Filling A Tubular Metal Rack?

Steel shot used in hunting perhaps?

Unhalfbricking, when you were using sand was your sound lacking in dynamics? If there wasn't a problem, then why not just fill it back with sand.

It also might help if you describe your room and system.

Well of course the stuff you can get for free is no good. They want you to buy their product. I have sand in the legs of my rack, and under my CD player. My system sounds great!

You will drive yourself crazy trying to tune your system with different media in your stand. Lead, sand and cat litter....I've tried all three at various times, even combining them at different rates. I look back at all the crazy tweeks I have tried and I shake my head. Nothing was too far out to try. And I now believe that the general consensus that a good rack will "make" the system is flawed. The combination of variables are numerous. Let's start at the beginning: strong wood floor/weak wood floor/concrete floor, steel rack/wood rack, filled tubes/empty tubes, spiked rack legs/no spike rack legs. How about shelves?...Black Diamond, Polycrystal, mdf, plywood constrained layer, granite, cedar, maple, glass. Do you spike the shelves to the rack or not? If you do, will you use brass, aluminum, ceramic, composite or Black Diamond cones? All of this is a balancing act of resonances which I admit will influence the sound of the component....but only if it is in contact with the component! That is why spiking components to the rack is ultimately a flawed approach. The solution is to not spike components to the handful of resonances residing in all racks but to isolate the component from the rack. When you do this, you now make it simpler to tune your system. Use the rack to hold your components but do the tuning part at a more intimate level and you will find that the results are more easily controlled and predictable at all frequencies. After trying to juggle all these combinations of resonances over the years I have settled on Herbie's Tenderfoot w/ebony balls. The Tenderfoot is a squishy proprietary material which holds the 1" ebony ball. It is this first contact point up against the bottom of a component which is the most critical when tuning a system. After years of chasing down and trying to control nasty resonances with fancy fandango footers, I can say without a doubt Herbie Tenderfeet w/ebony balls are the best. Herbie also offers hard maple and a hard rubber type ball for alternative tuning options but I find ebony to be the best material for my components. Since the balls rest on the Tenderfoot, no vibrations or resonances can come up from the rack and it seems the the squishy Tenderfoot material has a near zero influence on the sound of the ball which is contacting the underside of the component. Controlling resonances directly at the component level is much easier than finding the right combination of the many variables found in all floor/rack/shelf set-ups. I would still advise to fill the stand with something easy like sand, but only because it will kill the metallic ringing sound you hear from sound waves hitting and bouncing off of it.

Brick:

Seemed to me that you were happy two months ago following employing soft footers between the slab floor and the rack.

What's happened since them (don't tell me that you heeded to audiotweeks one solution/product fills the bill in all applications advice:-)?

Anyway, if so then just reverse what was suggested/employed.

While we at Starsound employ MicroBearing Fill in our racks, and promote the properly engineered Resonance Energy Transfer sciences, we cannot control the engineering or performance of unknown DIY racks and stands. Thus, we have no way of knowing if our MicroBearing Fill will indeed improve the performance of an unknown DIY rack or stand. It may improve it, or may not, depending upon many other variables used in its design and application.

This is a fairly common situation that we encounter regularly with our products. People seem to think that any tubular metal rack or platform will behave the same as a Sistrum rack or platform. This is not true, because simply using construction techniques which look somwhat similar to Sistrum does not mean it will perform like Sistrum. The same is true with our Audiopoints. I get calls all the time about Audiopoints, and people compare them to some cheap five dollar brass cone, and think they are comparing apples to apples. Not the case. Others don't even try Audiopoints because they "have tried brass cones". There's a difference. Audiopoints are correctly engineered to do the job that other brass cone makers don't even know about. If the product is not produced by Starsound, then it is not a Sistrum or Audiopoint, and will not behave in the same beneficial manner. Other items and DIY projects need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, because they are built on other principles than our Resonance Energy Transfer science.

Unhalfbricking, you can call me on my toll free line 1-800-307-0728, if you'd like to spend some time on this with me. If you want any of our Sistrum or Audiopoint products, I can arrange to have them sent to you in NZ. Or you could email me, if you'd prefer. I'd be happy to help you, regardless of any sale involved.