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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
jadem6's avatar
jadem6
1,074 posts
 
Redkiwi, I've followed your progress on shelf material with great intrest. I know that finding maple was an issue for you and you are reviewing it now. I'm interested in following up your experiments with different thicknesses of maple, mahogany, pear and anything else anyone might suggest. In order for me to first relate my study to your previose findings I was going to start with a similiar board. Thus the question, what size all three measurements are you using now, and is it a built-up (butcherblock) or a single board. Thank-you for your research and following information. J.D.
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
Jadem6, I have two boards of 454mm * 354mm * 57mm (or approx 18.5" by 14.5" by 2.25" for the metrically challenged). To my knowledge they were cut from a large piece of Maple Butchers Block and are made up of glued pieces of Maple, not a solid block of Maple. I find it to be good, but not as good as the Neuance shelves. However the Neuance shelves cannot support the weight of my monoblock amps and so that is where I use the Maple. I really need more time to be more definitive, but I would recommend you look into the Neuance shelves as they seem to me to be a better idea, being faster, more transparent and less colored. The Beta version of the Neuance is able to support my Theta gear which are around 40lbs each, so it is really only large amps that cannot be accommodated. If you do try them then you should be aware that they need about a day to settle. When you first put the Neuance in place the sound will be warm and mushy, and then over the next two days all will clear up. You get the best of everything with the Neuance; neutral without peakiness, speed and extension, fine detail without smearing. Iswear I can almost identify the brand of guitar strings there is so much clean detail and natural color.
subaruguru
1,375 posts
 
Mark> Greetings! Just discovered this thread, after posting at length on your older "Neuance" thread, so I refer you there. I read your comments on the EAR footers with interest, and am curious as to what Ken thinks about their use instead of the
metal spikes he likes...Ernie
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
Hi Ernie - I have just finished posting to the one you refer to - I must be following you around. My reference to the E-A-R footers was for between Neuance shelf and component, whereas Ken's was for between rack and shelf - I believe. In fact I have found that if you use the Neuance shelf correctly (ie. on a welded steel shelf, spiked up and down, no sand-filling etc) then the sound is just great with a component's standard feet. Where the E-A-R feet come in is this - once you have used the Neuance properly, then all fancy footers sound gross, the only thing that I have found that sounds OK is the E-A-R. The E-A-R adds warmth, bloom and a very liquid smoothness without upsetting PRAT and resolution noticeably. Probably ideal for taming the highs you have been trying to do for a while. But too many E-A-R in the system can take away immediacy and openness. For example, in one system we preferred to use a fair number of E-A-R feet under the components, but when we swapped out the Siltech cable for the Coincident cable or the Wireworld cable, we preferred to take all of the E-A-R feet out. So I found the E-A-R feet did not undo the effect of the Neuance and was a reasonably successful way of getting the right balance of openness and immediacy with warmth and liquidity.
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