It recalls famous pugilistic advice. "Don't worry over the guy with a thousand flashy moves. Beware him who practiced his one basic move 10'000 times." When David's US retail pricing arrived, it had $7'990 for the Babel, $480 for a standard Delta, $1'060 for the Extreme. "I'll take ten" multiplies quickly when Babel packs such a serious punch. Yet it's still less than an Ansuz Darkz Z2S. That requires three per component so a €10.5K outlay. Hey, in any sector, a brand's best always demands the most devout wallet worship. It's how that cookie crumbles. Even though he'd solicited me for Babel, David gracefully accepted my choice of Delta. Given how effective our multi-stage equipment racks are, I suggested that my most promising Wellfloat targets would be loudspeakers and subs. They're by far the greatest mechanical exciters in any hifi system. Comparing our resident footers to today's then to none would best, uh, isolate Wellfloat's efficacy. With a minimum of six for three per speaker, I could even float our entire Spanish rack. Just three could do either upstairs or downstairs subwoofer. If the company wanted me testing speakers and sub together, I'd need nine units. I left it to David and his Osaka bosses to decide which Delta version to submit; and how many units. It's far too easy to spend big when you're not actually paying. Best let those shouldering that burden be the judge.
Based on these photos, the Delta difference between Extreme and Standard is dress code. The more affordable version loses the fancy cover to become a nudie. That comes in the left type to surround an existing footer or play receiver for a sufficiently long spike; plus two different heights to directly contact a component's bottom or use the central one for spiked kit. With the same weight rating and suspension mechanism as the Extreme and nearly the same size, was there any more to the difference which eludes the naked eye? "I want to answer in the most accurate way so am waiting to get my response blessed by the designer first." That was proper distributor MO. Respect!
Audio Exotics of Hong Kong whom I visited many moons ago have a web page showing off different speakers like the one at right plus components decoupled on Delta floats. The more bass-extended our speakers get and the louder we play them, the more they act as invisible jackhammers on our floor. It's how physical vibrations migrate from our speakers/subs into attached hifi gear. This issue compounds with suspended floors in upper storeys. Coupling speakers to resonant surfaces is similar to bolting mega subs to ringy car chassis for that boom-truck effect. Our floor becomes an amplifying device whose reaction is always behind-the-beat late. It also becomes an LF distributor to upset neighbors. Keeping it in the pants is sage advice not just for adolescents high on testosterone.
Equally true, bigger devices like these and our Carbide Bases aren't really civilian issue. Looking at them telegraphs audio extremism like slick fat tyres on a motorbike indicate racing ambitions. Standard consumption needs neither. It's when top performance beckons and we educate ourselves on what liberates or opposes it that kit like today's becomes a very specific problem solver. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting that we have a problem is the first step. Time-slurred muddy bass is simply so ubiquitous that recognizing it as an unnecessary aberration isn't self-explanatory. That's doubly true when the spike-it notion has ruled this sector for so many decades that to many, it's the unassailable default position. Now one must look beyond the mainstream for anecdotal evidence of a more effective solution, then try one of its many expressions¹ for personal confirmation.
It's once we've heard the difference that we recognize the limitation we accepted as normal before. Now we can't unhear it. That's part of hifi's learning curve. Often we don't know what we're missing until we're exposed to better. As far as our wallet goes, ignorance is blissier. As far as better sound goes, ongoing education is bossier.
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¹ For just a few, think isolation footers from Ansuz, Arya Labs, Carbide, Finite Elemente, Grand Prix, HifiStay, Magico, Stillpoints and Wilson.
Bossy math suggests that to clone Babel with a Delta force requires nine units to erect the flagship's triple layers. My calculator calls that $4'320 for the standard, $9'540 for the Extreme stack. Suddenly the all-in-one $7'990 flagship no longer buzzes the till quite as loudly? Mind the question mark. Not only is this elitist stuff, it warrants hardware context equally ambitious. It's all about noise as that which ain't music signal. Grosser noise exists mechanically like buzzing transformers, ringy tube filaments or transport spin. It exists electrically as ground loops, power-supply hum and intermodulation products. It even involves the time domain with delayed room echo. Then there are finer forms like micro resonances and jitter. Plain logic dictates that each time we reduce noise even a little, we'll hear a bit more underlying signal. Hifi's generic term is signal-to-noise ratio. The higher the better. Directly related is the concept of standing noise or the noise floor. Anything below it we can't hear.
An easy test uses a generic smartphone SPL app to measure our room's ambient noise. If it's 30dB or lower, we're lucky and probably live rural. Against inner-city din, it could well show 40dB. That's when no music plays. It's just background noise of traffic, appliances and ordinary life. If we want to play our music quietly and still hear the full recorded dynamic range—ECM recordings tend to pack ~30dB—lowering our system's noise floor is key. In my book, that's precisely the business Wellfloat's Delta variants are in. Common sense predicts that if they work as advertised with speakers, one thing we ought to hear more of is dynamic range. By disrupting energy transmission into the floor, we'd also expect cleaner time fidelity particularly in the bass and relatedly, reduced overlay of LF mud on the vital midrange. How much improvement awaits should greatly depend on our existing noise floor. That sets our achievable resolution. It's all very basic but helps paint the picture which Wellfloat's triangles parachute into – behind the enemy's lines of noise.
"Delta Standard uses stamped aluminium with regular anodizing and M3 bolts. Delta Extreme uses heavier more rigid machined then hard-anodized aluminium with stronger M4 screws. Our engineers tried many shapes and found this irregular quasi-triangular shape to better disperse resonance than a cylinder. Both Delta versions were designed by Mr. Shiro Nakamura who led the design of many cars like Nissan's GT-R [above] and knows how to reduce resonance by shape. And needless to say, heavier more rigid parts tend to work better for audio performance²." Given my planned speaker/sub use, David suggested that I focus on the Delta Extreme parts. Agreed. And that's how the Delta Extreme force tumbled the tower of Babel. One final small-print point. There are no leveling provisions. If you need those, they must come from the component or speaker itself; or as in the above photo, from the stock footers of a component board.
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² As a country, Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. So it doesn't surprise that their engineers have developed pendulum dampers for high-rise buildings to exploit the cancellation of opposing motions. One of the most famous is in Taipei's 101 tower installed between its 87th and 91st floors weighing 730 tonnes and costing a cool ~€4'000'000.
