Re: the Stillpoints...
Marty:
I have both the Stillpoints Ultra Mini and the SS (the next one up) and I don't think carpeting dulls their effects.
Having said that, what did you have them under? Speakers? Or something else? Let me tell you my experience with Stillpoints on carpets.
I have Nola speakers. Several models. However, the Contender, my most recent purchase (I could have gotten KOs, but I wanted something I could lift. While I can bench press a lot, lifting speakers from the floor is entirely different in what muscles you use, so I opted for the 50-lb Contenders).
Unfortunately, a driver on the Contenders went out, so I put my old Hale Revelation 3s back in there. The Ultra SS arrived the same day. I will only say that putting the SS directly under the Hales was not fun. 90 pounds, and it was only weeks after a medical operation. My body punished me for a week after that, so I didn't do it again. I didn't want to get the threaded thingmagigs to go between the Stillpoints and the speakers, because I didn't intend to keep the Hales in the system and besides, I'm the mad scientist type of the Einstein persuasion: one change at a time for a controlled experiment approach and keep at it for weeks (I remember Einstein saying he wasn't smarter than others: he just persisted longer than others did. That would be me, although it can be tiring to be like this).
The carpet was wool and, frankly, thick enough that the Hales were different heights between the two speakers (I could see that the top of one speaker was at least 1/4" higher than the other). Height makes a significant difference in sonics. I've always known that: even 1/8" creates noticeable differences in sound, although, among reviewers, only Roy Gregory has pointed this out in print. And I worked for two mags myself.
For all that, I could hear the difference in the Hales mainly as a lessening of darkness. AND - and this is important: turn the top thread a half turn (at least) to separate it from the bottom part. By the way, Stillpoints doesn't - as I've seen on forums - recommend turning the SS upside down so that the wider part is underneath the speakers (which is what I saw in some photographs). Their position is that the technology is much more effective when placed against the component, meaning the Ultra Minis and SS should have the small end up top, against your CD player, preamp, amp or line conditioner.
I found putting them on the carpet was okay, BUT, my rug was wool and hand-tufted in contrast to wool rugs that are hand weaved, and it made for an uneven surface. This was something easily visible, although I wondered how one part of the carpet was solid under the SS, yet another (Stillpoint) footer sank into it. I returned the rug (I was experimenting anyway [I TOLD you I'm a mad scientist type]) and put back in my old wool rug, where the threads are coming up every time I walk over them, but it's a hand-woven one (at least from what I could read on the label on the bottom side of the carpet. It's 10 years old: the print was faded. Who knows: I could have been hallucinating). Hand woven seems better than hand-tufteds (or at least, MY hand-tufted), which has a very tight weave to it. The footers were even on the handwoven rug, which also returned the speakers to equal heights between right and left speakers.
I did notice a difference, too, between putting, for example, my Shunyata Dark Elevators (I have both the V2s and the originals) on the rug, underpadding or floor. I researched a website that discussed acoustic effects of underpadding and found that open cell padding is superior to ….whatever the other kind is (laughing! I can't remember, but I think it's called "closed cell". Maybe it's latex or something; I just can't remember as I'm typing this). In any case, as I then discovered, after moving the elevators on and off the rug, floor and under padding (yup, had to move the speaker cable and power cords around, too. Mad, mad, mad as the Mad Hatter I am, marie), there's even a sonic difference between the 2 versions of the dark Elevators: the original version has more "weight." (Yes, I know I'm off the subject of your question, but since the original poster bought these, he might want to be aware of what I'm going to say next). One shouldn't mix the two versions under the same component. (I'm sure if Grant [Shunyata's Marketing Manager]) ever sees this, he'll have a fit . It "confused" the sound a bit, to my ears. The newer version is considerably more transparent and "faster" but not quite as weighty (it's a small difference) and I had them both on the exposed hardwood part of my listening room. I don't carpet my entire dedicated listening room: just 2/3 of it. Now that I think of it, it does correlate to the qualities of their Zi-Tron cables, which as Robert Harley said, in TAS, were more midrange and treble oriented, which does't mean it's "lite"-sounding. Anything but. Yet, it is still less "weighty" than it used to be. If you read the reviews of it on The Audio Beat website (or was it Soundstage? I forget), you can see they reached the same conclusion. I believe they compared it to the previous generation of Shunyata speaker cable, specifically.
You might want to go onto Audiogon and type in "Stillpoints." And be sure to do it by "recent" instead of "Relevance": a number of us have them on carpeted over wood floors and they work great.
Might I ask what you used them under, and what your results were? I've found that - as I said before - putting them under a component and just assessing that way, is not the way to go. Can I assume you used them under your speakers? Again, check Audiogon in the discussion forums, but most of us on the Stillpoints Ultra threads found you had to play with their placement. A LOT. I had an NAD C325BEE in the system at one point and it has vents over most of the bottom of the plate, so I had to move the Minis around. It worked, even in the vented area, but moving it even a shred (and I mean, A SHRED. As in, the tiniest visible nudge you could see yielded improvements, or, conversely, taking away from the refinement of the previous "nudge.") I found that having at least two of the Minis under the non-vented area was wiser, since they (the Stillpoints) require a completely firm connection to the component above them. I do know one or two guys who place the Ultra (the BIG ones) on top of their components.
And, so that is not a completely off-the-subject response, I agree with the original poster that the power cords' difference is more apparent than the signal cables. What I mean by that is, one should start with Shunyata's power cords first, and get the signal cables afterwards. I've had 3 generation of the speaker cables, and as it happened, I had the original (well, it was their 2nd or 3rd revision of it) Andromeda speaker cables (the really BIG ones, because, originally, the Andromeda were the middle of the line, but then they revised them, to a bigger (around 8 gauge) size than when the Andromeda were only the equivalent of 12 gauge size. I assume this was when they were the middle of the line, and not the top of the line, which the final versions of it became. I know whereof I speak: I had the 8 gauge and sold them (fool that I am) and now have the 12 gauge (I was curious how the smaller ones sounded, so I bought them. BIG difference let me tell you!). So, I had the (garden hose sized) speaker cable months before the power cords. And then, 3 months later I discovered - and bought - the power cords. Oy Gevalt! The mid bass was so obviously more powerful than whatever I had, that the sound transformed from a dynamic range of P-F to PPP-FFFF. I believe Roy Gregory also mentioned this in HiFi Plus, back in one of the 2004 issues, when comparing the King Cobras to Nordost's Valhalla power cords (which I still have). In fact, the original Shunyata were weighted towards the low bass-middle midrange. Upper mids and highs were softened (although not the transients which was strange that that was the case. Transients were explosive.)
So, for those experimenting, get the power cords first, and then the signal cables. Do it in reverse and you'll be shooting yourself in the foot. You won't 'get' what makes the Shunyata seem so realistic, as Mobiusman has discovered.
