December 2019

Great Audiophile Gift Ideas For The 2019 Holiday Season
Enjoy the Music.com celebrates our 14th annual gift ideas to give your audiophile!

Dynamat Xtreme Vibration Dampener

  Have ya' ever spent $400 on those wooden Shim Mick hockey pucks? No?!?!? Me either. There is possibly a better, much cheaper way to do it in my humble opinion. Yes, the resonant frequencies of your room, your equipment and what-have-you can make a subtle, or not so subtle change to the music your system reproduces. In fact, some components are designed with certain resonant frequencies to enhance their performance! So what if I told you there's a way to enhance your enjoyment for under $100? How about for under $18? Ah, now that I have your attention....

In the mobile audio field they have been dealing with resonant frequencies for many years. You see, when you put large subwoofers in your trunk, the trunk is effectively another "box" and can become a big resonant device itself! Have you ever heard a "boom" car's trunk rattle? Well then you too have heard this hypothesis in action! Now what if we took this information given to us from the mobile audio field and applied it to our home systems?

Within high-end audio gear we have chassis resonances, speaker enclosure resonances, and of course your turntable's headshell has a resonant frequency too. Are you curious what reducing / eliminating these resonances could do to improve the sound of your hi-fi system? Do you have $18 and some fun time set to experiment? The great news is, you can try various techniques, and if they don't work it is easy to remove, or change location, of the Dynamat material. One gentleman I know cut small dots from Dynamat and uses them on his turntable's headshell. You could also use small sheets on the underneath of the turntable plinth too.

Other ideas for use includes the basket of your loudspeaker drivers. The really good news is that you can find many uses for Dynamat. As always, there are no "hard and fast" rules here. This is just another fun tweak I use. You can get Dynamat Xtreme bulk 24" x 12" sheet for only $18 at Amazon.

Recommended by Enjoy the Music.com's Steven R. Rochlin.

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