My system is getting better and better along this road. Small steps. Though, all this small steps makes a substantial positive difference together. The journey with the system is fun and the music that comes out is the goal. I spin records all the time. Is it normal that your teenagers wants you to play less music at lower volumes? It should be the other way around, right?

Make no mistakes! Great and well matched products does sounds great even without all the optimizing things that i tried out. But it's always some percentage left to enjoy if you think it's fun to go there.
The system without good music is worth nothing to me.

One of the ideas with this thread is to share my opinion and experience in this system and maybe someone gets ideas that eventually can work well in another system.

Ideas and audiophile experience I'v read about have helped me a lot.