Damping an Akurate Radikal?

[David Neel]

We know that a Klimax Radikal is better. I’ve heard it myself. But I have the Akurate casing.

Has anyone ever tried adding damping to the Akurate casework? I’ve just had my car doors damped with Dynamat to minimise the speaker boom/resonance. This was successful, and there are some offcuts…

Dynamat is reported to be very difficult to remove, so before I start experimenting, I’d like to hear any experiences.

Thanks.

[tokenbrit]

We know that a Klimax Radikal is better. I’ve heard it myself. But I have the Akurate casing.

Has anyone ever tried adding damping to the Akurate casework? I’ve just had my car doors damped with Dynamat to minimise the speaker boom/resonance. This was successful, and there are some offcuts…

Dynamat is reported to be very difficult to remove, so before I start experimenting, I’d like to hear any experiences.

Thanks.

Does it make sense to rest some on top of your Radikal to test it out? It may not be 100% the same result as sticking it on, but it should be easy, instantly reversible, and give you an idea of whether you want to stick with it or not ;)

[David Neel]

“Stick with it” :) - I like that…

From what I gather, it’s only with the adhesive that it damps. Just placing it on top would be equivalent to placing a magazine on top.

But thanks for the thought. I may start by placing small piece on the inside of the casing, rather than a large piece. I have enough to cover the majority of the underside of the top surface.

[tokenbrit]

“Stick with it” :) - I like that…

From what I gather, it’s only with the adhesive that it damps. Just placing it on top would be equivalent to placing a magazine on top.

But thanks for the thought. I may start by placing small piece on the inside of the casing, rather than a large piece. I have enough to cover the majority of the underside of the top surface.

Damping the bottom shelf of a Harmoni rack doesn't depend on glue, but that's a different application...

Idea behind trying it on top was to see if matters improve with any damping, and how much as it's easy to adjust the size... Does a Radikal sound better with a magazine on it?

In the absence of anyone trying this, let alone with Dynamat, you may want to wait for Fredrik to weigh in: pretty sure he uses a judicious amount of case damping in some of his products :?

[lejonklou]

If Linn have done their work properly, you will only make the Radikal sound worse by trying to dampen its case.

Tokenbrit is correct in that you can try other things before sticking on something with glue. And it doesn't need to be on the inside, it works just as well on the outside. If you hear no improvement by placing something on top of your Radikal lid, which I doubt you will, you can forget Dynamat as well.

Thomas O'Keefe reported an improvement when placing the Akurate Radikal case upside down. Then you need to place feet on the lid. The exact position, material and dimensions of the feet will all have an effect, so there could be a "beck-journey" awaiting you. :)

[Arjen]

If Linn have done their work properly, you will only make the Radikal sound worse by trying to dampen its case.

Tokenbrit is correct in that you can try other things before sticking on something with glue. And it doesn't need to be on the inside, it works just as well on the outside. If you hear no improvement by placing something on top of your Radikal lid, which I doubt you will, you can forget Dynamat as well.

Thomas O'Keefe reported an improvement when placing the Akurate Radikal case upside down. Then you need to place feet on the lid. The exact position, material and dimensions of the feet will all have an effect, so there could be a "beck-journey" awaiting you. :)

Damping can be an issue for good. I remember Fredrik made/changed damping of the Slipsik 7 and his conclusion was that the 7.1 sounded better after this intervention. But indeed, if Linn did already the good thing, what’s the benefit of (more) damping of the case?

[lejonklou]

Damping can be an issue for good. I remember Fredrik made/changed damping of the Slipsik 7 and his conclusion was that the 7.1 sounded better after this intervention. But indeed, if Linn did already the good thing, what’s the benefit of (more) damping of the case?

Yes, 7.1 was an adjustment of the damping pad inside the case by a very small amount, but it still made a difference.

Interestingly, there is no damping in any of the newer cases. Instead it’s replaced by the ventilation slots. It turns out they serve similar functions. With the right amount of slots (preventing standing waves in the metal surfaces?), any additional damping added sounds worse.

And slots work better than damping. Damping has a dampening effect on the music, while slots adds some kind of relief. Like suppressing a problem versus relieving it.

I find this fascinating stuff, as I don’t know exactly what is going on (listening with a stethoscope isn’t possible without affecting the surface, perhaps measuring vibration patterns with a laser could work), but it’s very evident from its effect on the music. So I do it all by trial and error.

Ping to our loudspeaker designers on the forum!

[David Neel]

Thanks for all the input.

I’ve just tried the Radikal upside down. As I have no suitable feet, I rested it on two large pieces of Dynamat. Different, but not better. And it messes up the cable runs as well as looking bad!

After picking up the Radikal, I realised that the case may not be as heavy as the Klimax one, but it’s not flimsy like my car door panels.

I’m going to put this on the back burner for a while, as I have other things to experiment with this week…

[lejonklou]

Why did you use two large pieces of Dynamat?

Anything resembling the original feet and positioned similarly would have made sense.

[David Neel]

Why did you use two large pieces of Dynamat?

Anything resembling the original feet and positioned similarly would have made sense.

Only because they were available. I agree, something approximating the original feet would have been better. I’ll return to this in a few weeks when I have more time.

[sunbeamgls]

I think Fredrik's right. Unless you're prepared to experiment with many materials and locations, you'd be very luck to hit on exactly the right one at first attempt. I also think that Linn probably won't have done their homework as thoroughly as I expect Fredrik would. As far as I recall the Akurate case sleeve is identical regardless of which product it is used on, so it is more likely to be generically good enough, rather than the best it can be for that product.

I did some crude experimenting with 6mm thick aluminium plate to try to add mass to Akurate casework, to emulate Klimax. I had the plate cut to the exact dimensions of the Akurate casework. Then it was positioned on top of the casework using various different interfaces from a single sheet of paper through cork, window draft sealing foam, pencil erasers etc. Tested on an Akurate Exakt DSM and Exaktbox6. I can't remember which way round it was, but I did find that one of the combinations slightly improved one of the components and all of the other combinations made the other component sound worse. But even the one that sounded slightly better wasn't worth the visuals, nor the effort to properly finish the aluminium plate in satin black or whatever. So the boxes ran without any plate until the left the building for real Klimax kit.

Some nice Aluminimum plate available to experimenters... :)

[sunbeamgls]

Ping to our loudspeaker designers on the forum!

Being a frankestein speaker hacker, can't comment from personal hacking work!

However, a recent visit to Kudos revealled that they also use trial and error to determine things like panel thicknesses for the Titan inner cabinet (each panel has one of about 4 thickness choices) and the outer panels that damp the inner panels are suspended via the "best" mounting location but compliantly via a damping material that was also chosen after lots of trial and error.

My notes on the visit are here: https://audiophilemusings.blogspot.com/ ... visit.html

[springwood64]

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing