There Are No Such Things As Things
Music itself is an infinite array of finely tuned vibrations. Craftsmen devote entire careers to creating fine musical instruments desired entirely for their ineffable qualities of vibration. From the timbre of a Stradivarius violin to the tone of a Fender guitar, we want to hear those instruments- and not our systems. Or even, our room! Seismic Isolation is the key that unlocks this world, letting you hear all the performance of your carefully selected components like never before.
Nothing is stable. Nothing is solid. Everything always is in constant motion. Music itself is vibration. Townshend Seismic Isolation allows all your favorite music to vibrate in its own special way. Without it your music is smeared, as everything vibrates everything else. With it, your music shines clean and clear, dynamic and detailed and full of feeling, just as you always wanted.
Have you ever looked at a seismograph? The earth itself is always vibrating. People stomp around, traffic rolls by, wind blows on trees and buildings. This is bad enough- and then we start playing music! Speakers produce huge amounts of vibration. Many of us have been mislead into putting them on spikes and things that efficiently transmit these vibrations right into the floor, walls, ceiling- where they travel all the way back to our sensitive audio components! The amount of distortion, and tone and timbre coloration this creates is something that has to be heard to be believed.
It isn’t only speakers. Turntables of course, we all know sound best when isolated. The surprise is when we get the same improvement under a CD player, DAC, amplifier, or other component. What is going on?
Tubes work by controlling the flow of electrons from one plate to another. They physically travel across this space. Any vibration of these plates will alter this, creating smearing and worse. Tube microphonics are well known, but most try and address this with tube dampers, rather than at the source.
The critical solid state components within CD players and DACs are harder to see, but the impacts of vibration are easy to hear because they operate on even smaller margins of error. The same is true for every component, even totally passive ones such as our state of the art Allegri Reference preamp.
Extensive research shows springs to be the best means of isolation from all these harmful sources of vibration. The main challenge with springs being, they bounce! Bouncing is another form of vibration, creates resonance, and thus colors the sound. For these reasons the best spring isolation must be of high quality, precision damped to avoid resonance, and matched to the weight of the component.
All our Seismic Load Cells use the highest quality piano wire, and utilize an ingeniously simple precision damping system to achieve just the right amount of damping to avoid any hint of coloration while still achieving a high degree of isolation from vibration of all sources. It is hard to believe, until you have heard it removed, the extent to which each instruments tone and timbre is colored by system and room vibrations. With Seismic Isolation each individual instrument sounds so much more natural, lifelike, and real, and brings similar improvements to palpable presence, image focus, and soundstage width and depth.
Seismic Isolation is also cost-effective and incredibly high value. A huge amount of room resonance and bass control problems are often assumed to be due to the room, and therefore controlled only with large expensive room treatments like tube traps. In fact, a huge amount of this is due to the room being made to vibrate by the speakers. Physically isolate the speakers from the floor and a lot of this is eliminated at the source. Of course, this also eliminates a lot of vibration being transmitted to your other rooms- and your neighbors!
As each component is isolated, progressively more colorations are eliminated, ever more detail is revealed, and your music comes more and more alive. Seismic Isolation can be done in any order. It all adds up, and the cumulative effect is truly transformative.
This is thanks to the exceptional speed of the Supertweeters’ ultra-light ribbon diaphragm, compared with the much slower response of a relatively heavy dome assembly.
The Maximum Supertweeter works from 6kHz upwards, making it better able to produce the leading edge of each transient without time smear. This is why it makes a system sound more relaxed and natural, as it can respond to the signal with greater speed and accuracy.
The Maximum Supertweeters are easy to add to your system, with a simple connection via a pair of included 1.5m link cables. They are wired in parallel with the main amplifier feed, or the tweeter connection at the main speaker.
A six-position level switch allows for seamless integration with your speakers.
Image gallery
Testimonials
I am slide content. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Amanda LeeCEO 
I am slide content. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Adam CheiseDesigner 
I am slide content. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Floyd StallerCo-Founder 
I love mine!
Wonderful preamp!