PR: Bindbreaker — Audiophile vibration control feet every bit as effective as the great DFPC!
After years of development, including what must be hundreds of trials and tests, we are finally ready to share with you the opportunity to pre-order and help launch the Bindbreaker vibration control feet. This product takes audio playback to unbelievably new levels and reveals no coloration of its own.
True, we have been ‘close’ many times before, and were just about ready to go public, but the most subtle late-night doubts would creep in and further trials would reveal subsequent advancements which forced us to continue to re-assess our approaches of the past. This went on for months and month. But, luckily for you, all these difficult tasks of discovery and development are now fulfilled; what remains is simply the straight-forward task of implementation in an industrial atmosphere. We have our production partners lined up which include our great Bog Wood manufacturer, our never tiring wood milling partners, and a new partner who runs a laser metal cutting business using large precision equipment from Japan (Lasmac), which can take up to 2 x 3 meter sheets of metal at a time. Below an image of the equipment.
The precision made available through this industrial process of CNC metal cutting is perfectly tailored to enable cost-effective production for the Bindbreaker feet.
The process we will need to implement with this machine involves making many precision holes in sheets of thick steel, then cutting out hexagonal wafers featuring rounded corners. This can be programmed to run automatically so we maximize efficiency of production using modern, reliable techniques. (Picture is from a non-related project.)
How big is the foot and how does it look?
The foot is about 38mm high. That’s just shy of 1 and a half inch. There are two main portions to the foot. First, there is a hexagonal platform at the bottom, made of beautiful Bog Oak, which measures about 90mm across. That’s about 3 and a half inches. Here is how it looks in the hand:
This Bog Wood base piece is laid down onto any flat surface. Onto the Bog Wood is placed the upper part of the Bindbreaker. The second part easily self-centers as it is lowered down onto the Bog Wood. The resulting action looks like this:
The cylinder on top then is ready to accept the gear which you place on top of it. We have been using three Bindbreaker feet for each piece of equipment and we feel this number is best.
What is the operating principle?
First, remember please that we are dealing with micro-vibration. When I say micro-vibration, generally I am speaking of sub-measurable vibration. There are generally two schools for anti-vibration feet: rubbery solutions and hard solutions. Rubbery solutions can be measured in their effectiveness but this is due to the fact that they deal with low frequency, large amplitude vibration (like the kind found in industrial transformers, refrigerator pumps, water pumps, generators, etc.) As audiophiles we don’t really need shock absorbers which deal with large amplitudes. We are dealing with vibrations of a miniscule sort which are of sufficient frequency to be able to affect capacitance differences of such small a nature as to induce a smeared sensation of the audio. This is hard to pinpoint while measuring, but critical listening reveals that all rubbery solutions introduce a rubbery type sound quality, and this is undesirable. Bindbreaker falls in the latter school of thought, the ‘hard’ solutions.
Two unique steps
There are two steps involved with the Bindbreaker. When speaking of vibration of any sort, there are always so-called modes of vibration involved. These modes have directions. The first task of the Bindbreaker is to polarize the micro-vibrations such that only those normal to gravity are accepted into the foot. (This is why rubbery feet don’t sound good, because they offer up and down vibration resonance damping, resulting that some amount of the vibration will always get reflected back up into the gear.) This is accomplished within the workings of the cylinder on top.
Acoustic vibrations travel much more quickly through hard steel than they do through the cellulose fibers of wood grain. The cylinder is attached to the lower portion of the Bindbreaker through hard steel only. No wood contact is made. Thus, any and all vibration which enters the large steel joining bolt have already been polarized in nature. As these polarized micro-vibrations travel very quickly through steel, they immediately spread through the tightly joined thick steel plate which conducts the vibrations to the matrix of steel bolts at the bottom. The steel bolts are all in tight contact with the wood fibers within the bottom portion of the Bindbreaker. The reason the Bindbreaker has a hexagonal shape is that the hexagon is the only figure naturally formed when maximum density of circles are arranged. We want maximum density because we want a maximum sized boundary layer between steel and wood. The wood provides maximum damping, the steel provides near-instantaneous conductivity. Thus, these two steps work in tandem in order to bring micro-vibrations away from the gear’s bottom as quickly as possible without any chance for them to spring back up towards the gear through resonance. It is a vibration sink with one direction only: first only to the side, and then only into wood. The Bog Wood plate at the bottom has the function of further damping the numerous button hexagon sockets, for these form small resonant cavities of their own.
And?
And the result when used beneath audio equipment: fantastic clarity, lower noise, more focus, better imaging, very musical bass, pristine highs, nice, rich midrange with melodic qualities which simply sing music in all its purity. If you already enjoy the DFPCs, and now the Firewall modules, you will absolutely love the Bindbreaker feet. Perhaps one, if not very imaginative, way to describe their performance is that they work “like DFPCs on steroids.” You will not find a coloration here. You will find more and more music.
The result of their use is that the music frees itself from the bounds of the loudspeaker. Almost as if the music has sounded before the loudspeaker has had a chance to move. That’s how quick the Bindbreaker is to act. We are speaking here of possibly the most subtle art in all of audiophile culture. The product performs very strongly and is ready to join the LessLoss family of unique, cost-effective, superb performers.
I personally, upon listening, gain more respect for performers, for instrument makers, for conductors, and for composers. So much more is revealed from recordings one would have thought one knew everything about that one is, frankly, humbled by the very experience. This in some way is a lesson in the great mysteries of nature and how, with due diligence, one can ‘crack the code.’
The Bindbreaker is a prize achievement. It is not to be taken lightly, and not to be missed!
The above snapshot is of a prototype. Diameter of the cylinder is 22mm. If you have this much flat space under your gear in three locations, you can and should definitely use the Bindbreaker. It is like taking a known system and giving it wings. Every musician apprentice knows this feeling upon finally breaking free from some long-held habit, finally after long pondering and trials, finds the key and can see his or her habit in a new light, a light of release and understanding, enabling them to be more free and more truthful than before. That is what the Bindbreaker does for an audio system. I wish you this freedom of sound in your system. Therefore, I welcome you to participate in our launch.