Wood blocks underneath components?? snake oil?

Wood = okay but ceramic (pumice) foot sanding stone material is more neutral than wood if that's your preference. Ceramic replaced everything I tried, included roller feet, sorbothane, wood, vibrapods, etc., etc.

Stereophile has an excellent article titled "Bad Vibes" I don't have time to get the link.

Dumb question time for all you resonance control affictionados....

Its my understanding that everything resonanates at some frequency. By using different materiels aren't you just changing the resonance frequency? Wouldn't you need to know the frequency at which your present system was resonanating in order to select a materiel to move the resonance frequency to a frequency where it becomes less of a problem (I would guess that frequency would be one which was not being excited by other stuff in your system or room)?

Help me to understand this.

Thanks........

The last time I replied to a similar post it never made it past the moderators for some reason. Placing different materials like wood or brass under a cd player or tube equipment will alter the sound slightly at times for better or worse but are not very effective in isolating the component from the mechanical vibrations via the rack. If you look up isolation or vibration damping devices you will find that materials like polyurethane are used often. Sorbothane is just ultra soft polyurethane. As a mechanical engineer with access to vibration analysers it is easy for me to see which materials dampen vibrations and which don't but I doubt I can convince any of the serious audiophiles to give up their high dollar cones and ball bearings for something that cost a few bucks.

Rotarius...could you please elaberate...

Are you saying sorbothane, which most of my equipment came with and which it still sits on, is one of the better vibration damping materials? Is there something better in the polyurethane family, or are you refering to another material?

Please share with us, the benefit of your knowledge

Or suffer yourself and plow through the article, it's heavy reading:
[/url=http://stereophile.com/reference/52/]bad vibes[/url]

Newbee, I don't think ceramic stone has a resonance, I could be wrong though :-).

Rotarious, question is do you prefer to isolate, transmit, or dampen vibration. Are you pushing the air bladder concept? Check out the bad vibes article, you can't eliminate the vibes. Here are some excerpts:

"The best vibration performance you can achieve is nearly 100% transmission of floor-borne vibrations through the platform without amplifying them or generating and new resonances in floor OR platform"

"Transmitting nearly all of the floor vibrations to a component. . . would be a significant accomplishment compared to most real-world coupling schemes"

C'mon guys read it your yourself.