CHOOSING THE RIGHT PRODUCT

Unsure which of our fabulous isolation products are most suited to your needs?

It's not just turntables that can benefit hugely from good isolation. All audio equipment can be affected by vibrations and can also transmit its own vibrations, transferring interference to other sensitive components! When considering your isolation needs, adopting a global view of your system is extremely important to ensure that your not simply moving problems from one place to another.

Do you really need isolation?

In general, isolation and the management and control of vibrations are rarely considered when manufacturers design and build audio equipment or by the consumer that buys the equipment.

Good isolation is arguably the most important ingredient in an audio system that will sound true and accurate.
Ignoring isolation is like leaving out the foundations of a building.

It's human nature to focus on the things which are visually the most pleasing and attractive so the way something looks will play a huge part in our purchasing decisions.

We spend a small fortune on highly sensitive audio equipment where most of the manufacturing costs will have gone into everything but the way it interacts with its external environment, its true potential locked away and its sound and performance will always be negatively affected by its poor isolation.

Its clear that room acoustics plays a major role in how our system will sound in our homes and of course, in the pursuit of the best sound, we are now becoming accustomed to investing large sums in room acoustic treatments.

All the while there’s a fundamental and arguably more important part of the whole equation that’s been overlooked and that’s the effects of vibrations and interferences on the audio equipment.

It is well known and understood that these micro and macro vibrations and interferences have a major impact on sound, smearing the music, vocals and instruments. Soundstage, musical coherence, detail, clarity and bass control can be dramatically affected and without an isolation strategy, and the right products in place, you’re essentially locking these faults into your system forever.

No amount of expensive acoustic room treatment will eradicate these inherent faults, they will always be there and ultimately you will never truly hear the upper limits of how your system should sound.

If you’re serious about your system and your music, isolation is essential.

Where to start?

Here's a helpful guide to choosing the right implementation strategy and the right products!

When it comes to isolation, always have an isolation strategy for the whole system but if your budget doesn’t stretch that far then you can achieve huge performance improvements by focusing on just one or two piece of equipment at a time.
You can mix and match all our products to suit your needs and budget. For instance, if you have a Turntable based system, you can use our BRIJ NEDAN 2.0 under your turntable and our DUO NIVA or OHJATA platforms under your other components.

Invest in the right things first.
- In general, always isolate your source components first, such as you turntable, CD player, Cassette Deck or Streamer. The only exception to this is valve amplifiers which are incredibly microphonic and are as important as your source components.
- Digital components such as CD players, DAC’s and streamers are not exempt. Macro and micro vibrations can have a significant impact on how they perform so they should always be part of the overall isolation strategy.
- Once your source is properly isolated then consider the next layer of components which would include, solid state amplifiers, phono stages and pre amplifiers and DAC’s.
- Speakers can have a considerable impact on the sound of your system, transferring vibrations through both air and structure which can lead to feedback and distortion. Our new range of PHAENON Speaker platforms should really be one of the first things to consider alongside isolating your source components. This does depend on your room but in our experience speakers are often the components that lead to greater distortion and smearing of the frequencies.
- In summary . . . Source, Speakers and then everything else!