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Re: CLD?

Posted by melomane (A) on June 25, 2005 at 06:49:03

In Reply to: CLD? posted by subcoolman on June 24, 2005 at 19:19:16:

Well if you want professional jargon designed to make impressive people sound impressive, then you've come to the wrong man! I seem to remember that "constrained layer damping" actually started in audio anyway in the fabrication of turntables. One of the earliest proponents of the idea was Kuzma (though many large Japanese companies did it first), with their top-of-the-line 'table which was a sandwich of acrylic and aluminum and some sort of adhesive (they always say "proprietary damping compound" instead of glue to make you feel happy about shelling out several $K, which I suspect in most cases are simple contact cement or some other common glue aailable at the hardware store). The idea is that each material has its own resonant characteristics, and by firmly bonding one material to another material you ensure that no single resonant behaviour dominates, the aim being to create a truly neutral plinth that allows you to hear yor tonearm and cartridge accurately. In the end, though, like violins, it's a crap-shoot, and all anyone can really do is glue various materials together and hope for the best, as the high-end belt-drive manufacturers in fact do (which explains the various recipes). Despite this, I still prefer CLD, which does make sense. Now I have found that by using my ears MDF/birch-ply sounds great, I think the best so far of various materials and mixes I've tried. It's cheap and easy to work and nice to finish, so I stop here. I've used Corian/MDF, which also sounded great, though I believe the birch-ply/MDF sounds more energetic. Do a lot of reading as you've done, trust your own sense of logic and common sense (so rare these days you might as well call is "Spidey-sense"!) and most of all your ears, and I'm sure you'll come up with a good-sounding plinth. In the absence of any true knowledge/experience (as opposed to impressive theories), give in to your whims, I do this often!

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