At least yours costs nothing, the Hifi rack 100 X more for similar performance 
This may be a simplistic way of looking at it, but shouldn’t manufacturers pay more attention to the way the electronics inside their amplifiers/streamers/CD players are isolated (I know Naim does) ? The customer wouldn’t have to spend so much money on racks, perhaps.
Why Naim does? Quite all say that a Fraim enhances very significantly the sound.
I am not aware of any electronics that don’t benefit from a proper hifi rack. But maybe they exist.
To be fair, rack manufacturers aren’t swimming in a pool of magic claims. Microphony is not a fringe issue. When you get the data sheets for any off the shelf capacitor (for example) it has stated tolerances for microphony and the effects on performance and what frequencies are leaked. Even the data sheets for the tiny caps that cost 10 pennies in your laptop have this in their data sheets.
At the component level, this stuff counts. It’s not just hifi.
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Would a metal plate of some kind hovering in the air due to electromagnetic repulsion be feasible?
Possibly useless in reality if em effects affected the cartridge?
Does anyone remember that kids science show with Johnny Ball where they shot a tray across the studio with some electromagnetic rails underneath>
Feeling dated.
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No idea about a kids show or who Johnny Ball is, but I recall being fascinated by Eric Laithwaite’s linear motor being demonstrated. (Possibly one and the same thing, though I suspect what I saw may have been on Tomorrow’s World.)
I did start a thread on this a while back: Magnetic levitation for equipment isolation, though there weren’t many contributions, and I see that whatever links I had posed were removed. And of course magnetic levitation is used in the Maglev turntable - does that still need anything special in terms of a stand?
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Absolutely true.
As far as magic claims by manufacturers with regard to racks goes, that’s another matter I think. Yes by and large racks do enhance the performance. My issue is not that - but the unsubstantiated claims made by manufacturers with regard to how their racks work. Talk of energy pathways to earth, avoidance of resonance through the use of non-parallel surfaces etc, etc. Where is the scientific/engineering evidence to support these claims? If it exists, and I’m not necessarily saying it doesn’t, then I’ve yet to read of it anywhere. In the absence of this evidence then all these claims amount to is nothing but gobbledygook.
What I sort of suspect is that some manufacturers do design their racks based on solid engineering principles. However a number of manufacturers just jump on the bandwagon and cobble together something which amounts to nothing but a simple set of shelves with nothing special about them. They then make inflated claims about what they do and how they do it based on the genuine claims made by manufacturers who have actually done the engineering research.
Just my opinion of course. I could be wrong and I’m open to correction if anyone knows different.
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Yes I do! I also remember How? and Young Scientist of the Year. Great shows, entertaining, fascinating and very educational. Do they still have programs like this for kids? - what a crying shame if they don’t.
I think that there are a few stands or isolation devices that use this principle. It’s not a cure-all though. Mechanical forces can still be transmitted through the interface via the magnetic fields despite no physical contact.
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To some extent, but I have found one of the sensitive aspects of equipment on stands is the external pressure connections from, mains, interconnects etc.
If the device is moving subtly with respect to the lead at the connection, perhaps through vibration, resonance etc, then I believe this has a detrimental affect on performance.
I think most of us know the pressure contact connections are the achilles heals in many setups. If we soldered our interconnects and mains leads to our devices, I am fairly sure performance would take a step forward.
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Like gas suspension, it’s just another form of “spring”; however the suspended part has greater mass than is needed for gas suspension.
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You do t know who Johnny Ball is? Blimey. He’s Zoe’s dad.
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Not a name recognised unless half of Cannon & Ball, a duo that I didn’t appreciate.
Just googled: his children’s TV was rather late or too young for me - in any case our TV watching as kids was strictly limited to an hour or less a day on weekday early eves and apart from Dr Who, only whatever our parents watcheon Sat or Sun eves.
You’ve got me wondering now if it was that linear motor on Tomorrow’s World (which I also watched avidly) though my recollection is that I saw it on one of Johnny Ball’s shows. Maybe it was on both.
He really did produce some fantastic STEM themed TV Shows for kids on the BBC when the modern STEM term didn’t really exist - a really natural down to earth presenter who taught us so many interesting things as youngsters in the late 70s/early 80s. A shame they don’t make TV shows like think of a Number these days.
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I Googled him earlier too - in his mid 80s now. I found a few clips on YouTube and he was an excellent communicator who brought a lot of fun to the presentations for youngsters. Not many remaining episodes it seems as the BBC wiped so much of it.
Gosh, ‘How’ - I’d forgotten that one, suspect they’d never get away with the credits these days - they’d be accused of cultural appropriation or similar.
Interestingly:
Seems the show was revamped in the early 2020s.
Original had Fred Dinenage - thought he was the chap who cleaned all those industrial chimneys but wikipedia suggests otherwise. 
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Fred Dinenage (1966–2022) Bunty James (1966-7, 1970-6) Jon Miller (1966–1981) Jack Hargreaves (1966–1981) were the original presenters of How. Brilliant program.
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Fred Dibnah?
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Yes I think that was him - never watched the series but seem to recall it was quite popular.
Dinage did How
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