Hanging Audio Rack?

This is too funny--I was writing my post while at the same time Albert posted his--when I submitted it--that's when his appeared. I like your ideas Albert--wish I had hit submit just a little faster.

I am not sure you guys are on the right path. If you sink concrete into the ground you are ensuring you get vibrations from one of the most likely sources, the planet we live on - it rumbles and grunts all the time, and transmits energy from passing vehicles. I still reckon that whatever you do you need to use a very light and rigid structure as the last step between your equipment and any supporting structure, with sharp point interfaces. I will not go further because I have already stated these opinions elsewhere and at length. If you will pardon me for a moment and hopefully accept I am not wishing to criticise, my general observation and generalisation is that Americans tend to veer towards over-building things and appear to inherently believe in using significant mass in anything they build. I could point to many American products as examples, and to the difference between reviews on either side of the Atlantic of such things as remote controls, where Americans want a remote machined from a solid piece of aluminium, and others want one that is light and easy to hold. I have often pondered that this seems to lead American audiophiles in the wrong direction a lot of the time when it comes to equipment support. Sorry for the gross generalisation - I happen to like your 60lb CD players with their half inch thick aluminium face plates.

That was exactly what I was wondering, would the school of light vs solid mass come to oppose each other. It seems to me idea one, solid mass would be very easy to achieve if your on the bottom floor with slab on grade or crawl space. I could see simply cutting out a portion of the floor, digging down a few feet and pouring concrete. I think this could be achieved in a very affordable fashion. This construction method of isolating a portion of a floor is used quite often in manufacturing. I would "being American and all" tend to see this as the proper direction, after all, everything eventually ends up sitting on the earth. The next step in this direction would be to incorporate the spring and isolation techniques used in earthquake design. In our case the spring size would be less than for a building. I would assume we could find someone who could determine the design of a spring isolation platform if anyone wanted to experiment.
I am however quite intrigued by Redkiwi line of thinking. What is the easiest way to create an extremely lightweight completely isolated system that has the most separation from the earth. Again, assuming a rack system is well spiked, what is the ultimate bearing to retain the benefits of the light weight system? Or is it adequate to simply have a rack sit anywhere as long as it's spiked? It seems to me that this is not the answer, so I'd love to hear ideas on this aproach.

Hi JD. I was being a bit provocative, albeit trying not to criticise "being American and all", by pointing out that I think "you all" (if I can use that term mate?) have a tad too much faith in throwing mass at an engineering problem. I do believe that light and rigid gets out of the way of the music better. I don't like much British equipment but their light and rigid approach seems to work. But I don't believe a floppy floor under the rack is good either. I really don't know the best way to bolster the floor as it is difficult to experiment. But I recall Caterham1700 (who knows much more about this than me) stating in another post that the biggest source of vibration energy muddying up the sound of our systems was in the ground under our houses. So direct coupling our gear to the ground does not sound right to me. If I am honest, I too have felt that a massive support must surely be less subject to vibration than something very light. But if you ponder on the physics theory you realise that the more massy support vibrates with the same energy as the light support, but holds on to that energy longer. There are times when I have been fooled into thinking a massy support sounds better, only to realise later that the music was robbed of energy and that there was smeering at low frequencies (which some like since it adds bass weight). The execution of light and rigid is also not easy - the principle problem being getting a shelf that is light and rigid, but also appropriately damped.

O.K. Red, I'm following so far. The shelf of course we've discussed at length and I believe as you do that the Nueance is as good a solution as we've found so far. If we're acceptant of that statement, then the next issue is the interface between the shelf and the support. Again I feel very confident that you have provide some excellent recommendations on that topic. The next issue is the rack or base for the shelf. I'm personally at the point of wanting to investigate racks, construction methods, and design philosophy. I have gotten some good input from Caterham 1700 off site and hope some of the products he's trying work out. In the mean time I was thinking of trying some D.I.Y. systems just to get more in tune with the issues. The first question that comes to mind for me is material. I wonder if steal is the best material to use or is it just used because that's what was used in the past? Is brass, aluminum, graphite, or whatever a better choice? I realize the difficulties of working with aluminum or graphite vs the ease of steal, but have the other options been explored? I was also wondering if welded is the best solution vs, bolting with isolation between each member. Any thought on these ideas?