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AcouPlex - Perplexed

karlsushi

karlsushi

pfm Member
I was at the NW Audio Show over the weekend and one of the more fascinating things I experienced was in the AudioWorks Room, where they demonstrated the effect of placing a small piece of acouplex on top of an Acuphase CD Player.

I'll have to admit that I stood there dumfounded as to what on earth was going on, but the impact in terms of dropping the noise floor was clearly evident.

As a bit of background, AcouPlex is a material that was designed by a company called MusicWorks who produce power distribution and isolation products. Acouplex is a composite material designed to absorb acoustic noise in isolation platforms/footers etc, however the demonstration involved simply placing a small tube of the material on top of the CD Player chassis. The particular shape/piece of AcouPlex they were using was originally designed as a cable connector casing I think they said and it was only about 2 inches long.

The thing is, every time they added another one, the noise floor dropped again. Honestly, these things were just being placed on top of the chassis and they don't even weigh much, so there's no damping going on. To make matters even more confusing, the effect still happened when they were placed on top of a unit sat on a rack which was already built out of the same stuff, so effectively they were just adding a few extra grams of AcouPlex onto a rack built with Kgs of the stuff.

I was so intrigued that I ended up buying a couple of their footers to try at home. Not the same shape as the ones they were using for the demo, but still thought them worth it for intrigue's sake. Mine look like this, but as I say, the ones in the demo were a different shape:

5A55FC27-24A2-417F-ADB0-7E42020937AC-1024x705.jpeg


Did anyone else witness this or has witnessed this with AcouPlex before?

Magic trick or is there some genuine physics at play here?

(I will report back once I've had a chance to have a play with the 2 I bought).
 
karlsushi said:
I was at the NW Audio Show over the weekend and one of the more fascinating things I experienced was in the AudioWorks Room, where they demonstrated the effect of placing a small piece of acouplex on top of an Acuphase CD Player.
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This is the bit which makes me (reluctantly, obviously!) roll my eyes... like you, I can't begin to conceive of any mechanism by which this could possibly make any audible difference. As an equipment or shelf support, sure, but on top...?

I sat in the room briefly but there was no mention of any rubbery things and no offer of a demo of same.

Have you tried similar at home? Anything to report?
 
I remember many many years ago I saw an article in What Hifi reviewing a range of CD Player tweaks, including a housebrick to place on top of the CDP!
 
TheFlash said:
I can't begin to conceive of any mechanism by which this could possibly make any audible difference. As an equipment or shelf support, sure, but on top...?
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This.

It makes no sense to me as if it doesn't have any weight of value then it's not stopping vibration. Therefore, it must be magically catching and cancelling some waves or interference of some kind, which I find far fetched. Plus, I struggle to see how if the equipment was already on a rack made of loads of the stuff how a tiny bit more of it catches more.. erm... whatever it does.

I'd be curious to know how the home trial goes and if the effect/benefit can be replicated.
 
When I was a Naim junkie I placed leftover CD cases on the various boxes to stop them ringing (Naim chrome bumper and olive cases DO ring when you tap them). No, I didn't think it had any effect on the signal that came out of those boxes, I just couldn't stand the ringing coming directly from the cases.
 
Amormusic said:
This.

It makes no sense to me as if it doesn't have any weight of value then it's not stopping vibration. Therefore, it must be magically catching and cancelling some waves or interference of some kind, which I find far fetched. Plus, I struggle to see how if the equipment was already on a rack made of loads of the stuff how a tiny bit more of it catches more.. erm... whatever it does.

I'd be curious to know how the home trial goes and if the effect/benefit can be replicated.
Click to expand...
I’ve also got AcouPlex and am very familiar with the benefits heard by others on this thread. My take is that it damps vibration in the top plate and therefore the chassis, and reduces noise by, for example, reducing microphony. But unlike a house brick it does it without adding significant mass, so doesn’t simply shift the vibration to the low frequencies.

I know people say solid state electronics are not very microphonic, but they are still a tiny bit microphonic, and I suspect the voltages we’re talking about could well be at the level of the noise floor, even if that is 100-120dB down. The improvements I hear are consistent with a useful reduction in noise floor.
 
Just to add to this: the mechanism believed to be in-play here (as explained to me by an eminent professor of materials science, himself also an AcouPlex user) is that the vibration is dealt with in the boundaries between the acrylic substrate and the fine particles suspended in it. Also, those fine particles are themselves an amalgam of different materials, each of which will respond to vibration differently, at different frequencies, thus creating a broad-spectrum attenuation effect, where a homogenous material will not.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I’ve also got AcouPlex and am very familiar with the benefits heard by others on this thread. My take is that it damps vibration in the top plate and therefore the chassis, and reduces noise by, for example, reducing microphony. But unlike a house brick it does it without adding significant mass, so doesn’t simply shift the vibration to the low frequencies.

I know people say solid state electronics are not very microphonic, but they are still a tiny bit microphonic, and I suspect the voltages we’re talking about could well be at the level of the noise floor, even if that is 100-120dB down. The improvements I hear are consistent with a useful reduction in noise floor.
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Do you use them on Accuphase gear, and in what way? On or under, or both?
 
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Yes, and both ways. My rack still has acrylic shelves (haven't yet upgraded to AcouPlex shelves) but I have AcouPlex boards sitting on the shelves, which the equipment then sits on, sometimes using cones to replace the feet. And damping cones on the top plates. I also have an AcouPlex 50mm disc, drilled 9mm centre hole, which I use as a record puck instead of a clamp or weight.
 
karlsushi said:
I was at the NW Audio Show over the weekend and one of the more fascinating things I experienced was in the AudioWorks Room, where they demonstrated the effect of placing a small piece of acouplex on top of an Acuphase CD Player.

I'll have to admit that I stood there dumfounded as to what on earth was going on, but the impact in terms of dropping the noise floor was clearly evident.

As a bit of background, AcouPlex is a material that was designed by a company called MusicWorks who produce power distribution and isolation products. Acouplex is a composite material designed to absorb acoustic noise in isolation platforms/footers etc, however the demonstration involved simply placing a small tube of the material on top of the CD Player chassis. The particular shape/piece of AcouPlex they were using was originally designed as a cable connector casing I think they said and it was only about 2 inches long.

The thing is, every time they added another one, the noise floor dropped again. Honestly, these things were just being placed on top of the chassis and they don't even weigh much, so there's no damping going on. To make matters even more confusing, the effect still happened when they were placed on top of a unit sat on a rack which was already built out of the same stuff, so effectively they were just adding a few extra grams of AcouPlex onto a rack built with Kgs of the stuff.

I was so intrigued that I ended up buying a couple of their footers to try at home. Not the same shape as the ones they were using for the demo, but still thought them worth it for intrigue's sake. Mine look like this, but as I say, the ones in the demo were a different shape:

5A55FC27-24A2-417F-ADB0-7E42020937AC-1024x705.jpeg


Did anyone else witness this or has witnessed this with AcouPlex before?

Magic trick or is there some genuine physics at play here?

(I will report back once I've had a chance to have a play with the 2 I bought).
Click to expand...
This how salesmen sell to people, good old fashioned snake oil. No doubt you were prompted to hear the difference each time?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Yes, and both ways. My rack still has acrylic shelves (haven't yet upgraded to AcouPlex shelves) but I have AcouPlex boards sitting on the shelves, which the equipment then sits on, sometimes using cones to replace the feet. And damping cones on the top plates. I also have an AcouPlex 50mm disc, drilled 9mm centre hole, which I use as a record puck instead of a clamp or weight.
Click to expand...
Out of interest, how do you secure the cone feet to your units?
 
karlsushi said:
Out of interest, how do you secure the cone feet to your units?
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Use them pointy side up and just place them on the rack. Rest the unit on top of the spike. Alternatively, put one or more of them the other way up once you have the unit stabilised. Under speakers, there are versions threaded M8 which will replace many spikes.
 
Many of the very well respected range of Musicworks mains blocks use AcouPlex in various places .The G4 uses more AcouPlex in more places than the G3 . The G4 sounds better than the G3 , I have both . And the G3 sounds better than the ReflexLite one of which I also own .

My G3 has the AcouPlex base plate earlier ones I'm told didn't .
 
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