AV Racks. What difference does it make?

While I believe we're all here to learn, and share our experiences, how one poses questions, directly results in the answers received. Sarcasm generally results in sarcastic answers, and mentioning rack differences must be "horse pucky" and akin to hearing differences because of wearing different footwear and clothing, and negatively implying that room acoustics make no difference is not asking for help, but implying rack differences are voodoo, and should be dismissed as such. Not a good way to seek help.
By researching this site and others, the above answers could have been easily gleaned, and perhaps TWL assumed you had done so, and your question was more to incite, rather than to enlist help. Slappy, only you know your motivation, but in the future, if you're truly interested in insightful answers from as many folks as possible, perhaps limiting the sarcasm and editorializing, may result in even more cogent responses.
This hobby has been fun and quite surprising. Things I didn't think should (or want to) make a difference, have. Over the years, I've kept an open mind, but more importantly, open ears, and have improved my system.
Obviously, the more resolved the system, the more important, or noticeable the tweaks. Differences are just that, it's up to the end user to determine whether the differences are for the better or worse, but racks, cables, footers, acoustic applications, et al, make differences.

Eldartford, right now I don't see the point in spending big bucks to purchase say, a Rix Rax, Grand Prix Audio or the like, although I did consider Zoethecus.

I've decided to build a rack system that will be bolted to the studs in my wall. I bought nice 16/4 piece of padauk as the spine support and had three maple shelves custom made to the sizes I wanted. All this for about $140 including shipping from hardwood suppliers I occasionally buy from on Ebay.

It's a little experiment to see if I can design and build an audio rack that is aesthetically pleasing and performs well.

Slappy, sorry if I offended you, but I felt that the main body of your thread was just as offensive. Whether you realize it or not, the majority of your thread body was directed at ridiculing the use of audio racks as a viable product that can help the sound. I understand that perhaps you felt that was being funny. But it was being funny at other's expense. When you set the tone of ridicule, you can expect a similar tone in response.

To answer your questions, the racks will make a difference, either better or worse, depending on how well they do the job of removing the offending vibrations in the system. There is differing opinion on what works best, but most agree that it does work.

Slappy, you are a white belt and a very poor clown. I'm the one who's notorious for spicy, fiery and entertaining posts in this forum. On classical comedy Nrchy can give you a run for your money speaking in Groucho Marx's style. So step aside. Like TWL told you, do your research and stop implying the experienced don't know.

For your information, I have mastered the art of *tuning* components using different woods, cones, materials and devices. I have absolutely no reason to write a treatsie on how to do it. You have to do your own legwork. Remember, this is a journey, not a destination.

With psychic power and primal intensity,

Having been in the server/storage networks and enclosure industry during a pervious internship, I garnered some 411 on how acoustics and vibration energy can induce the amount of transfer inaccuracies and bandwidth impedements during high speed/volume data transfer.

This has led me to come up with many different ways to augmenting/optimizing the stereo's musical acoustics. The root of this approach is in the belief that every material has a natural resonant frequency (remember plate techtonics and seismic waves?). And, any material that comes into contact with the stereo will mechanically or physically alter the sound characterstics of the stereo.

Most important, and this is a disagreement with previous threads, I feel a "good" rack is just as or more essential for digital than for analog since, in my opinion, digital data transfer integrity in audio is years behind computer network technologies which is the one of the culprit to why digital sounds so "digital."

So, along with better data transfer hardware and software, the casing holding the hardware is crucial in order to ascertain higher fidelity digital audio transmission.

Lastly, and perhaps this can be started/stated in a thread of its own, I've gained a tremendous amount of audio "heads up" from this forum. I would hate to see a few bad seeds in the form of 1) shills, 2) fallous logic and 3) vulgarities ruin it for the rest of us. So, to Slappy who has made these types of implications, you definitely earn and deserve this rarest of golden sombreros of disgrace. If you are offended, I did so intentionally.