Which rack i can buy???????????????

[bonzo75]

One of my more useful posts LOL.

And relatively more accurate

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well Ked, my Zus are relatively more accurate since I made my choice of rack.

 

[tima]

Tima... The reason I haven't done rack compares is that they are difficult... Almost impossible... Including by the people I have visited. What I have done is taken my mooks around and found all racks wanting so I don't like racks. I have never gone wow, I can see what your rack can do, like I have gone wow I can see what your TT or pre can do, or even a crystal cable absolute dream. People spending on racks should spend on records instead.

Btw...i am not including TT isolation here which is a separate topic, just component racks

Vibration management for Turntables is no different than for any other component. You can have a seperate topic but you can't have seperate physics.

Trying to judge a rack with shun mook devices is, imo, laughable. Now you may like the colorations that you get through mooks but they are not a tool for gauging vibration abatement and isolation. The fact you have not gone 'wow' suggests have not heard before and after a decent rack. But where it bothered me is without much study or experience you are making suggestions on what people should do.

 

[tima]

Agreed. On and off the rack is tiring but possible. But a/b CMS with SRA or Stacore rack, can you really be certain what you really hear given the a/b or /c process has so much time gap and racing heart rate between them. I don't see any consumer have a chance and efforts to do that. I mean with these very expensive racks. So choose one over the other is mainly gut feeling and people's testimonials.

Kind regards,
Tang

Have you tried long term listening comparison? That's where you have a component long enough that you learn how it sounds - you come to know it. When a different component is swapped in, differences are obvious. Quickie A/B/A tests can be useful, but can also lead to misjudgement - or so I've found. When you say "very expensive racks" what are you thinking of - the price of a SAT tonearm, a GFS cartridge or...?

 

[microstrip]

Tima... The reason I haven't done rack compares is that they are difficult... Almost impossible... Including by the people I have visited. What I have done is taken my mooks around and found all racks wanting so I don't like racks. I have never gone wow, I can see what your rack can do, like I have gone wow I can see what your TT or pre can do, or even a crystal cable absolute dream. People spending on racks should spend on records instead.

Btw...i am not including TT isolation here which is a separate topic, just component racks

I agree on the difficulty of comparing racks - although I did it for Target sand or lead shot filled, Zoetechus and Finite Elements top racks in my system, and also for my DIY efforts ...

I can not understand how you can have found all racks wanting . How do intent to support your equipment someday - hanging it on threads from the ceiling?

 

[tima]

Interesting Tima...are you a proponent of either: SRA (who apparently tune each isolation block specifically to your equipment) or Active Isolation?

Hi Lloyd - I'm of the view currently that the best of those called 'audio racks', as well as component platforms, are SRA and HRS. My experience of active isolation is somewhat limited - if designed for, I think they can work for specific component by component scenarios, but I'm not so certain about active rack solutions.

Each component is different and when you place it something its resonance characteristics change. Often people will hear some difference - more soundstage depth, improved clarity or focus - and say 'hey that really works'. However sometimes it is hard to grasp the full degree of vibration's distortive impact until you hear something better.

Granted that trying to do side-by-side comparisons of racks is awkward and time consuming and usually requires some space. I'm not an objectivist - listening is the final judgement - but it is possible to measure results with the application of whatever vibration management technique is considered and render some degree of 'proof' of what is happening. There is a science to it - large scale industrial applications don't do much of the trial and error approach. The principles involved are the same for audio. Same with acoustics - you hire someone to design your audio room to avoid trial and error.

To some extent because of their size and shipping cost, rack preferences tend to be regional. Until companies get enough sales to establish regional distribution it is sometimes hard to find more than one rack or platform for comparison outside the manufacturer's region.

I recall reading about your 'sandwiches' if I may call them that - multiple constrained layers? Are you still following that approach?

 

[microstrip]

Hi Lloyd - I'm of the view currently that the best of those called 'audio racks', as well as component platforms, are SRA and HRS. My experience of active isolation is somewhat limited - if designed for, I think they can work for specific component by component scenarios, but I'm not so certain about active rack solutions.

Each component is different and when you place it something its resonance characteristics change. Often people will hear some difference - more soundstage depth, improved clarity or focus - and say 'hey that really works'. However sometimes it is hard to grasp the full degree of vibration's distortive impact until you hear something better.

Granted that trying to do side-by-side comparisons of racks is awkward and time consuming and usually requires some space. I'm not an objectivist - listening is the final judgement - but it is possible to measure results with the application of whatever vibration management technique is considered and render some degree of 'proof' of what is happening. There is a science to it - large scale industrial applications don't do much of the trial and error approach. The principles involved are the same for audio. Same with acoustics - you hire someone to design your audio room to avoid trial and error.

To some extent because of their size and shipping cost, rack preferences tend to be regional. Until companies get enough sales to establish regional distribution it is sometimes hard to find more than one rack or platform for comparison outside the manufacturer's region.

I recall reading about your 'sandwiches' if I may call them that - multiple constrained layers? Are you still following that approach?

Tima,

IMHO each case is different case - IME there is no such thing as the best universal rack. For example, US designers tune their racks to 60 Hz harmonics, we have 50 Hz in Europe ...

We still do not know what is the main purpose of racks, excluding support our components. Do we want to isolate? Do we want to remove their intrinsic noise energy due to their own operation? Do we want them to tune the component being supported? Is air borne feedback significant or not?

IMHO as long we do not have a clear list of objectives, just the aim of getting better sound, objective measurements are tools for the developers that have their own priorities, but useless and misleading to consumers.

Also IMHO we could learn a lot from properly carried comparisons and experiments with active and passive systems. But it would take a lot of time and effort.

BTW, this patent has very interesting information on racks and links to previous work. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070278170A1/en?oq=US20070278170A1

 

[Tango]

Have you tried long term listening comparison? That's where you have a component long enough that you learn how it sounds - you come to know it. When a different component is swapped in, differences are obvious. Quickie A/B/A tests can be useful, but can also lead to misjudgement - or so I've found. When you say "very expensive racks" what are you thinking of - the price of a SAT tonearm, a GFS cartridge or...?

Yes I have Tima. But normally it doesn't take the whole day to realize a sunshine in equipment testing unless the equipment required a long settling time or to burn in or to find the right placement in a room. In a very revealing system with less homogeneity you will hear it with no difficulty in a short time. Listening a long time with different pressings and also certain part of pressing repeatedly is to me is for testers to be able to crystalize their thoughts and put into words to convey what he heard to readers. But to hear differences in equipments for me alone I dont have an obligation to explain what I hear to others so it doesnt take a long time. All highend gears are very expensive to me. I mean every single one of them. It is a very expensive hobby imo. Yes racks in the ten thousands of dollars are very expensive so a cartridges.

Kind regards,
Tang

 

[tima]

We still do not know what is the main purpose of racks, excluding support our components. Do we want to isolate? Do we want to remove their intrinsic noise energy due to their own operation? Do we want them to tune the component being supported? Is air borne feedback significant or not?

IMHO as long we do not have a clear list of objectives, just the aim of getting better sound, objective measurements are tools for the developers that have their own priorities, but useless and misleading to consumers.

You say "we still do not know ..." and "we still do not have ..." as if this is somethig waiting to be discovered. I'm not understanding that.

 

[microstrip]

You say "we still do not know ..." and "we still do not have ..." as if this is somethig waiting to be discovered. I'm not understanding that.

Yes, I hope that some day someone can have a proper answer do these questions. All we have are contradictory possibilities from manufacturers and forum experts ...

 

[bonzo75]

Vibration management for Turntables is no different than for any other component. You can have a seperate topic but you can't have seperate physics.

Trying to judge a rack with shun mook devices is, imo, laughable. Now you may like the colorations that you get through mooks but they are not a tool for gauging vibration abatement and isolation. The rackfact you have not gone 'wow' suggests have not heard what before and after a decent rack. But where it bothered me is without much study or experience you are making suggestions on what people should do.

Sorry, you keep making inaccurate posts. If you have a rack, put any footer in and out. Does it make a difference? If yes, I don't like what the rack does. I might not like what some footers do either, but I don't like what the rack does. Why is this difficult to understand? And this experiment has been done multiple times across systems. My favorite sound has always been footers on simple solid wood (with option to tune the footers easier)

 

[tima]

Sorry, you keep making inaccurate posts. If you have a rack, put any footer in and out. Does it make a difference? If yes, I don't like what the rack does. I might not like what some footers do either, but I don't like what the rack does. Why is this difficult to understand? And this experiment has been done multiple times across systems. My favorite sound has always been footers on simple solid wood (with option to tune the footers easier)

Ah, I get it now ... you're not talking about removing vibration or preventing it from entering a component.

 

[JackD201]

Exactly Tim. Mooks and others like Combax are resonators. Basically they mask and enhance certain harmonic bands. It's even explicitly stated in their literature. The opposite of vibration sinks.

They can definitely give some wonderful additions to the overall presentation for those that look for that sort of thing the same way some tubes do the same. For some it is the way I look at the top of the line preamp of FM Acoustics. I know it has a definite character or colors if you will but it's so darned pretty I don't really care. I believe Ked is a Mookie the way I view the FM.

Ked, I am curious that solid wood is actually simpler for you as wood varies so greatly even within the same species depending on cut, drying, finishing and joinery. It gets crazy with different species. While good solid wood is probably the easiest to get wrong, I mean I haven't heard a solid wood rack that was offensive in any way, consistency is not a strong point. What IS a strong point is looks. Great woodwork is beautiful in any setting.

Consistency is why I went with "synthetics" and CLD when I was DIY'ing and eventually led me to where I am now.

 

[bonzo75]

Ah, I get it now ... you're not talking about removing vibration or preventing it from entering a component.

No

 

[tima]

Yes, I hope that some day someone can have a proper answer do these questions. All we have are contradictory possibilities from manufacturers and forum experts ...

We still do not know what is the main purpose of racks, excluding support our components. Do we want to isolate? Do we want to remove their intrinsic noise energy due to their own operation? Do we want them to tune the component being supported? Is air borne feedback significant or not?

What would a proper answer look like?

I think it is not so much looking for a proper answer to the question "what is the main purpose of racks" but rather asking oneself what is the goal - what do you want to achieve. An answer lies in the intent of the audiophile.

If you want something to put your gear on, get a piece of furniture capable of holding the components steady and that looks nice to you. If you want to change the sound of your components like people do with tone controls or swapping cables, then try putting different things under those components and see what happens.

If you want to mitigate vibration in your components - not to change their inherent sound but to find out what that is, ie., their sound without vibration - then consider the sources of vibration and address those.

In that case, yes you want a rack that isolates equipment from floor-borne energy, air-borne energy coming from your speakers, air-borne energy that enters your room from outside such as in-house noise or that converts to mechanical energy, and lastly internally generated energy from within the components themselves. To answer your question: yes, air-borne energy can be significant; it is typically the greatest cause of vibraton induced to components. How does vibration impact the rack itself. Examine/study the rack itself to see if it trys to accomplish any of these goals and how it works to do so. Ask the manufacturer how the rack works with the various components that may be on it. Franscisco, you are adept at this sort of analysis, I imagine it would be straightforward for you.

Today, better racks rely considerably on modern materials science. This is largely derived from vibration mitigation technology taken from industry. For example, few (any?) of the current active isolation devices came out of audio. They have been adapted from other uses. For example a lot of money and technology are applied in keeping vibrations away from electron microscopes and other imaging technologies. Noise abatement in vehicles is another speciatization. One consideration is how materials used hold their effectiveness over time.

 

[bonzo75]

Jack, I view this more as an active vs passive preamp analogy. In theory passive preamps are the best. In practice 99 percent of us prefer active preamps. I view those who say that we control vibration as passive pre manufacturers... Great if they do what they claim, but sonically they might have negatives.

That said, my main point on this thread was that unless Gian gets his first passive preamp right, he is in a lot of trouble because racks are the most difficult to sell off. With footers, he has active preamps like mooks and passive ones like CMS, stacore, stillpoints, he can compare all day long and hey rid of mistakes easily. So even assuming racks are better, unless three or four of you are willing to ship him racks for free for trial, he has to take a punt against high odds

 

[JackD201]

Oh racks are definitely hard to try.

In our case the usual first buy isn't the rack per se but rather the amp stand. People using monoblocks usually need a pair because nobody really wants their amps on the floor especially if the amps have air cooling inlets in the bottom where accumulated dust can be sucked up and through. Something that tends to get hot on carpeting can also be very disturbing even if there is hardly any danger. If the listener likes what the stands do for their amps they usually move towards adding the racks later. Platforms and footers generally have more pronounced differences on sources and preamps too although there are some makes that are so heroically built that sometimes racks and footers are of very little effect other than offering solid support.

Given Gian and I have amps so heavy two people would struggle to handle them, and that Gian's amp stands are presently very high off the ground, I would recommend for safety's sake that this be Gia's priority. I shudder to think what an earthquake, even a mild one would wreak albeit I'm not sure how bad seismic activity is in Italy. It is a big deal here in the pacific ring of fire.

Amp stands are no more difficult to ship than amplifiers. If I were Gian, I'd make this my immediate priority even before trying footers. 100,000 dollars up in the air is scary.

Still, there is some risk involved. Aside from the sonics, some amp stands are weight and weight distribution specific. In such cases, unloading these limit you to a secondary market of people using the same model. This is much more apparent with tube amp owners where amps are almost always heavier in the rear because of the output transformers whereas transformers on SS amps are generally set more towards the center.

CMS and HRS moved to modular designs in large part to make transport easier as well as to provide flexibility and future expandability. It is however still difficult. Just less so. It does mean that Gian and others still have a relatively easy entry/audition point. Not as easy as footers but definitely not as difficult as a full support system.

 

[Bodhi]

Bonzo, I plan on ordering a full set of CS2 feet and setting up a shootout in my Dealer's main showroom which i'm familiar with. Basically the plan is to listen to the system with the components sitting on the CMS shelves, then add my Stillpoints Ultra 6's to the front end & power amp, then remove them and install the CS2 1.5 and 1.0 feet. I then plan to listen to the feet freshly installed, after 1.5 wks run in, then at 3 wks. I look forward to posting my findings. I will be taking the winner home with me!

 

[bonzo75]

Bonzo, I plan on ordering a full set of CS2 feet and setting up a shootout in my Dealer's main showroom which i'm familiar with. Basically the plan is to listen to the system with the components sitting on the CMS shelves, then add my Stillpoints Ultra 6's to the front end & power amp, then remove them and install the CS2 1.5 and 1.0 feet. I then plan to listen to the feet freshly installed, after 1.5 wks run in, then at 3 wks. I look forward to posting my findings. I will be taking the winner home with me!

So you will be comparing two footers with each other and trying the rack with and without them. You should also compare the footers on a non CMS rack

 

[Bodhi]

So you will be comparing two footers with each other and trying the rack with and without them. You should also compare the footers on a non CMS rack

That will be tricky as my Dealer is extremely busy and his shop is only open part time by appointment. I felt that was an adequate testing protocol overall to assess the two feet.