Had a quick listening session at Mike's this morning. Please take these comments in the context of ownership/endowment bias...
The effect I heard was similar to when I added the Massif racks including:
* blacker background
* more air around instruments
* increased high frequency energy
* improved articulation of individual instruments
The improvement at Mike's is greater than I achieved both in absolute terms and relative to his former baseline which could be secondary to better equipment, better isolation devices used in conjunction with the Massif racks, used of different wood combination and/or use of Nordost footers.
IMO, the racks are beautiful, well constructed and are a much better aesthetic fit for the listening environment.
Congrats!
Mark, thank you for visiting, and your feedback on my Massif racks. i was waiting to post about my impressions to give me more time to make sure how i felt, as changing racks in a complicated system like mine, is a different beast than i normally deal with. it's a global kind of change, where every piece of gear in the signal path is a little different. yet, since i do basically treat every piece of gear on every shelf independently in one way or another, much of what is going on has not changed.
i have to admit that in the first 30-45 minutes i started listening once i had reassembled the system, i was thinking OMG!!! what have i done?
i just needed to chill out a little; after all...gear does not "like" to be moved around. and in this case, every piece of gear was moved and then sat off for 2 days, so the sound was flat and snarly. at about 45 minutes, things got much better, and after a couple of hours.....i liked it better than my prior memory.
after that warm up time, my initial take was a sense that the music was less processed, as Mark mentioned, more relaxed, more separation and ease in the soundstage. i also had an immediate sense of greater tone color. not coloration, but a richer more intense, more real life, tonal palette. and a bit more of a holographic presentation. as far as the bass and dynamics, really no change has been evident. maybe a touch more bass delineation with that greater separation.
hard to know the "why" exactly; my non scientific mind sees the Adona GXT Zero racks using very high mass granite shelves, aluminum legs, solid cone footers and steel cross members. no decoupling. the Massif is the 3" thick Bubinga legs sitting on the Nordost Sort Fut decoupling footers, and 1.75" thick solid maple shelves. then on the top shelf, there are the Bubinga/ball bearing sandwich footers and another 1.75" thick solid maple shelf. so more layers of an impedance change. the 'sound' of granite verses the sound of Bubinga and solid Maple + the footer difference. my sense is that there is a nice synergy going on with the Massif racks and Nordost footers......on my 6" thick concrete floor and in my particular system.
the only two places where i made a tuning change with my gear with the rack change was with my MR-70 tape preamps, and a slight change to a lower VTA with my arms due to a bit of higher top end energy (but no edge or brightness). with the previous rack for the MR-70's i had used the Wave Kinetics A10 U8 decoupling footers. with the Massif it seemed that the A10 U8 footers were a little soft sounding, slightly smearing the sound. so i tried some BDR cones i've had for years, and that seemed to be just the right synergy. i had Mark listen to both footer choices, and he also chose the BDR cones as more correct.
many thanks to Trevor for these beautiful racks. i bought them for their better room look, hoping that they would sound as good. but then got a performance/synergy upgrade too.
the Massif has delivered a solid, really beautiful product. which sounds great in my system. it's important to note that i treat the gear/shelf interface for every piece of gear, so my result includes that. and those Nordost footers. i highly recommend the Massif racks. and they don't break the bank, in my case i did upgrade the expense of the more exotic wood. so that is a variable.
