Cd transport isolation

Trial and error is correct. Put some weight or absorbing material on top of the player, unless it is a top loader. I am a dealer for several lines of products and have found the are all effective to a degree but not to sound alike. Cones like the Star Sound do a good job of transferring vibrations out of the unit, others try to prevent vibration being transferred from the unit to the shelf. Roller bering platforms work also but a little disconcerting at times. I have some discs made by a German company , M something, which are made of ground up and cryoed metal. Very effective, may even over-damp some things but fairly expensive by my standards. They make complete racks of the same exotic material but I haven't seen one, several times the cost of the Star Sound one I use. In general about anything is better than nothing.

I would have one custom shelf made of ½” or ¾” thick black acrylic to the size you need. Then try your CDP to hear how much improvement you hear. Next use three brass audio points under the CPD, or you could try any other isolation devices. Go with which ever sounds the best.

I'm currently doing some experimenting with my CDP & although I've been using isolation devices for years, just last week I used dynamat & covered the entire top & sides. This is on an older Rotel RCD-855, so I'm not worried about how it looks. I've done other mods but won't go into that aspect now.

At first I was going to just use the dynamat from the inside but there wasn't enough room. I did cover a few exposed areas on the chassis then decided to completely cover the top, which includes the sides. The piece measured something like 23" x 10.5".

The results from this were a little more detail came through, like extended decay, i.e. the reverb & delay on both instruments & vocals and a bit more separation in some background details. On one song for example, I could make out that "something" in the background was a shaker, which wasn't that close to a mic. Background vocals had a little more separation too, which made them less muffled sounding. The overall clarity improved as a result of this.

The CDP is in a wooden rack w/wooden shelves (intensely reinforced) sitting on a Bright Star Audio sandbox with Herbie's grunge buster 1" balls sitting in FIM polished cups with 3 approx. 1 lb. ea. lead filled ankle weights on top.

My next experiment is using an old Rega plinth I've cut down to fit on top of the unit & will put the weights on top of that. I've almost finished filling in the holes, so will be trying that out tomorrow some time.

You also mentioned speaker isolation and there's been a lot written about that too. Rather than type more here, I did a review of VR4GenIII's you can read.

Keep in mind that the real wood will break easier do to its grain.Consider extra reinforcements to make the shelves strong enough to hold your gear.Real wood veneer is an option to.It was and still is used by great furniture builders.The resonance part is something I'll leave for the others.

I found that my Forsell transport was extraordinarily affected by isolation devices, which I never could understand but I actually could hear clearly. In my experience, the best isolation I gave it involved using an air and silicone-filled bicycle inner tube in a base that was damped with sand and lead shot, and putting that on either a Seismic Sink or a Gingko Cloud 10 platform. This combination did a good job damping the vibrations of the unit as well as isolating it from vibrations transmitted from the rack (since my entire front end is in a different room from the speakers, I had less of a problem with airborne vibrations than others might have). Unfortunately every inner tube I used eventually would leak (fortunately the base with the sand did a good job containing the mess), so I ultimately wouldn't recommend doing this anymore. I can't say that isolating the other transports I have owned has made nearly as big a difference as isolation did with the Forsell (that was one tweaky unit).