Redwiki - About racks, shelves...

Thanks for the description, Dekay. Sorry to hear of the problems you are having. The Studio Tech rack is so inexpensively priced, I was thinking to do as you are doing - buy it and then purchase custom shelves from Neuance. In my case, though, some of the individual components are quite heavy. Among other items, I'll be putting an Aesthetix Io with two dedicated power supplies - at 50 lbs for each power supply, plus 30 lbs for the audio section itself - so I need something that will be quite dependable under a heavy load. Hopefully, your experience with the Studio Tech is just a bad run of parts as you hypothesize.

Gregm. I have tried all materials known to man (ask my wife how many shelves lurk in the basement), so can report on Perspex. The best thickness seems to be around 12mm. It is really too heavy in my opinion and not damped sufficiently in the lower treble. Therefore you get good bass weight, but slightly behind the beat, and a bit of accentuated presence. The accentuated presence gets obscene if you support the perspex with spikes, or if you use cones between component and shelf. In particular the BDR cones seem to really set off a mutual resonance with Perspex. I found Corian to be better (which is also an acrylic but much denser than Perspex) than Perspex, and really not bad. But neither approach the Neuance. If you use Corian or Perspex, I recommend using very thin hard rubber pads (3 or 4) between rack and shelf. And then use soft footers between shelf and component. This will tame the resonance I have referred to reasonably well and if the footers are Vibrapods the bass will speed up a bit.

The Neuance is not a perfect solution, but it is damn good. Being very light compared with what most people use for shelves, you will find the bass is much faster, but you may find it lightweight compared with what you are used to. I reckon the Neuance is just more accurate, and the bass weight when using heavier shelves comes from the energy stored by those shelves being dissipated slowly - causing a perceived slowing of the bass. What you prefer will depend on whether you prefer the bass weight or improved PRAT.

The other issue with Neuance shelves is that the heavier the component, the more you tend to get a bit of unwanted warmth creeping into the lower mids and upper bass. I reckon that Neuance is trying to make a shelf that tries to optimise the trade-offs between each of light/rigid/damped, but that when the component gets out of the expected weight range it starts to flex a bit. That is probably why they make an alpha (for light components) and a beta (for moderately heavy components), and I think Ken is still working on a shelf for very heavy components. So it is a good idea to get the right grade shelf for the weight of the component to avoid the only slight coloration I can detect with the Neuance.

Hi Rushton: I will let you what happens with Audio Advisor and Studio Tech in regard to replacing the defective parts. With equipment as heavy as yours though I would look for upturned spikes that do not use any type of horizontal support system (other than the side bars/supports themselves). As a last resort I will machine the posts myself, but will need the use of a drill press and a tap and die set.

Thank you, Redkiwi. I assume Neuance is the current way to go. In cheapo mode however, other than corian (txs, again, kiwi) any experience with Maplewood or similar?

I am thinking of building a custom rack where each shelf will be individually suspended using plastic-covered metal wire -- two wires for each shelf. The rack: two rectangles connected via two metal boards welded on top and one (much wider) on the bottom. Spikes at the bottom.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Greg

Gregm, I have tried the suspemded shelf idea and found it promising but eventually abandoned it. My main concern was that the wire used has a resonance like a guitar string and gets through to the shelf unless you do something to decouple it. Nylon coated wire was, in fact, the worst sounding that I tried (sorry). Solid nylon fishing wire of high strength is OK, and so is nylon rope. But their colorations were still quite evident. I even tried suspending the Neuance shelves but they definitely worked better sitting on top of point contacts. Therefore I conclude that the suspension idea would probably work best if you used a shelf like Corian or Perspex, where you decoupled the wire from the shelf by some form of rubber, polymer etc (which happens to be what the Arcici does using Navcom and Perspex), or with a more damped shelf like the Neuance if you found some way of ensuring the Neuance was suspended in a way that it sat on top of point contacts. I suspect there is merit in suspending racks rather than sitting them on steel racks, but that just as with a steel rack you cannot just let the shelf rest on the rack (ie. you need a soft pad or hard spike between them), then the same applies to not letting the shelf connect directly to the wire.