Racks or racket?

[Mike Lavigne]

The above posts probably belong at this thread: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5432-The-fallacy-of-Expectation-Bias. Sorry for the thread hi-jacking.

Mike,

Could you detail what A/B differences you heard between the Wave Kinetics footers and your Monaco GPA racks? I have heard the 'before' and 'after' but there were a number of other moving parts so I found it difficult to ascribe specific differences to the change in isolation...

initially i added the Wave Kinetics A10 U8's on top of the tuned GPA shelves; and there was a marked improvement. i added them piece by piece to determine what the A10 U8's were doing specifically with each piece of gear. the effect was a more articulate bass, more image focus, better transient snap, smoother more extended high frequencies, a darker background, and more musical flow and coherence. there were different degrees of effect depending on the specific item. added together; it transformed the system to my ears.

there were 2 exceptions to the improvement. first; the two Dobbins plinthed tt's used Stillpoints footers. they were not improved by the A10 U8's; in fact; they lost definition with the A10 U8's. the Stillpoints were more linear sounding. it should be noted that the Dobbins tt's were voiced with Stillpoints. second; the darTZeel preamp did improve it's preamp performance with the A10 U8's, but the phono stage performance suffered by becoming soft sounding. i had been using some prototype Wave Kinetics footers with the dart pre, and those seem to work better overall than the A10 U8's in that particular application.

but otherwise everything improved. the single most dramatic improvement was the A10 U8's used under the pods of the Transparent Opus MM2 speaker cables. i was stunned by how much improvement in transient snap and overall improvement in apparent detail and focus there was.

i had no pre-concieved notions about what the effect of the A10 U8's might be under any piece of gear. you simply cannot predict about how any decoupling tool will sound. you need to listen.

when i removed the GPA and added the Adona everything got just a little bit better. like the A10 U8's were 'set free' a touch.

then the NVS arrived and later the isolation table for the NVS. then the larger halo's and the Durand Telos tonearm; which with it's 38 pounds additional weight has taken a couple of months to sort out fully. which it now is.

i don't think you've heard everything in it's current fully sorted out state. you need to.

overall; the GPA rack system is perfect for someone wanting high level isolation performance in a beautiful elegant package. but getting a grounded rack and tuning each piece of gear with A10 U8's will take you farther.

now it's your turn; what did you think about the differences?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

i'll add that i've been using the Evolution Acoustics 'double wire' speaker cables for the last 3 months, and sold my Transparent Opus MM2 speaker cable about 6 weeks ago; so with it gone my darTZeel NHB-108 stereo amplifier now is the most improved piece of gear by the A10-U8's. quite a considerable improvement in all those areas i mention above. and repeating what i said in a earlier post, i use 6 A10 U8 footers under the dart amp; it weighs 60 pounds and you do need to experiment with how many are appropriate for very heavy or very light pieces of gear. they come in sets of 4; which is appropriate for most gear.

the dart amp is sitting on a Box Furniture amplifier rack.

 

[jazdoc]

Honestly, it was really difficult to sort things out because of the many changes described above. I may need an 'immersive' visit just to confirm your findings. Of course, this is purely altruistic on my part...just trying to help out a friend!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Honestly, it was really difficult to sort things out because of the many changes described above. I may need an 'immersive' visit just to confirm your findings. Of course, this is purely altruistic on my part...just trying to help out a friend!

god knows i need help!

when you have the time let's get 'immersive'. i need to hear more of your new vinyl. and i just got 6 Billie Holiday Clef/Verve monos i'd like you to hear.

 

[fas42]

my system sounds the best it's ever sounded, i think that my evolution of isolation treatment and racks is a significant contributor to the refinement i am enjoying.

i strongly recommend the A10 U8 isolation footers used as tuning devices combined with a grounded rack of choice. i use as many as 6 and as few as 3 per piece of gear depending on weight and degree of heat. on my amp i need to 'massage' the A10 U8's every 30 days as the heat will cause the footer to solidify to a degree and lose it's de-coupling properties.

if you actually believe that your gear (whatever it might be) will not benefit from some sort of isolation or rack interface tuning you have just not spent sufficient time and effort to investigate the issue. solid state or tube, speaker, electronics or source....it does not matter. there is a background of noise and vibration singing along with the music, and the more you can eliminate it the more your music will come alive. i'm not saying there is only one approach to solving these issues, only that no gear aspiring to be high performance is immune.

A big +1. The better the system, the more sensitive it is highly likely to be to vibration: CD players are very much part of the game, and SS gear no matter who makes it. Naim has got a name as good as any for being fussy about getting mechanicals right, but its Nait takes a nose dive if not adequately isolated.

The friend has a very heavily modified Quad CD player, which is sounding very, very nice at the moment: the vinyl and digital are at level pegging in overall quality, but the latest el cheapo tweak he tried was to add a hefty wooden support pillar which tensioned the shelf on which the CD sat upwards, strongly coupling the shelf to the floor structure. This was night and day, one of Tim's super fast changeovers, first with support, then without, then back again. Without, sound was still pleasant but "loose", the "PRaT" went down the gurgler; with, ahhh, now the drum kicks were hard and tight, and the ambience retrieval went up considerably.

Once a system is working at the higher level, all these subtle variations are blindingly obvious ...

Frank

 

[rockitman]

Another vote for Adona grounded racks with multi element floating shelves. I use two of them. They are a tremendous value $$$ wise and provided a significant improvement in sound quality to my system.

 

[MEM]

Hi Frantz,

Thank you again for the tip regarding room acoustics. While I am already enjoying the quantum improvement in sound from the new speakers and amps, the hard acoustic of my new listening room is clearly adding distortions. I am therefore looking into ASC products to help tame this room.

Michael

 

[ack]

Did you get your Spectrals already?

 

[FrantzM]

Hi Frantz,

Thank you again for the tip regarding room acoustics. While I am already enjoying the quantum improvement in sound from the new speakers and amps, the hard acoustic of my new listening room is clearly adding distortions. I am therefore looking into ASC products to help tame this room.

Michael

MEM

You're welcome ... Do have a look at some of their competitors among them Realtraps.com ... I would also reiterate the suggestion to contact an acoustic firm .. Depending on the level of work it may not be as expensive as it sounds pun intended

 

[MEM]

I have the DMA 260. The DMC 30SS will not be available until about mid February so I have a used DMC 30 on loan. The sound is nonetheless impressive except that there is a hiss coming from somewhere. All my components and cables are strewn across the floor for now and everything is plugged into a single MIT Z bar. A computer is on in the same room. I suspect that some aberrant radio frequencies are being introduced somewhere. I plan to get an electrician to see if a dedicated line can be run to the audio outlets and soon my power amp will have its own outlet source as well.

I can't understand how my old entry-level Cyrus CD player can sound so good; I can't imagine what a better source will bring to the system.

 

[MEM]

Hi Frantz,

You have made me a believer.

 

[ack]

I have the DMA 260

Great! Just curious - how long did you wait for it? I ask because every single Spectral component I buy locally I am told it's 8-10 weeks which drives me nuts, because the local dealer doesn't really stock anything, and I am sure they can do a much better job cutting down the wait time and all I get is just excuses. In fact, with the 30SS S2 I made such a fuss that they gave me whichever one arrived 10 weeks later, and it turned out it was slated for an employee...

 

[Elliot G.]

I have found that some of the products made make a huge difference in both solid state and tube gear. The issue is what they look like and of course what you are prepared to spend. I have used with great results the Rack of Silence and it made a huge difference as amp stands with all of the ams we tried on it including MLAS,Brysteon ARC and others. They are strange looking and so they are not for everyone. There are many good products most of which are really industrial looking and the ones that ususally look acceptable to the wife are mostly furniture. You can issolate your preamp and source components on or in a piece of furniture if needed but get your amp or amps a good amp stand. I have found you can gete some great results without breaking the bank.

 

[rbbert]

Here's some interesting food for thought. I have an Adona rack with their multi-element shelves (http://www.adonacorporation.com/zerosr4.html); the rack itself has spikes which fit into spike cups on my oak-over-concrete slab floor. I thought maybe putting some more damping material under the cups would improve isolation, so I used 1/8" Herbie's Grungebuster. Guess what? The sound became very "bassy" in the sense of louder and more poorly defined upper bass (~60-120 Hz I think), which immediately went away when I removed the little pieces of damping material.

 

[vdorta]

A cheaper, elegant and probably very good alternative is a solid wood rack like the ones from Box Furniture on top of state-of-the-art isolators like Stillpoints Ultra 5s and maybe Ultra Minis under every component.

 

[KeithR]

So I just took a rack plunge and bought a Quadraspire- I just could not justify paying double for a Box Furniture one that really doesn't do anything more. I also have Wave Kinetics footers coming to play around with under my Quad II 40 amps (which are on a maple block right now, courtesy of Dr. Williams) or Quadraspire.

 

[Steve Williams]

those are great maple blocks Keith. I still my Lamm amps on them as well

 

[audioguy]

Frantz (as usual) nailed it: For the money a high end rack system would cost, you can pay for some acoustic consulting AND purchase the products they recommend for less and end up with much more improved sound. Turntable isolation is important but you can solve that problem a lot less expensively than purchasing an isolation system for all of your components!

That represents both my opinion and experience.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Here's some interesting food for thought. I have an Adona rack with their multi-element shelves (http://www.adonacorporation.com/zerosr4.html); the rack itself has spikes which fit into spike cups on my oak-over-concrete slab floor. I thought maybe putting some more damping material under the cups would improve isolation, so I used 1/8" Herbie's Grungebuster. Guess what? The sound became very "bassy" in the sense of louder and more poorly defined upper bass (~60-120 Hz I think), which immediately went away when I removed the little pieces of damping material.

i think your damping material caused a 'smearing' of the focus and likely blunted transients and bloated the bass.

i also own the Adona with the multi-element shelves. the Adona is effective as a grounded rack; in otherwords it uses mass to provide a ground and couples to the floor. depending on your floor structure that can be an effective starting point for good performance. but it's only a starting point. with a grounded rack you can then choose good decoupling footers to use between the shelf and the gear. i use the Wave Kinetics A10-U8's and they work great with the Adona.

any well built solid rack will work well for a base for good decoupling footers. buy the one that is prettiest to you. it's the de-coupling footers that do the majority of the work.

the multi-element Adona shelves are effective because of the mass of the granite....not because they are multi-element. sure the wood layer does keep the granite from ringing, but it's still an effective decoupling footer where the special performance comes from.

and all that is dependant on the type of floor you have. if you have a trampoline (suspended wood) as a floor then you have to somehow deal with that first. racks work in context with floors; you can't just assume one rack type will always work.

 

[KeithR]

Frantz (as usual) nailed it: For the money a high end rack system would cost, you can pay for some acoustic consulting AND purchase the products they recommend for less and end up with much more improved sound. Turntable isolation is important but you can solve that problem a lot less expensively than purchasing an isolation system for all of your components!

That represents both my opinion and experience.

I have a treated room, dude.