Here's How I Make My Equipment Racks

I am not privy to the details of the physics, but vibrations are generated by amplifiers, and they have an effect on the electric signal. There are also other sources like sound waves and other components that introduce vibration to the amplifier. Higher quality electronics are typically more affected by vibrations and their sound can change considerably with the whatever is placed beneath them. A good rack, imo, will try to dissapate all the vibrations (just different forms of energy). Its just like spiking speakers and isolating sources, but on a bit of a different and usually less important level. There are lots of discussions about it on the various audiosites.

4yanx, i can understand your not understanding : )

I too was in the same boat. I thought that vibrations could SURELY alter the stability of a phono system and probably even play ( smaller ) games with digital front ends, but amps ????

I went from a sturdy yet somewhat lightweight all wood rack that i had constructed to a very heavy duty threaded rod design. Everything was ROCK solid, level, etc... on both designs, so there was no reason that i should have had such a drastic difference between the two. The threaded rod rack COMPLETELY altered tonal balance and gave me so much added "boom" , "bloat" bass ringing that i could no longer enjoy the system at all.

After playing around with every component and various types of isolation, damping, etc... i had to resort to substituting components until i could find the source of the problem. Luckily, i have multiple spares of everything, so this was not a problem. When all was said and done, substituting an amp of similar sonics but with notably less bottom end cleared the majority of problems up.

My one and only conclusion from all of this ???

Everything affects the sound of your system, even things that you would never think of. If i would not have heard it and experienced it, i would not have believed it. As such, i've since moved onto other racks and learned quite a bit in the process. Sean
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Went to IKEA yesterday to check out the LACK end table and coffee table. The end table does have (now) hollow legs as indicated above. The coffee table, however, still has solid legs.