These are highly engineered audio equipment platforms that have been specifically designed for Decware tube gear.
These Audio Focus Platforms get their name from their ability to turn
vibration into heat instead of moving it from one place to another like a
solid block of wood. The result is noticeably better image focus, and
bass control.
If you read about how these actually work, you're going to want one.
- Steve Deckert / DECWARE
top view
bottom view
Options
These platforms come in different sizes to match our amplifiers. Our larger sizes may work with other brands as well.
For example, we have five sizes that cover all of our amplifiers / preamplifiers.
Size A - 8" x 13-1/4" x 2-7/8"
Size B - 11-1/2" x 13-1/4" x 2-7/8"
Size C - 10" x 17-1/2" x 3"
Size D - 15" x 18-1/2" x 3"
Size E - 15" x 20-1/2" x 3"
If you have a Decware amplifier selecting the size is easy, just choose your model number when you get into the shopping cart:
Most of our amplifiers come in hardwood chassis, so we offer the same hardwoods here to match.
They are:
Maple, Walnut/Sapele, Oak, Cherry, African Paduke and custom woods.
You can get the platform by itself as shown below, or you can get it complete with our cones and pads, pre-located for your specific Decware amplifier as shown above.
Zen Audio Focus Platform shown in maple.
The cones are hardwood with brass tips and locate into the platform
ready to spike into the bottom of your amplifier chassis at the exact
correct locations.
The pads that the platform sets on are made from 1/2 inch thick
Sorbathane that has the correct stiffness and diameter to support and isolate the platform.
Zen Audio Focus Platform shown in Sapele
How it works
With these platforms it is about loading, which means having having an amplifier with some weight setting on it.
There is no "tuning" with this design because we are not trying couple
mass to change the resonant frequency of the vibration, but rather using
the platform to absorb the vibration and turn a substantial portion of
it into heat.
(exploded view)
Unlike a solid block of wood which can only move vibration from one
point to another, or lower the frequency of vibration by coupling its
mass to the audio component, the Zen Audio Focus Platform absorbs
vibration equally from both the amplifier that sets on it and from the
audio rack that it sets on. The vibration is greatly reduced
leaving what it absorbed as heat in the composite resin core.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF VIBRATION IN A TUBE AMP?
Many people think that vibration control platforms are to prevent
vibrations in the audio rack from entering the amplifier, and that is a
small part of it yes, but do you realize that the 50/60 Hz vibration
from the power transformer in a tube amplifier is 10 to 100 times
greater than any air born or seismic vibrations that will ever collect
in your audio rack? Assuming of course that you didn't set your
amplifier on top of the subwoofer!
Yes, the power transformer is your main source of vibration in a tube
amplifier, and the tubes themselves are the specific thing in a tube
amplifier that you want to keep from vibrating.
So, you have to recognize the source of the your problem, the
transformer, and then identify the path it takes through the amplifier
chassis. Once you have done that you can locate the perfect spot
to couple the chassis of the amplifier to your platform.
If your amplifier has a bottom plate, be it wood or steel, and you have
placed your footers there, you have turned your bottom plate into a
weighted spring sending as much vibration back into the denser part of
the chassis as goes down through the footers or cones.
The highest mass of any chassis is the corners... the exact
corners. That means to collect that vibration you have to have a point on the top of an
upside-down cone embedded into the exact corners of the amplifier chassis to couple
the most vibration into the platform.
Once you have done that, you want to absorb the vibration, not move it
into a solid block of wood expecting it to somehow fade away.
Since we are an amplifier manufacture, we know exactly where the
vibrations are in our amplifiers and the best way to reduce them.
Using tube dampers, to reduce vibration after it has entered the tube is
not as effective as reducing the source of the vibration entering the
tube in the first place. That is what the Zen Audio Focus Platform
does...
Watch the video to see it in action!
HOW IT WORKS CONTINUED:
In the diagram above you see two thick plinths.
The plinths are made from solid hardwood. The particular wood used
will typically be the same wood as the amplifier chassis is made
from. The most common being Walnut, Maple, Cherry, Oak, African
Paduke, and Ash.
The top plinth is solid while the bottom plinth has a 4 inch hole
through it's center. Coupling the two plinths together is an 1/8"
brass ring that creates a fulcrum so that the corners of both plinths
can flex against.
The composite resin plug is made from epoxy resins, quartz, aluminum,
brass, iron, and copper in a proprietary blend. This completely
fills the 4 inch hole in the bottom plinth as well as the ring with a
super high mass that bonds the two plinths together so aggressively that
they can not be forcefully separated under any condition even with
tools.
Since the composite resin plug bonds with the wood so deeply, the lower
plinth has considerably more mass than the top as the plug's mass
becomes part of it. This is what creates the co-mass-layer-damped
system that keeps the corners from resonating on their own and what
creates the heat.
The platform works equally well to absorb energy from the top as
it does from the bottom. In fact it's so effective that you may
get better performance from setting it directly on the audio shelf as
opposed to using isolation pads under it depending on the mass of your
audio shelf.
A DEVELOPMENT THREAD on our online audio forum containing technical info and pictures can be read here.
Support
This platform
is
hand
built
in the USA by DECWARE.
Try this platform in your own home for 30 days and if
you're not completely tickled with the improvement in sound, send it
back for a full refund less a 10% restock fee.
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