Well Float - A new game changer on mechanical vibration management
Last Saturday, I attended a debut audition session of Wagner Silver Signature pairing with one XiangYu subwoofer. According to PT, this was a first trial run as he wanted to create a “customer journey” by involving his core group from the very beginning. He has a roadmap to gloom it into a mega system with subsequent addition of a 2nd sub and a pair of Air Blade tweeter by Arya.
I went with a high expectation on the new Wagner given the newly in-house made driver alongside flexibility to adjust tweeter sensitivity. Overwhelming responses were written in another thread. I will be joyfully share mine subsequently.
The second part of the audition session brought a new height of excitement when PT asked all of us to put the WellFloat Delta underneath the Wagner Silver Signature with Arya’s ReVopod underneath. Team work shortened the setup to a few minutes. Everyone went back to their respective listening positions.
Maria Joao Pires is ‘the’ pianist I like the most. Her Mozart sonata recordings by Denon Japan at her age of 20 is always my testing reference LP for piano playback. It is one of the reference recordings in the career of Pires. I can find 4 complete sets in my home and may be several more in warehouse. Pires had recorded it again 20 years later.
In an interview in 1991, she described the differences between the 2 recordings: light virtuosity vs elegant technique; budding prominence vs worldwide recognition. Regardless, she accorded highly to the suite recorded 20 years ago for an unfurnished/unpolished interpretation.
The second part of the audition session brought a new height of excitement when PT asked all of us to put the WellFloat Delta underneath the Wagner Silver Signature with Arya’s ReVopod underneath. Team work shortened the setup to a few minutes. Everyone went back to their respective listening positions.
Maria Joao Pires is ‘the’ pianist I like the most. Her Mozart sonata recordings by Denon Japan at her age of 20 is always my testing reference LP for piano playback. It is one of the reference recordings in the career of Pires. I can find 4 complete sets in my home and may be several more in warehouse. Pires had recorded it again 20 years later.
In an interview in 1991, she described the differences between the 2 recordings: light virtuosity vs elegant technique; budding prominence vs worldwide recognition. Regardless, she accorded highly to the suite recorded 20 years ago for an unfurnished/unpolished interpretation.
With WellFloat Delta, one can vividly feel higher sensibility on the emphasis of each keystroke. The joyfulness of each Mozart piece conveyed in the magic hands of a 20 years old carries more prominence and uninhibited passion than the playback without Delta under the Wagner speakers.
Another LP playback that anchored into my mind was the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata by Daniel Shafran. At his younger age, in order to perform flawlessly, Shafran practised “doubling speed” for many pieces. As a result, his fingering technique is one of a special kind. If the music lacked profundity or expressiveness, he would strive to compensate by instilling his own enthusiasm and imagination.
Another LP playback that anchored into my mind was the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata by Daniel Shafran. At his younger age, in order to perform flawlessly, Shafran practised “doubling speed” for many pieces. As a result, his fingering technique is one of a special kind. If the music lacked profundity or expressiveness, he would strive to compensate by instilling his own enthusiasm and imagination.
Indeed, Shafran’s performance stood out amongst other virtuosos. With WellFloat Delta, the diversity of his virtuosity to establish a higher pitch radiating energy more directly and distinctively than that of Gendron, Fournier, and Rostropovich.
Groups of notes are ‘sparkled’ with unrestricted flares. I am familiar with most of their performances but the playback under Wagner Silver Signature shoed into Delta projected a much stronger presence of Shafran - this was an unforgettable playback of Arpeggione sending chills through my spine rendering goosebumps.
So, what is the magic behind WellFloat? The designer believes in any hifi system, typically a moving component like speaker, there are 2 contradictory elements of vibration: (1) vibration to produce the air movements thus the musical sound waves, eg. Percussion of strings inside the piano, movement of the driver planes in the speaker ; (2) induced and unwanted vibration which destroys the purity of the musical details, eg. Vibration of the speaker cabinet. To manage these two contradictory vibrations properly, WellFloat developed their products with a unique mechanism to leverage ‘the cantilever and handing pendulum’ principle.
So, what is the magic behind WellFloat? The designer believes in any hifi system, typically a moving component like speaker, there are 2 contradictory elements of vibration: (1) vibration to produce the air movements thus the musical sound waves, eg. Percussion of strings inside the piano, movement of the driver planes in the speaker ; (2) induced and unwanted vibration which destroys the purity of the musical details, eg. Vibration of the speaker cabinet. To manage these two contradictory vibrations properly, WellFloat developed their products with a unique mechanism to leverage ‘the cantilever and handing pendulum’ principle.
It has proven to deliver radiating performance in numerous concerts meeting the most stringent requirements of recital pianists and cellists in coupling their precious instruments with WellFloat Delta.
WellFloat warrants a title of Game Changer because it has taken a ground breaking approach to restrict mechanical vibrations of speakers to lateral movement only. This is much better than purposeless hard coupling and/or over constrained damping resulting always in a ‘boring’ delivery of musical energies! This is the Greatest Find of the year!
Marvel
WellFloat warrants a title of Game Changer because it has taken a ground breaking approach to restrict mechanical vibrations of speakers to lateral movement only. This is much better than purposeless hard coupling and/or over constrained damping resulting always in a ‘boring’ delivery of musical energies! This is the Greatest Find of the year!
Marvel
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Yesterday when I listened to the system after installing wellfloat delta, the sound was cleaner than ever. However, the highs were aggressive and somewhat muffled. Then I crank up the sub volume but it didn’t work. Vocal was not organic. Then I removed all delta, and called Chris for help.
Chris was kind enough to came over the next morning on an emergency mission to save my system. During 2 hours long of adjustment, he did the following:
1. Separate analog ground cables from sharing the same binding post on Tripoint Troy Signature from digital components
2. Adjust various sub parameters (from -6db input gain to 0db gain and /from +8db sub output to +10db).
Things got much better, vocal became organic again and the there was more weight on piano
Then we installed the wellfloat deltas back to the system (it was a tough job for both of us and I could see that Chris was not used to do this as he’s got Chung around all the time…lol)
After installing wellfloat delta, the sound got significantly smoother and more stable. Chris cranked up the sub woofer input gain even further to +3db and raised sub output volume to the maximum of +12db! I thought it would blow up my living room but it didn’t. The bass was extremely clean, focus and fast. And overall noise level was significantly reduced in exchange for so much more details.
Lastly, Chris pulled both Xiangyu subwoofers out further away from the main speakers. Then we listened to an orchestra record “Zubin Mehta conducting Mahler No.3 by Anaolg production”.
Oh my god! It was beautiful! It was like sitting in the front row listening to a live concert!!! I’ve never heard better bass reproduction from my system than now. It was the first time I felt the full monster potential of Xiangyu have unleashed to the fullest extent! And yet they are not trying to get any attention because they blend in seamlessly with the main speakers.
Chris gave me a valuable lesson this time, which is the importance of properly dialing in a system before making judgments on anything. A system comprises of main speakers and a pair of subwoofers is not easy to integrate especially input sensitivity of the amp driving the main speakers and the amp inside the sub must be different.
Before these adjustments were made with respect to listening to a few reference recordings, my system potential was undermined. After Chris waved his magic wand, my system has reached an uncharted area in the “dream” domain!
My absolute respect to Chris, it is not about how expensive the toys you have; more importantly, it is about the knowledge/know-how to fully maximize the potential of whatever you have.
I am still waiting for my delivery of Revopod + Delta combo to put underneath my speaker
Look forward to see how big improvements could be made to bass reproduction after installation of this combo
Learner
Learner
Do you need to adjust the positron of your speaker? Do you agree if more energy has been unleashed because the speaker is more free to produce genuine musical sound waves?
I was too eager to listen with result in Wellfloat delta, I didn’t change speaker position. This somewhat caused the sweet spot to move closer to the speakers around 1.5 feet (or few inches more depending different songs). Depth of my listening area is 14 feet. Yes, with Wellfloat Delta, I would say now there is more energy released from the Stiletto in a very controlled manner. I feel more comfortable to listen at higher volume safely with my Zanden 6000 amp. Even at loud volume, soundstage is still very solid with clear structure. For example, I can now listen to Aaron Neville’s “Everybody Plays the Fool” at 3 o’clock volume position.
Learner