Isolation vs. Absorbtion

Brulee: How thick is your Maple platform and is it butcherblock or of a simpler vertical glue/lam design. I am still using 3/4" Maple (not butcherblock). I do not want to cut up my 5' 2 1/2" thick Maple butcherblock yet as I may want to use it in another cabinet one of these days if and when I can relocate the gear. I picked it up for nothing many years ago but the replacement cost of this "slab" is quite high. I have also cleared another 6" of vertical space (for the time being) in my cabinet (the new tube amp sets on top now) and would like to try the Isoblocks (they are only $24.00 which is the same as Vibrapods). My wife finally noticed the cones, or the use of them as they were in the shadows (when the sliding doors were removed from the cabinet) and asked "why is the CD player floating in air?"

PS: Everything has also changed with the new 300b amp and I may have to start from scratch again and try everthing that I have already done all over. The first thing that I have noticed is that I can tilt the HF's up much more without is bugging me. I should probably wait until I re-tube before I run the gauntlet again. The only MDF that I am using right now is under the amp itself.

Hi Dekay, I am using 2 1/4 inch thick maple butcherblock that I got from McMaster & Carr. I found this thanks to a post left by Albertporter (thanks Albertporter) on another thread. It came 6'x 30"x 2 1/4". I was able to get 8 15x18 boards. I have one I can let you borrow for a few weeks if you like. I could ship it out to you tomorrow so you could have it for the weekend.

Brulee: My memory as well as my old emails are wiped out, but I am pretty sure that you are just an hour North of me. If so, let's wait until we can hang or take a road trip together. If my memory is wrong please let me know and I would then like to check out the Maple via mail per your kind offer and will cover the shipping both ways. If I have confused you with someone else (perhaps Gthirteen) then I apoligize to both parties for my lapse. I was pretty fogged out a while back from some medication, to the point of making coffe one morning with dried cat food instead of ground coffee:-)

Hi Brulee. I am trying to shut up on this topic at the moment because I still have a lot of experimentation to do before I can be happy I know what these shelves really sound like. I find the Maple Butchers Block is pretty much as you describe Brulee. There is plenty of life and soundstage size with the Maple, but there is some lack of leading edge or pace. In the end I believe the Neuance is more promising, but I am yet to be certain about the Neuance. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I really want to try it out in a few systems. My main system has at least one unusual characteristic in that the floor is very hard. This means the termination between rack and floor can be very influential on the sound and I get quite different results in my other system where the floor is wooden. The other issue is to do with the Neuance itself. When you use a Neuance shelf for the first time the sound is quite warm and woolly, but the sound clears up after a few days. I have repeated this experiment just to make sure I am not crazy, but it seems that the exterior of the shelf will have some compliance when you first put pressure on it, but that it settles after a period and becomes a much firmer support. The sound seems to change for up to a few days and so experiments with it can take rather a long time. With some of my earlier attempts with the Neuance I had some problem with upper mid-range resonance. I am trying now to understand whether this is a fault of the Neuance or a fault elsewhere (which, as we speak, appears to be so - ie. not the Neuance's fault). But there is no doubt that the Neuance is way ahead of anything else I have heard in terms of transparency, extension, dynamics and detail. The sound is stunningly open throughout the spectrum, but perhaps the most striking feature is that treble detail is just absolutely fabulous, with no hint of smearing.