what is the theory behind maple stands and racks?

Audiofeil, you are correct in that most baseball bats are traditionally made of ash. A few years ago, maple became the trendy new bat when MLB approved the "Sam" bat made by a guy in Canada. When Barry Bonds adopted the maple bats, they started to become more common. However, there is now a movement by MLB executives to get maple bats banned. When they shatter, they tend to break into big chunks with huge jagged sharp ends that go flying into the crowd. They're considered dangerous because of this. The players who like to use the bats are not too thrilled about this and there might even be some union issues involved if MLB follow through on trying to ban them.

Anyway, the new season starts today! Take me out to the ballpark!

Mapleshade claims they have done comparison tests and have found that North American Maple "sounds the best". They are in the business of selling the stuff, so I take their claims about maple with a pinch of saw dust. Who knows - maybe a little bit of the right kind of "sustain" in your platform makes your audio gear "sing" like a stratocaster?

In my limited fooling around with different isolation platforms, I cannot tell the difference in sound between Maple, Ash or Bamboo. BUT I find that I can tell the difference between intact wood and MDF, particle board, synthetic materials or steel (although Aluminum may be a good choice), with wood sounding the best to me. And the thicker and heavier the wood the better.

I can see it now - knownothing's Genuine North American Tree Stump Equipment Stands...

Any fans of granite shelves?

Magfan, I used a 1.5" exotic granite slab under my TEAC Esoteric X-01 Ltd CDp for a while. . . In my opinion it hardened the sound. At the time I 'solved' the problem by interposing a $15 IKEA square stool top between the 2. But now the pretty granite has been relegated to end-table-top duties in the living room, and I have the CDp on top of a 50 year old 42"x22"x2" slab of solid african Mansogna wood. . . it does not seem to impart the system bizarre resonances. Some rack makers do use granite, but often not by itself. E.G. HRS does not use pure granite shelves. . . but uses granite as the top layer of composite shelves. G.

thanks for the interesting reponses. It appears that maple may be worth experimenting with. It is mysterious, or at least, not clear to me, how the coupling/draining vibration thing works, but that it can audibly improve things I have no doubt. There seems to be some combination of equipment coupling, vibration draining and isolation that works, but it appears to be difficult to predict how or why or what works. For example, I tried putting my amp (large tube amp, has large rubber=type feet) on spikes (i.e., instead of the "rubber" feet), on a white acrylic cutting board, sitting directly on the floor - poor result. Then tried the amp on the cutting board which was sitting on spikes, on the floor - excellent result (at least as good as a Billy Bags amp stand, which is, in a way, a similar combination of an inert shelf supported on steel coupled to the floor.)