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Footers/Shelf Material

I am still on the shelf quest, trying Corian, Neuance and Maple Butchers Block (the latter is still to arrive, but is coming). The Neuance is still the best - the Corian less dynamic, slower and a little warmer. But I have also been trying lots of footers with these shelves, hoping for a magical combination. And I found one.. With hard shelves like Corian, glass, perspex, marble etc (including the Neuance) - (but definitely not for MDF), the best I have found is the E-A-R Large Isolation Feet, $3.25 each at the Parts Connection. With hard shelves all of the cones I have tried are way too peaky. Plain old hard rubber feet are muddy and smeered. Vynil feet in general are "zingy" and tend to hardness from the middle of the mid-range on up, and a bit smeered on down - and this includes Vibrapods. The Vibrapods are a bit too lively in the upper mids and not great with string tone, but are also not coherent from top to bottom (but are otherwise second-best to the E-A-R feet. But the E-A-R feet give you all the detail of the best of the other footers (cones, squishy feet etc) with NO peakiness, and fantastic solidity to images. They are an unfortunate shade of blue and look like a hard synthetic rubber, but do not have any of the fuzz and smeer that you get with hard rubber footers. More neutral overall than anything else, all the detail as you get with cones but with none of the peakiness, none of the smeer you get with rubber, vynil, or sorbothane. I like them. There are also small feet at $1 each, but my components are too heavy for them and they sound muddy and grey - but they might work with light components - they are used by Sonic Frontiers on all their better gear. Please note I do NOT recommend them if you use MDF shelves.
redkiwi
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
Dan2112 - I am only just getting to grips with the Butchers Block and perceive some small problems, but they are small. I have stated above that the E-A-R feet are great with hard shelves and still hold to that. But I don't call the Butchers Block or MDF hard. With these softer shelves I tend to prefer cones. With softer shelves I also like supporting them with up-turned spikes (like most steel shelves have), but with hard shelves a thin piece of hard synthetic rubber between rack and shelf seems best (Note that Mana racks do not hold to this last rule - always use spikes). So far the Neuance seems to work more like a hard shelf and the Butchers Block more like a soft shelf. So it is E-A-Rs between components and the Neuance and cones between components and the Butchers Block (I think). So far with the Butchers Block the sound is wonderfully open, detailed, extended at the extremes, dynamic and with a realistically large soundstage - but just a tad slow (only very slightly) and there is a very fine grain (that I am working on reducing). Hope this clarifies. I have ordered more Neuance shelves and will probably only really know how good they are when I have more than just the one - but it is very very fast, with no significant resonant peaks.
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
I hate it when I speak too soon. I am probably doing it again but want to correct my last post. I have gone back to the E-A-R feet between the monoblocks and the Maple Butchers Block, but am supporting the Maple with Mana sound frames - thick rigid steel, spiked up and down. And it sounds good. The cones didn't quite work on more extended listening. I will probably shut up now until I have tried this out for longer as well as in the other systems I am using.
sol322
426 posts
 
Dekay Kimber Powerkord is very light and has been recommended for front end components. I have one and I need to make a decision for where to install it either the preamp or the digital source unfortunately I have to hard wire it in place my first impression is to go with the digital, what do you think?
sol322
426 posts
 
Dekay and group how have you set up your power cords. Are they elevated from the floor? How do you do this? I had overlooked the effect of the weight of the PC on the components interesting detail, could you comment further on this. Thanks
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,552 posts
 
Hi Sol: I have always had the PC's hanging in the air from the power conditioner to the component. My gear is placed in (and now on top of as well) an old Tansu cabinet and all of the components are at least 5' off the floor. I never upgraded the PC to my integrated Musical Fidelity SS amp (which has a seperate power supply and either captive cords or ones with odd plugs) so I have do not have experience with upgrading PC's on preamps. Most of the feedback seems to say that more improvement will be had upgrading digital front ends though. I just received a new tube amp that accepts replacement cords and in this case I am not too worried about the weight of the PC (within reason) because of the sheer mass of the amp and its overall balance (weight distribution). I also do not plan on placing the amp on cones (way too precarious) due to earthquakes and the fragile nature and expense of the tubes (300b's). For this reason I do not place my mini moniters on cones either (though they really did sound better when placed on sets of Mapleshade cones). My main gripe is using heavy PC's on DAC's and player/transports that are placed on cones. Any of the methods that I have used to "support" the PC's on the digital components so far seem to change the sound (each method of support sounds different from the other) and this is why I suspect that they are mucking up the isolation components. I am also asuming that a free and hanging PC would be the way to go (this seems to be the case with speaker cable), but again this is only a guess. If I end up liking the overall sound of a lighter PC (such as the Mapleshade PC) on the DAC, it will still not prove much. The only thing that I am certain of is that the position and "drag" of a PC changes the sound of my digital front end. I also just cleared more vertical height to play with and will next try top weighting the DAC and transport to see if it will stabilize the sound a little more, regardless of PC placement. Too much top weighting can sound dead though, IMO.
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