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confused about equipment racks

I have been considering either a commercial or a DIY rack for my components.
The problem is do you isolate or couple?
I'm good with speaker spikes which couple the speaker to the house.
But what about a CD player? Isolate? Couple to something massive? Why do I read about Maple butcher block?
I've read about people who swear tennis balls are good. Others use hockey pucks or handball balls, whole or cut in half.
Steel shot, lead shot, cat litter and a host of 'custom' ($$$$) products to fill tubing.
All sorts of weird (to me) theories about resonance / damping / microphonics and related phenom.

Any opinions or stuff I can READ to try to straighten this out. Please, not too much advertiser hyperbole.

thanks in advance::
magfan
magfan OP
1,583 posts
 
Just as I thought.
No consensus, plenty of choices from DIY to stratospheric.

Not as 'hot button' as say... cables / interconnects or powercords, but still lots of variability.

I will watch this thread for some more info, than go with my DIY plan, which apparently is quite unlike most of what I see.
jdoris
972 posts
 
Hi Magfan. The below thread has a lot of discussion of a DIY "flexi" rack design, with some discussion of different materials. John

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?htech&1158841915&openmine&zzJdoris&4&5#Jdoris
lewinskih01
909 posts
 
Hi.

This is the best article I know of, per your request to read something: 1995 Stereophile's "Bad Vibes" article http://www.stereophile.com/reference/52/index.html

You would probably benefit from reading it a few times over several days to let all the info sink in and start putting together a "strategy".

I hope it helps.
tpsonic
1,092 posts
 
Home-Depot sells a number of 1.25-1.5" OD tubing in various decors (brass,silver and PVC with different cosmetics),whuch can be loaded up with your damping material of choice.This will hide any tarnishing of the metallic up-rights and adds significantly to the mass/rigidity of the rack.
magfan OP
1,583 posts
 
Thanks for inputs::
Seems I've got some reading to do.
So far, however, I 'lean' towards all thread for the uprights, nothing hollow since I'm not going to open THAT can of worms!

I may experiment with tubing later. My fill idea is to use expanding foam with steel shot. The foam will increase the rigidity of the tube while the steel adds mass.
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