Hmm- one can make quality amplifiers, streamers etc themselves too if you have the knowledge, skills and tools… just like one can build a non resonant stand if you have the knowledge skills and tools … but you haven’t seen my carpentry skills!!
I think in the end most people don’t have the time, patience snd/or inclination for the trial and error of designing, building and testing stuff to get the results they want - even if they can - hence they buy it. But true indeed some can and do make their stuff. However knowing how to build and having experience of building whatever can and I suspect often does make you a more discerning buyer/consumer - and less susceptible to some of more outlandish marketing claims peddled by some…
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I have two of their products and am happy with their performance. One of my reasons for buying was that I could purchase extra shelves, legs, etc.
Their products were quite simple in design, and while they made claims about enhancing the performance of the electronics that went on them, they had no substantiation behind them. I bought their products to store LPs, CDs, and DVDs, and to mount my turntable and electronics. Their repeat business was in accessories and additional shelves, etc. I doubt many bought a second or third unit. Their costs rose dramatically, and their packaging costs would have been substantial. The amount of cardboard and polystyrene for one shelf was phenomenal.
I just wish I’d bought another set of spare legs six months ago.
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Certainly applies to me. I don’t have the skills but I certainly wouldn’t want to use my time experimenting.
This applies to many/all rack manufacturers. I have never read anything convincing in the way of technical explanation for the way in which a rack is able to improve the performance of hi-fi equipment. Just a lot of marketing hot air and contradictory pseudo-science which is written by people who sometimes don’t seem to even have a grasp of elementary physics.
I’m just guessing here, but I strongly suspect that in aome cases putting equipment on a well-made sturdy piece of furniture would yield just as good or even better results. In some cases ‘purpose designed’ hi-fi racks appear to be nothing but ordinary shelving with a few spikes attached here and there.
Because of course, spikes isolate don’t they? At least that’s when they they are not coupling rigidly, which is something they also do very well. Talk about ‘jack of all trades’!
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Not sure about that. I feel the strength was residing in the hard wood, with isolation specs . A bit like a good butcher block which makes good results. But it’s probably not enough to make a good and very effective rack.
Then Hifi racks were also expensive.
When looking at Finite Elemente for instance, with hard wood shelves, it’s on another league.
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To be fair I have. Although I am not a mechanical engineer, I certainly understand microphony in electronic engineering and interactions with physical vibration. In a way this is not so different to rejecting or mitigating against RFI.
I believe for resonance management within a structure and materials, the area of physics and mechanical engineering is Finite Elements Method.
Now I do agree, I do wonder how many rack manufacturers use these principles as opposed to undertake trial and error using reasonably popular and understood materials, as well as materials that look aesthetically pleasing.
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What isolation specs? How does a piece of wood isolate anything?
I don’t deny that hi-fi racks work. But why and how is another matter.
I use a Quadraspire SVT rack and it sounds excellent. But there is much marketing hype and BS, such as ‘the use of non-parallel sides to eliminate resonance’. How do non-parallel sides eliminate resonance? What resonance exactly is it eliminating - and why is that important? Without any scientific reasons behind it it’s just marketing twaddle and means absolutely nothing.
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Very nice. It’s only out of my league price wise.
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Of course. I haven’t read the information from Finite Element but if they provide a sound scientific / engineering rationale for their racks then kudos to them.
I’m not aware of any such explanations from other manufacturers. Just what amounts to nothing but marketing hype in the absence of such information.
Take the example of spikes, which are almost universally used. The original raison d’être of spikes was to prevent speaker stands rocking on carpets. They would penetrate to the floor beneath and provide a solid support. They worked well in this capacity. At least in terms of eliminating rocking due to a carpet. Sound-wise is another matter.
Spikes seem now to have become something altogether different. A mechanism for isolation, and also at the same time, for rigid coupling between items. Depending on the desired effect. Now I’m no mechanical engineer, but plain common sense dictates that something cannot both be capable of providing isolation and also coupling. It’s one or the other. Some rack manufacturers say that spike are ‘mechanical diodes’. Presumably meaning that they are a one-way only path for mechanical energy. How so? Why can enrgy only travel one way through them? Sounds like pseudo-science to me.
So what I’m questioning here is not whether hi-fi racks work. They do. But rather the science, or complete lack of science, behind them as the case may be. And whether a few wooden shelves with spikes on them and stacked together is actaually capable of anything that a normal well-made furniture shelving unit isn’t capable of if chosen and evaluated carefully. And whether the inflated prices often charged can be justied in terms of solid scientific fact and engineering.
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Exactly - I see similar things in the world of digital electronics and networking from audiophile hobbyists and resellers. No wonder so many people get confused.
I think spikes isolate and reflect the vibration energy back into the structure from my understanding where it dissipates either critically damped or critically underdamped depending on the material of the stand. In the latter one strives for high mass to lower the resonance point.
The above is only my understanding which could well be wrong of course.
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So the question is
A slab of rubber, or spikes and glass, or a load of balls?
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Yep, a ball, like a ball bearing, is like a spike though for smooth surfaces. Rubber is just some lossy material.
Quite so. But that’s only one example.
There are many racks available which seem to me to amount to nothing but a pile of wooden shelves, separated by wooden or metal supports, and sometimes with glass or other sub-shelves on them.
So what makes these racks so very different from a well-made furniture shelving system? Is there something special about the wood used, or the metal support columns or whatever? It appears not in most cases. They are just shelves with inflated pseudo-scientific claims made about them to justify high retail costs.
Make a wooden shelving system - call it a hi-fi rack, make some unfounded pseudo science claims about resonance control and energy pathways that sound impressive and convincing to the gullible and charge about three or four times the cost of an equivalent furniture unit.
That’s pretty much how it seems to me. Not in every case, but certainly in many cases. I’m open to correction if I’m wrong, but I suspect that many racks on the market are designed and made without any sort of scientific or engineering understanding behind them.
It seems like Finite Elements may be an exception as they provide scientific information on their designs. Likewise probably Stillpoints and Townshend racks.
My own Quadraspire rack sounds excellent and looks good, but I’m highly sceptical about the claims made for how it works it in engineering/scientific terms. And whether its cost is justified. Could I find an ordinary furniture shelving unit that performs as well or better and at much cheaper cost? I really don’t know is the truth. But like I’ve said - I can’t be bothered. It would take too much time, hassle and experimentation. So I suppose its worth the cost to avoid that!
Admittedly there are some racks where the manufacture claims that they have been developed through listening tests. They may provide some basic scientific ideas about how they might work but they make it clear that these are just ideas - nothing more. I applaud that approach. Nothing wroing with that at all.
But I thoroughly dislike being fed BS with no solid reasoning behind it. Why not just say it sounds fantastic to us - but we don’t really know why?
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My reasoning is the opposite actually. Spikes provide a very small contact area so the resulting extremely high pressure at the contact points will tend to rigidly couple items together.
But also - I could be wrong.
Well indeed a perfect spike can’t exist in practice, although a ball bearing gets close, so they are lossy to some extent.
I seem to remember @Xanthe was a bit of whizz in this area.
But in maths we know when things are infinitely small, other measures get infinitely large and interesting things happen, and in practice you do t need perfection to get suitable results, after all the sample theorem that all digital audio is based on uses this principle and that requires infinitely small time at infinite power… which of course is a nonsense in reality, but it works in approximation.
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On the other hand, there are a lot of ways a stand can degrade the performance of hi-fi equipment.
Finite element analysis is a good way of increasing the consistency and understanding of the mechanical properties of a design.
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Interesting topic this. Once I get a bit of time, I’d like to create a rack once more and ensure it matches my oak floor.
@anon9602469 , @Simon-in-Suffolk
Simon, thank you for the compliment, but I only applied some general and simple principles of physics!
All mechanical interfaces act as filters, the question is about controlling the filtration properties.
When talking about rigid interfaces (spikes, ball bearings, welded joints! etc.) the static response is a specific stress strain relationship and is usually linear (and happens for springs, rigid interfaces are just springs with very high force constants). However when talking about dynamic performance things get more complicated.
Consider rubber blocks, they’re not just lossy, they have a storage and loss moduli, and both are frequency dependent (not the same frequency relationships), and these moduli are also dependent on the load/compression, and the type or rubber compound. (We used to do research involving the mechanical properties of biopolymers!)
The same applies to all mechanical interfaces to some extent, even welded joints, although in this case the loss modulus is a lot lower than the storage modulus.
The next point is that for materials that are not homogeneous through the interface, there are surface interface properties to take into account, such as transmission/reflection ratios and stereographic energy distributions (this is where spikes and balls come into things through small contact areas).
Lastly there are anisometric considerations, where energy distributions in different directions encounter different properties.
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The difficulty is in having absolutely no reference point. Hi-Fi equipment has to be placed on something, even if it’s the floor. That something will influence the performance. So what is the ‘base’ performance? What is the support that makes the equipment sound as it should sound?
There’s no way of knowing. The only thing we can say is that stand X sounds better than stand Y to our ears. But which stand actually allows the equipment to perform free of outside influence?
The design and engineering credentials of the stand may help. But ultimately it’s like most other things in hi-fi. We judge according to our ears. So in that respect it’s quite possible for someone to prefer a stand that is say enhancing bass performance but is actually performing worse than another stand that is closer to the ‘true sound’ of the component - whatever that is.
Similar to the situation with cables. There can be no true reference point.
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The proof is in the testing. I compared long time ago , at dealer place, some entry level rack vs the Finite Elemente, the difference was obvious.
But the Finite Elemente was too expensive for my budget. I bought a second hand Fraimlite. However I upgraded it with Cerapucks from Finite Elemente under the spikes.
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