The Soundcoat Company has been providing specialized noise control solutions for aerospace, medical, and industrial applications since 1963. I first became aware of The Soundcoat Company through Steven Klein at Sounds of Silence (who imports the New Valve Order Audio electronics to North America), when he told me about the superb results he experienced through applying .070 GPDS vibration damping material to strategic locations within the chassis and external power supply of the New Valve Order SPA II phono equalizer.

Knowing Steven to be a man of superb taste in all things audio, I was quite intrigued by his praise for the Soundcoat GPDS, and fortunately Steven was kind enough to send me a sample of some GPDS to try in the SPA II I have here on long term loan, and needless to say I was impressed with the result. In the photo below you can see where I applied the GPDS to one end of the SPA II main chassis (as well to other locations that aren't visible in the photo).

The Soundcoat GPDS has an adhesive on one side, so all you have to do is cut it to size, peel of the backing, and then stick it onto the desired location. Neat stuff!

I was intrigued by the Soundcoat GPDS damping sheets, so I contacted Soundcoat to see how I might find out more about their different products and how they might be used for high-performance audio applications.

I was thinking about incorporating the GPDS into the Duelund-WRSE Project isolation stands in place of the quartz granules I have been using, and the Soundcoat people were kind enough to send me some samples to try.

In the photo below you can see the New Valve Order Audio SPA II phono equalizer sitting on the GPDS sample sheets Soundcoat sent me to experiment with. Wow - thank you Soundcoat!

Soundcoat Customer Service Manager, Grace Heyne, also referred me to one of their Acoustical Engineers, Joseph Tran, to learn more about potential applications for Soundcoat products. Like Steven Klein and yours truly, it turns out that Joseph is a music lover, and he is particularly fond of headphone listening - he's one of us! That's a cool connection!

I had a great discussion with Joseph about different Soundcoat products and how they might best be used in different audio applications. As you would expect, the GPDS is ideal for applications like damping the metal chassis of audio electronics like the SPA II phono equalizer.

Joseph and I also talked about a number of clever and easily applied vibration reduction technologies that could be applied to the Duelund CAST crossover stands, as well as ideas for mounting each of the Duelund CAST components on vibration damping material to further enhance their performance.

I will follow up in a future article to let you know the outcomes of this collaboration with Soundcoat Company on applying their vibration control technologies to audio applications. It’s an exciting topic!

Stay tuned!