Audio racks

I think a lot of this talk about isolation goes way beyond what's necessary for great audio enjoyment. As my equipment got better (and much heavier), the footers I used had the opposite results: muddier sound. 

Taking them out and placing them directly on a thick, maple shelf, pretty much does the trick. I don't have the room, vertically, to try out anything new so I went for some constrained layer damping pads from Les Davis Audio and heard a very slight improvement. That confirmed my suspicions, for now, that the way I have it now is quite good. 

Any well made piece of kit has, at the very least, some vibration isolation factored into its design. Yes, you can go with an all out assault on your setup and eventually find something that betters your situation, but you're chasing some very diminishing returns with your wallet.

Even my JBL speakers use small, wool felt dots between it and the metal stands that tilt them back a few degrees and the whole thing rest on a carpet, over concrete, over wood. The stands are flat with no spikes or footers of any kind and the imaging is rock solid.

All the best,
Nonoise

Thanks for the great suggestions--I've never heard of Symposium Acoustics. Nice stuff.
It's amazing to see the price differences b/w some of these builders for racks that look very much alike. One of the issues I have is that I prefer a 5 shelf system---many of these builders stop at 4 shelves. 

Symposium can give you 5 shelfs and customize it for you.Call Peter and talk to him.

Technically vibration isolation refers to isolating the component from very low frequency vibration (structureborne) primarily but also higher frequency vibrations, too. Damping is technically a separate issue and usually easier to accomplish. Some components like employ rubber feet or springy feet but until you get up into high end stuff I doubt you’ll find much of anything that’s particularly effective. What’s required imho is a comprehensive program of real isolation and resonance control for the entire system.

jred writes:

@millercarbon

Valid points. I use mid century low rise coffee tables and low height nightstands to hold my equipment. Real wood. Ahhh the golden days.

Anyways. What isolation or padding would you recommend for components?

I tried dozens of different materials, shapes, constructions, and products before settling on BDR as the best. By far. Very likely still is, but only if you can find them used as they are no longer made since the man behind it all DJ Casser died some years ago. Cones, Shelf, Those Things, etc all highly recommended- if you can find them.

Isolation incidentally is a misnomer. I did a demo one time for a friend to show him how much difference Cones make. Only instead of stopping the music like usual I let the player play while I lifted it on and off the Cones. When I asked if he heard the difference he said yes, "as soon as you picked it up!" What's funny about that is its way more isolated with me holding it than sitting on Cones or anything else. So "isolation" is BS. Everything vibrates. Every wire, capacitor, you name it, send a music signal through it its gonna start vibrating. Isolation is a Macguffin. Its much more useful to think in terms of vibration control.

Wood is good but keep in mind all my testing shows all components pick up, to some degree or other, the sonic signature of whatever they are placed on. People like the sound of wood- there's a reason its used in so many musical instruments after all - but it does color the sound. The different wood types (oak, pine, cocobolo, etc) each have their own sonic signature. Construction can be used to try and ameliorate this and get the best of both worlds- thicker and laminated works pretty good.

Anything soft or floaty will help lower the noise floor, blacker background, etc, but at the cost of dynamics and fine detail. This is part of the reason why just about anything you put under a component will improve the sound- just about anything is better than the crap rubber feet so many makers use. 

This is all very general info, which is just what you need in order to understand what is going on and why different things affect performance the way they do. Its all a complex blend of different materials stiffness, mass, and inherent vibration damping characteristics, in which shape plays a role as well.

Sorry, but the old BDR is so much better than anything else that all I can do is say either buy that, or throw a dart (but threads like this are chock full of dart throwers already), or go and listen. 

Or DIY. Frankly the best answer for an awful lot of people is gonna be the tried and true sand box. Doesn't have to be a box even, its the idea- packed sand, mixed with a little oil to keep it nice and tidy, effectively kills vibration. More adds mass, which is great for turntables but with a lot of other components you can do just fine with three CD sized and 1" deep. Then you put something hard on top to set your component on. The beauty of this is its modular- you can easily experiment with the top being different materials like wood, MDF, acrylic, etc. 

If it sounds like a lot of work well yeah, I guess so. But just imagine how much you can learn about vibration control this way.

Which I don't have to imagine at all. Because I did it. That's how I know.