Do stands make a difference for equipment?

My general impression of them is that on the whole they probably make a worthwhile difference, although I myself have only owned a pair of isolation platforms from Alan Maher that I finally pulled the trigger on only recently. But they've been some kind of wonderful. These are of the newer kind that offer electrical noise reduction and isolation in one product. My rig is a $5k, CD-only, preampless system and I started by placing one stand under the Oppo 103 transport and the other under a Ric-Schultz-modified DEQ2496 DAC...no contest, a night-and-day difference for me. I will be buying 2 more stands for my monoblocks. For me too, there's no going back.

I guess it depends on what particular products Elizabeth, some are more expensive than others.The Star Sound Audio Points I mentioned are quite reasonable in price yet yield very worthwhile improvement that`s more than subtle. Their Sistrum stands are more money but are`nt excessively so, and boy do they work! It`s all a matter of perspective. These well engineered products will expose the often 'hidden' potential in good quality components.Effectively addressing vibration is worth the effort.
Regards,

I went from heavy duty glass shelves to Copulare wooden shelves and it made a tremendous difference in the playback of my source components and the amps. The sound improved tremendously. I also upgraded to a heavy mass Clearaudio MontBlanc turntable stand from a standard wall mount one, and again, it was an improvement in sound.

Ivan, you bring up another important point regarding your Maher stands: electrical isolation. How is this implemented in that stand? I presume you mean some grounding scheme using leads, etc. I am a big fan of electrical grounding schemes, and rather than run leads from my equipment chassis, I actually incorporate my sistrum stand instead. This was suggested to my by Starsound. It theoretically creates a larger grounding plane from what I was told.

Elizabeth, your position is a little contrarian in light of what most of us spend over an audio lifetime. However, I do agree with the allocating money wisely and according to scale. A $250 CDP does not necessarily warrant megabuck stands, but there are many good options out there. In terms of performance, you would be shocked by what a good stand like a Sistrum sp101 can do under a relatively modest set of speakers. It becomes a whole new entity and it is not simply 7.5% better....