Once mounted on these bridges the speaker does sway about at the slightest touch and seems to go entirely against the grain of the ethos of keeping the cabinet sited rigidly on the floor using spikes or conventional feet. The latest models have cork discs attached top and bottom.Ī set of four loudspeaker “bridges” was also supplied which consists of a substantial bar of stainless steel wider than the speaker it is to be fitted to, with a magnetic unit at each end, two for each speaker fitted fore and aft underneath. Most of them are of fixed length, although one of the models could be adjusted for height. Miles has just released another variant using aluminium to replace the brass components, primarily to reduce costs and another variant using wooden machine turned Burr Oak cylinder casings.
The outer case of the cylinder and the “foot” are made of non-ferrous metal, in this case, polished and lacquered brass. What I can best describe as a ‘piston’ arrangement, with the opposing pair of magnets fitted inside a cylinder, with a stainless steel rod extending down to a “foot”. The range is quite extensive and arranged by the weight carrying ability of each product.Īt this point I would normally give an indicator of pricing, but the range of products is quite considerable and can be easily viewed on the Solidair website. Solidair have addressed that issue by putting the magnets inside their non-ferrous cylinder so that only vertical movement is permissible from the units. The roller bearings were there to minimise that inherent friction. The SAP Relaxa1 kept the lateral movement under control by fitting vertical stainless steel guide rods at each corner of the bottom plate, with roller bearings fitted to the uppermost plate which ran up and down the vertical guide rods, preventing any sideways movement. The Solidair supports are supplied as individual units in sets of 3 or 4 (more can be added), rather than 4 pairs of bare magnets fitted rigidly into a Perspex chassis as per the SAP Relaxa platform.Īlthough the idea of harnessing the forces that high flux rating opposing magnets generate is a good one, they also tend to throw themselves sideways away from each other at the same time as part of that force, so keeping lateral forces under control is very difficult without introducing friction.
AUDIO ISOLATOR INSTALL
I had the pleasure of meeting him when he came over to discuss how best to install the supports into my system. Solidair Audio is run by a gentleman by the name of Miles Kilby, based down in the far bit of Cornwall before it joins the Atlantic. Hifi can be a rather dangerous pastime you know. That resulted in a huge blood blister on my finger and no small measure of profanities from me. It was with the SAP Relaxa that I also discovered (the hard way) just how powerful Neodymium magnets can be when two magnets fell out of their housings while moving it and I picked up one magnet in each hand and they drew together rather rapidly with my finger in between. My biggest surprise was the effect it had on my power amplifier, which, given that it has no moving parts and being solid state electronics, was not as prone perhaps to microphony, as say a valve amplifier can be. It worked rather well though on a Technics direct drive deck which was much lighter.
AUDIO ISOLATOR PLUS
Of course I did try it under my turntable, a Logic DM101 as I recall, but that already had a sprung subchassis suspension system, so it was less effective in that role, plus the weight of the turntable was just a bit too much for the poor old Relaxa to bear comfortably. I will begin by saying that I am no stranger to using isolation supports employing magnetic levitation principles, as a good few years ago now I owned a SAP Relaxa 1 support that really was effective under my then CD player. Dominic Marsh experiments with the Solidair Audio Magnetic Isolators in this review for Hifi Pig.
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