Wood blocks underneath components?? snake oil?


Hi, I have read that putting some sort of woood blocks underneath components helps in the sound. In particular, I believe Ayre actually suggests doing this. Can anyone explain to me how this helps?
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I agree with Newbee, your equipment will sound different with wood footers compared to Sorbothane or brass points. Some Audiogon members say Maple is best and others like composite materials.

As pointed out, you can cut up a few pieces at Home Depot or maybe pick up scraps of various woods at your local lumber yard. These scraps should be free.

If you don't like the sound, use them to start your next BBQ :^).
OH NO!!! Don't go to Home Depot. The scrap lumber at Lowes is much more musical.

Seriously, pretty much anything under your stuff will make it sound different. I agree to try the cheap tweaks like tennis balls, scrap wood, super balls, sandwich bags with sand in them, etc. before spending any serious money to see if it makes any difference to you.
No snake oil at all, great for resonance control and added dampening. Very inexpensive DIY techniques, I would even go 1 step further and try Frank Tchang's feet, beautifully designed stacked and insulated wood feet with holes drilled throught the structure, really tunes your sound.
If you go on to the Cardas.com website to read about the Cardas Myrtlewood Golden Cuboids, the basis for this product introduction is explained. It is hidden in the "accesories" section.
Ayre has these labelled for them, I believe.
Basically, vibration absorbing, and an apparent tuning effect, combine to improve performance. Works well where I have placed them, but no single brand of reasonably priced footer is "perfect" for every component, so you have to listen when trying the myriad of footer choices out there.
The Cardas Myrtlewood Golden Cuboids (the rather Biblical sounding name kind of gets you in the mood to hear better performance, don't you think?) are inexpensive, don't add any instability to the supported component, and do not add much height, compared to the original equipment feet.
There are now very many support products competing to create the best support for a given item. If you never try any variations in component support, then you may never "miss" them, but fascinating to hear differences, if that is a part of the audio hobby you might enjoy.