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Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

Depends on you…

"Are these DIY options actually decent sounding racks as far as isolation devices go?"

If you take a look at the expensive racks, they fall into 2 groups. Those like the Grand Prix Audio Monaco which work by using isolation techniques and those like the Finite Elemente Pagode which work by tuning resonances. Even in the high price area, there can be differences in sound with different racks and one of the reasons is that some racks try to eliminate any contribution from the rack and others try to make the contribution as sound enhancing as possible.

It's the same with DIY racks. Some work by isolation, some by tuning resonance. In general they don't tend to work as well as the expensive products, at least in my experience, but they all go some of the way and some go further than others.

I haven't tested them all so I can't offer comments on different approaches though years ago I did design and have an aluminium fabricator build me a shelfless rack, actually a frame which directly supported the components, and posted about it here. That approach served me well for several years until I bought myself a Monaco.

The big problem is the word "isolation" which most certainly does not mean the same thing to every audiophile. It's also become a buzz word which gets applied to any vibration control device, whether or not that device works via isolation or not. Some people like the result you get with true isolation strategies and some don't, much preferring the result with controlled resonance. I don't know which group you fall into and, if you haven't heard examples of both, you may not know either. You may be saying you're looking for "isolation" but you may be happier with controlled resonance.

You can get good results, quite good results in fact, with DIY approaches but finding the right approach is the key to being happy.




David Aiken


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