Any time you elevate a given element (or elements) of an audio system over others, you are building a worse system. It is one thing to have a budget and work up one component at a time, but it's entirely different to subjectively dismiss some parts as less important to sound quality. One outstanding way to achieve mediocrity in HiFi is to focus attention on a couple of elements of the system as though they carry the preponderance of sound quality. The most important aspect of speakers is their genre, which dictates preference for most.
Suggesting that platforms are more important than transducers is one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever seen here. Why do I suspect that the person who arrogantly made that comment has not done an actual comparison between the Moab/stands versus the Ulfbehrt? We are talking serious ego problem and lack of sensibility.
Follow that sort of foolishness and the odds are very good that you will build inferior systems. You will be wasting your money relative to what you could have done. It reminds me of the ludicrous comment years ago that someone made wherein they claimed that particular stands made their speakers sound not like their $20K MSRP, but like $60K. It doesn't get much more stilted than that!
Most audiophiles seem ignorant of the fact that it is not the exotic construction or materials that is the vast majority of the benefit of stands, but it is the lofting of the speaker, raising it up, effectively elevating the soundstage. This has a dramatic impact on the performance. I use hard rubber hockey pucks to do so. I am not going to spend an inordinate amount of my money on subjectively indistinguishable tweaks and methods. Feel free to read my article Audiophile Law: Burn In Test Redux at Dagogo.com, wherein I tested stands, isolation devices, cables, etc. along with break in and found ALL to be a waste of time in actual comparison using my Imbalanced System Test (only half the system, one channel, treated). Now, before you start shooting off your mouth, go read the article. If you simply want to argue out of ignorance, I'm not interested.
Go ahead, do the Imbalanced System Test with one channel using hockey pucks and the other your vaunted stands - if you dare! Are you prepared to face the possibility that you blew thousands of dollars on a device that raises a speaker, and it can be replicated sonically by a hockey puck? If you don't have a gratuitous shift, an awful imbalance, a rift in the sound in terms of tonality, center imaging, soundstage, etc. then you have wasted your money. Remember, the claim is that the stands make SUCH a huge difference, transform the sound, etc. So, if that is the case, using humble hockey pucks for one channel should cause sonic disaster. Go ahead, try it.
I do not mean to be particularly harsh about this, but enough foolishness already! :(
As you can see, I don't support marginal methods to build superior systems. I use methods that show better results in building hundreds of audio systems.
