You will drive yourself crazy trying to tune your system with different media in your stand. Lead, sand and cat litter....I've tried all three at various times, even combining them at different rates. I look back at all the crazy tweeks I have tried and I shake my head. Nothing was too far out to try. And I now believe that the general consensus that a good rack will "make" the system is flawed. The combination of variables are numerous. Let's start at the beginning: strong wood floor/weak wood floor/concrete floor, steel rack/wood rack, filled tubes/empty tubes, spiked rack legs/no spike rack legs. How about shelves?...Black Diamond, Polycrystal, mdf, plywood constrained layer, granite, cedar, maple, glass. Do you spike the shelves to the rack or not? If you do, will you use brass, aluminum, ceramic, composite or Black Diamond cones? All of this is a balancing act of resonances which I admit will influence the sound of the component....but only if it is in contact with the component! That is why spiking components to the rack is ultimately a flawed approach. The solution is to not spike components to the handful of resonances residing in all racks but to isolate the component from the rack. When you do this, you now make it simpler to tune your system. Use the rack to hold your components but do the tuning part at a more intimate level and you will find that the results are more easily controlled and predictable at all frequencies. After trying to juggle all these combinations of resonances over the years I have settled on Herbie's Tenderfoot w/ebony balls. The Tenderfoot is a squishy proprietary material which holds the 1" ebony ball. It is this first contact point up against the bottom of a component which is the most critical when tuning a system. After years of chasing down and trying to control nasty resonances with fancy fandango footers, I can say without a doubt Herbie Tenderfeet w/ebony balls are the best. Herbie also offers hard maple and a hard rubber type ball for alternative tuning options but I find ebony to be the best material for my components. Since the balls rest on the Tenderfoot, no vibrations or resonances can come up from the rack and it seems the the squishy Tenderfoot material has a near zero influence on the sound of the ball which is contacting the underside of the component. Controlling resonances directly at the component level is much easier than finding the right combination of the many variables found in all floor/rack/shelf set-ups. I would still advise to fill the stand with something easy like sand, but only because it will kill the metallic ringing sound you hear from sound waves hitting and bouncing off of it.
Filling A Tubular Metal Rack?
I have a tubular metal rack which consists of four hollow cylindrical steel uprights, sixteen hollow rectangular cross supports and is coupled to a carpet over concrete floor on four threaded spikes. My components sit on MDF shelves and are coupled to these shelves with brass cones and spikes. Up until recently I have had the rack filled completely with sand. I was advised on this forum to remove the sand from the rack as sand acts as a damping device and therefore kills dynamics. With the equipment in use on the unfilled rack I have introduced a metallic ring to the sound, loosened up the bass and diminished top end detail. It was suggested to me that I use a material such as Systrum's Micro-steel Bearing fill instead. I investigated this product on Systrum's website and I quote from their website...
"Steel is positioned as a primary conductor of resonance within our science and product designs. NO SAND, NO LEAD and NO RUBBER products, as these substances come from the "absorbent materials" group. It remains a fact that sand, lead and rubber materials are a solution to treat the negative effects of resonance and vibrations. However, these materials absorb dynamics and micro-dynamics when used with audio and acoustical equipment. They literally soak up and destroy the energies that make the musical presentation exhilarating.
Maintaining and increasing Dynamics within the presentation is a primary goal of all Audio and Videophiles. This raw energy creates the overall excitement and pleasure related to human emotion while listening to a recorded process or live-presentation. If you currently own a stand that can be mass loaded or are using sand and/or lead as the primary fill material, we highly recommend replacing the absorbent material with Micro-Bearing Conductive Steel."
The problem I have is a) the Systrum products are unavailable in my country (New Zealand. b)Systrum sells this product for US$40 a quart and I require approximately 15 quarts to fill this rack. Given the exchange rate and cost of freight, importing this product would be extraordinarily expensive. Approximately NZ$900 not including freight! This is clearly an unrealistic proposition.
I am hoping that somebody may be able to suggest a more readily obtainable and cost effective alternative. Thanks in advance for your help.
"Steel is positioned as a primary conductor of resonance within our science and product designs. NO SAND, NO LEAD and NO RUBBER products, as these substances come from the "absorbent materials" group. It remains a fact that sand, lead and rubber materials are a solution to treat the negative effects of resonance and vibrations. However, these materials absorb dynamics and micro-dynamics when used with audio and acoustical equipment. They literally soak up and destroy the energies that make the musical presentation exhilarating.
Maintaining and increasing Dynamics within the presentation is a primary goal of all Audio and Videophiles. This raw energy creates the overall excitement and pleasure related to human emotion while listening to a recorded process or live-presentation. If you currently own a stand that can be mass loaded or are using sand and/or lead as the primary fill material, we highly recommend replacing the absorbent material with Micro-Bearing Conductive Steel."
The problem I have is a) the Systrum products are unavailable in my country (New Zealand. b)Systrum sells this product for US$40 a quart and I require approximately 15 quarts to fill this rack. Given the exchange rate and cost of freight, importing this product would be extraordinarily expensive. Approximately NZ$900 not including freight! This is clearly an unrealistic proposition.
I am hoping that somebody may be able to suggest a more readily obtainable and cost effective alternative. Thanks in advance for your help.