Hard Point Trinia footers---very impressed

Mike Lavigne

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I've been enjoying my MSB Select II dac and SGM server these last months, and really loved it when I added the second power supply back in August. the music has been really great. but dealing with 4 separate boxes + the dart preamp and optimizing them in terms of shelving and treatments has been a challenge as I did not have the space really. ideally each box would have it's own separate shelf. I have the MSB dac itself stacked on top of the dart pre, both of which are on top of the Herzan TS-150. but the 2 power supplies were stacked on the second shelf both sitting on a set of Wave Kinetics A10 U8's. then the SGM is sitting along side on it's own platform, which is an unused Adona granite/wood shelf on cones into the concrete floor. it's using it's stock footers, as I compared them to a set of A10 U8's and the stock footers (which had been carefully designed into the SGM) were quite a bit better.

I've been waiting for the Taiko Tana active isolation product to arrive, as well as the disruption from the arrival next spring of the American Sounds tt and it's huge rack. so I was slumming along knowing that these boxes were not optimized. a WBF member and I had been emailing about our mutual interest in the Entreq products, and he suggested I try a footer product he liked, and volunteered to send me a set to try. so he did about a month ago, a set of 4 Hardpoint Serene's.

room-11-H4.jpg

these are beautifully made anodized aluminum footers with dual rolling ceramic balls top and bottom and have an adjustable base to accommodate differences in bottom contours of gear. in essence; it allows the gear to float......completely decouple. I have a PDF of a brochure; and i'm not qualified to sort out what is real science and what might not be. anyone who knows me knows I don't give a rip about why something works. I can forward anyone the PDF and you can check it out for yourself.

i received this set of Hardpoint Serene footers, and tried them under the SGM. wow. immediately the musical focus improved. better textures, more delicacy, noise floors dropped. bass articulation improved. I was very concerned that it would tip up the tonality, but zero case of that. after a week of listening I was pretty impressed, so I asked Esotar if I could get 2 more sets of these to try under the MSB power supplies. these sets finally arrived on Friday. instead of the Serene, these were a newer slightly different and improved version called the Hard Point Trinia.

room-11-H3.jpg

I had to move things around to allow for the MSB Select II power supplies to each have their own shelf. I moved the American Dream 2 shelf rack over from the right side to the left side next to the Adona rack. put the SGM on the bottom shelf, one MSB power supply on the upper shelf, and that allowed the remaining power supply to have it's own shelf in the Adona rack. and installed the new Hardpoint Trina footers underneath. more wow. but now to another deeper musical level. more subtle.....and far reaching. all those things that had happened with the SGM were now there to a higher degree. the music became sexier. had more swing, and more inner texture. it was not a night and day difference objectively as the MSB had been sounding superb prior to this, but it was a significant step forward.

room-11-H1.jpg

I was concerned that my putting the power supplies on separate shelves might have been, in itself, what was the improvement. so I tried the power supplies on their own footers (that sucked), and on Wave Kinetics A10 U8's, which while much better than stock footers was not in the nuance realm of the Hardpoint Trinia's. and.....the A10 U8's definitely don't suck.

so I purchased all three sets. these are keepers. I knew I was not going to purchase 5 Taiko Tana active units anytime in the near future. this gives me that decoupling magic I crave.

highly recommended.

as always; YMMV. my system is pretty revealing of differences, and this is the only system I have heard these in. the MSB Select II/SGM are particularly revealing. OTOH the MSB Select II and the SGM likely are the most robustly built of any dac and server too.....so other gear might get more gain from these. the Select II's power supply chassis are milled from solid billet, the SGM weighs 60 pounds.

room-11-H2.jpg
 
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Ron Resnick

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Very interesting, Mike! How do the Serenes differ in design and construction from the Trinias? Do they have different purposes?
 

audioarcher

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May 6, 2012
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Hi Mike, After a little searching on Google it looks like this is a Korean company. The name of the company appears to be Hifistay. The website is in Korean for the most part and shows no US distributor yet. Who did you obtain these footers from?
 

Mike Lavigne

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Very interesting, Mike! How do the Serenes differ in design and construction from the Trinias? Do they have different purposes?

same purpose, essentially the same design, just slightly more effective and able to work with an Artesania rack. 6 moons had done a review, but due to the Artesania rack being decoupling, the results were inconclusive since the footer and rack were not compatible. so they did a slight re-design so it would work. not really relevant since the Artesania is not meant to be used with a footer. but it shows how intense these guys are.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Hi Mike, After a little searching on Google it looks like this is a Korean company. The name of the company appears to be Hifistay. The website is in Korean for the most part and shows no US distributor yet. Who did you obtain these footers from?

WBF member Esotar does sell these. you could PM him if you have any interest. I do have the PDF if anyone wants to read the technical details.
 

audioarcher

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May 6, 2012
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WBF member Esotar does sell these. you could PM him if you have any interest. I do have the PDF if anyone wants to read the technical details.

Thanks. They are not really in the budget right now. They do look well made and the technology is interesting though. Guessing they are probably around $1,000 for a set of 4?
 

Mike Lavigne

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a screen capture from the pdf of the brochure.....how it works.....(and i'm not claiming any of this, just forwarding the information.....I only report what I hear).

tri-pdf.jpg
 

JackD201

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Apr 20, 2010
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Esotar is Korean isn't he? Originally by his username I thought he was Danish :)

Did you compare them with the WK's Mike?
 

Mike Lavigne

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Esotar is Korean isn't he? Originally by his username I thought he was Danish :)

yes, he is Korean.....and I connected with him since he is big time into Entreq, as am I. I think Esotar also builds and sells speakers but I could be wrong about that.

Did you compare them with the WK's Mike?

yes. I had already compared the stock footers on the SGM server to the Wave Kinetics A10 U8's a few months back and those stock footers (which were carefully selected and integrated in to the SGM design) surpassed the A10 U8's there. so when the Hardpoint Serene's were much better than those stock footers I did not need to re-visit that issue now.

then this weekend after I moved the MSB power supplies around and found that the Hardpoint Trinia's were really great under them, I was concerned that just providing separate shelves for the power supplies might be responsible for much of the improvement. so I removed the Trinia's and tried the power supplies on the separate shelves with just the stock footers (that sucked), and then with the Wave Kinetics A10 U8's, which were quite a bit better than the stock footers, but not nearly as effective and nuanced as the Trinia's were. and.....the A10 U8's don't suck.
 

JackD201

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Thanks Mike :)
 

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Mike Lavigne

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Will there be a test between these and pitch perfect footers ?

not by me.

unless Steve specifically asked me to do it (and i'd rather avoid it). and with the settling time of the PP, it might be hard to do any straightforward compare. maybe you could quickly switch out and in a burned in PP with the Trinia, but maybe not.

i'm not selling anything here, just communicating my experience. I have no personal reason to pursue a compare. the Trinia's do exactly what I wanted them to do, and right away. switching the A10 U8's and Trinia's the difference was immediately evident. and I own them and am no longer in the market for footers.
 

Mike Lavigne

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:rolleyes:

Dont we love putting Mr. Lavigne on a spot. :p

it was inevitable from the first moment a month ago I unexpectedly heard what the Hardpoint Serene did under my SGM server. there would be no avoiding this question. my mistake was allowing Esotar to send me his little footers. after that it was going to happen.

OTOH there is me avoiding the answer.
 

rockitman

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Sep 20, 2011
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not by me.

unless Steve specifically asked me to do it (and i'd rather avoid it). and with the settling time of the PP, it might be hard to do any straightforward compare. maybe you could quickly switch out and in a burned in PP with the Trinia, but maybe not.

i'm not selling anything here, just communicating my experience. I have no personal reason to pursue a compare. the Trinia's do exactly what I wanted them to do, and right away. switching the A10 U8's and Trinia's the difference was immediately evident. and I own them and am no longer in the market for footers.

That’s good to know Mike. I am heavily invested in stillpoints and have liked their effect. They are out of the system now except for the speakers so that I can do a reset on my system to try to systematically add stillpoints back in, one component at a time to try to better understand what happens to the sound. It is possible that footers need not be under every component for best results which may vary from one system to the next and of course by listener tastes.
 

Argonaut

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Do the Trinia footers have a minimum and importantly a maximum recommended load bearing ?
 

Jazzhead

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The Serenes do look better than the Trinia . Have you compared the two ? Or settled on all Trinia . Thanks for sharing . Any link to a web site ?
 

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