Stillpoints and reference-level speakers

Hi Psag,

I'm right in the middle of a very extensive process of reviewing isolation devices for a review in the future for my website hometheaterreview.com. I have had in house many highly regarded footers, platforms, and racks to see what their effect would be on the performance of different gear and speakers. The results so far, will not surprise seasoned audiophiles, is that you never know what the results to be until you experiment in your own system. Some of the most highly regarded and expensive platforms/footers sucked the life out of my system, while other less known, less expensive devices produced wonderful sonic changes like more transparency/micro-details, better sound staging and layering, more accurate/taut extended bass, etc. The two very big winners so far have been: 1) For all upstream gear the rack and footers from Krolo Design. No matter what piece of gear I have put on the Krolo rack or footers it always has lead to significant improved performance with no negative effects at all. 2) For speaker isolation the Sistrum Apprentice Platform/Audio Points from Star Sound Technologies, which is not even this company's reference level device, had a beautiful effect on my Lawrence Audio Cello Speakers. Both company's offer home audition periods and charge very reasonable prices for their very high quality devices. Hope this helps, good luck with your experimentation.

Hey Charles,

I'm glad that you experienced such wonderful results in your system with the Apprentice platforms. I highly recommend that you might want to audition at least the footers, if not a rack from Krolo designs, for your upstream gear. Just by using the Krolo Design's footers, they come in 3s, on different racks what they do has been amazing regardless of what I have put on top of them. When I have used the "Full Monty" the Krolo rack and footers the combination has been absolutely superlative in my system. The designer, Mirko Krolo, is a great guy to work with and has come up with beautifully built pieces that are based on a very intelligent application of isolation/bleeding off vibrations in his designs. I have have his reference TOMO rack in house right now and it has been significantly better then six other stands, racks or platforms in its effects at bringing the performance of my reference system to a qualitatively higher level that I did not expect to happen. What the TOMO rack does sonicly is of course the most important factor, however it does not hurt that it is one of the most attractive racks I have ever seen or ever have had in my home.