Brandon's Air Mass Isolation Platform

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(Assembly continued)   Now your platform is almost complete! you should have the platform with its retainer pieces screwed into place. now you need to sand it again so the retainer pieces are as smooth and flush with the platform as possible. This is also the step to add a finish to the wood if you like. I just left mine plain.  The last step is adding the innertube. for a platform as big as the one we are making here I found a 20 inch innertube works fine. Its a little bigger than needed but you just have to fold it in on the backside as seen in the below pic. fill the innertube until its completely inflated. but not soo much where its stretches. put the innertube in the retainer piece so it forms with the inside of the retainer as best as possible. it should stay in there by itself. if not you could always put some silicone or glue it in. You will have to tweak the air pressure in the tube depending on the weight of the component, it should be only full enough to have the platform completely suspended. put the component on top of the platform and your ready to go! Performance and Conclusion   As far as the performance of the platform goes. I cant comment on sound with and without it because in my current setup I don't get much of any floor borne vibrations to begin with. but I have placed the platform on my speaker and played bassy music and can physically feel the speaker vibrating and not the platform. so it DOES work to keep floor vibrations away. You could also customize the dimensions of the platform to fit dacs or pretty much any component. I have tested mine with around 50 or 60 lbs on it and it still worked just fine. but I don't think you would want to have anything heavier than that on this design. For any questions regarding construction of the air mass isolation device you can contact me at:  boylc001@hawaii.rr.com   AudioTweaks: Thanks Brandon!  You've done a great job with your platform. It's easy to build and looks great! If you've built something similar or if you wish to comment on this design, please click here.

Comments (add)     Bob Very Nice platform design. Actually, all I did was buy a $3.95 12" bicycle inner tube from WALMART and put under my CD player. It does work just as well without the wood platform, because since the 12" inner tube is so small to begin with, it gets virtually hidden under a fairly big size CD player. Inner tube suspension is nice, but really, it does nothing for draining small internal vibrations from a component. And, as we all know, all internal electronics do have small amounts of vibrations inside them! The best thing I have done in years was to unscrew and completely take off the bottom plastic plate of my Pioneer Elite PD-65 CD player and put some of the mapleshade triple point spikes under neath it. The spikes make direct contact with the large copper plate under the PD-65, and do a fabulous job of draining internal vibrations. So, much so, that it now sounds like I have electrostatic speakers, instead of cone speakers. Those brass triple points from Mapleshade records.com made the most difference in how my system sounds than anything else I have tried lately. This was the best tweek I have done in 20 years. Since the triple points worked so well under the CD player, I decided to also order another set to put under my Golden Tube 40 watt amp. Wow!! What a difference!! I could go on and on about this, but I think you get my point. It's more important to try and get the internal vibrations drained out of your components than to try and isolate them from external vibrations. Inner tubes do work great, but the triple point spikes from Mapleshade records made the most difference in my system. Go to: www.mapleshaderecords.com and click under audio tweeks. Bob Matthews     Andy Brandon, hi there, I've built something similar ... but different! So I'm interested in your comment about two points: My understanding is that air insulation platforms work better when the top plate is heavy - like a concrete garden paver (which is a cheap item) or an inch slab of slate. Would you care to experiment with a concrete paver to see whether it works better than your plywood top plate? Instead of an inner-tube, you could use a number of racquet balls. These are small and fairly squishy ... and not very expensive. They have the advantage of not having a valve which might leak over time. Regards, Andy