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Introduction

Unlike the racquetballs that we ended up slicing in half, these were purposefully built for the task of resonance and vibration control. They come in two sizes to accommodate equipment of standard or heavy weight. For this review we obtained the standard ones with the intention to use them under our CD player. They are sold in sets of four, $10 for the standard and $20 for the bigger ones.

If you haven't read our Perspective segment, you may want to do so now as a prelude to this and all other tweaks we review.

Construction

The Pads are square in design, the standard size ones measure just about 1" 3/4 on each side and 7/8" in height. They are sandwich like in construction with high impact rubber layers on top and bottom and a cork like material in the middle. They appear to be strong enough to support most audio components.

The rubber layers are quite interesting; they have straight, deep grooves in them with opposing groove orientation between the top and bottom layers. So if you have the grooves of the top layer in the east to west orientation the bottom layer ones will stretch north to south. The grooves, secondary in importance, actually define narrow strips of rubber that come in contact with equipment on one side and the shelf on the other. These narrow strips of rubber, at closer inspection, alternate in height just a bit. This means that, provided the equipment is not too heavy, contact will be made only by every other rubber strip of each layer.

The alternating height of the rubber strips, their opposing orientation between the top and bottom layers, the rubber compound and the cork like material in the middle all are indicative of a simple but clever design to maximize isolation by minimizing points of contact and straight line vibration propagation.

Vibration Isolation Pads