On the draining of resonance.....

Schubert, are you saying I should still be listening to my 1967 Magnavox all-in-one turntable/IA/speaker system?

Not to open a can of worms, but one of my Yoga instructors often refers to Yoga as an antidote for "spiritually deprived Westerners".

It resonates with me when stated. Not all Westerners are spiritually deprived of course and all are free to seek it out but spirituality is not a core tenet of modern Western Culture by any stretch so one has to find ways to seek it out on their own. Audiophiles included I suppose. Is teh gear teh end in of itself or a means to teh end of enjoying music, which IS often a spiritually uplifting event.

To me, music is my spirituality--it amazes, humbles and uplifts me. The system is my altar, out of which all nourishment flows. To acquire better sound is to bring a deeper reverence. It is a material pursuit in the interest of a spiritual revelation. Joseph Campbell remarked that the great cathedrals were built to render an experience of God. When you walk in, you are removed from your domesticity toward a deeper meditation. Even your local church, with the high ceiling and pipe organ, is meant to render a sense of that. And when you walk out, you are back to the pedestrian concerns of survival, etc. The goal, as he said, is to retain some sense of that meditation that transcends the more mundane concerns of life. This would also be the Zen state of being.
Anyway, let's start a new church out of our hobby. Each of our homes will be a sanctuary--we will call it Audiology, and we can all get tax breaks on our houses. We will need a high priest--anyone?
I am serious on the first part, though--I have been through a religious conversion, only to return to music as my inspiration.

JAfreeman,

Great post! I can relate to that.

Ommmmmm. Of course you would ask me that! My wood blocks I was using on my old shelf (and when I say old, I mean like 175 years old!!) don't fit on my new shelf, so my turntable is sitting on the ground, which is OK, because the ground is a concrete slab over 300 tons (literally, don't ask) of crushed rock. My old Thorens TD150mkII sounds best in this configuration sitting directly on the floor on its little rubber feet. The bass is from middle earth somewhere. In my rather flexible old wardrobe, my CD player, table and amp all sounded better supported with cones on a large wooden slabs that were isolated from the actual shelf (purely home brew) as described above and in the images from Mapleshade. If you have a concrete basement floor resting on a large mass of rock, I might recommend trying your turntable or disk drive on their stock feet sitting right on the floor. I haven't tried my amp in this configuration. If/when I reconstitute old setup, will post photos.