I agree on placement of footers. I was told to try and place at least one under the transformer if the can work. Made sense to me, but in most cases we just place them next to the feet on the cabinet. Also, I recommend only using three unless you can adjust the height. That's the only way to make sure you get a solid connection between the foot and the rack/platform typically.
You can go crazy on cords, cable, feet and cable elevators etc...., but be careful how much you spend and make sure that it's worth it. All too often we start to spend an extra 500 on feet, plus 700 on a powe cord and for that 1200 alone, you may have been able to get much better sound, just purchasing a better component.
In Matt's case and others on this board, you guys are already maxing out a lot of your budget on the components and want to spend this extra to get the last bit of goodness. That said, for many, you can just spend an extra few thousand on your source and get even better sound with the ability to later on do the accessory upgrades. That's still where I"m kind of at.
I have only one specialty cord that will go on my The Memory Player and then I'll have to see if I keep the Ayre AX5/20 or upgrade (if it is one and I'm told it's a no brainer) to the new VAndesteen mono blocks (to be released in a few months). Silly for me to start getting new cables before I know which components I'm going to be using.
So many of you are here to figure out which DAC to get etc... Not all of use can afford or want to afford the DaVinci that Matt went with. Honestly, I would't purchase anything new from them for all the reasons and problems mentioned in this thread as well as others. Plenty of great options for most budgets have been discussed here from Empirical Audio to Ayre to Brinkman to Lampizator to the lower priced gear too. It's funny, but I'd also love to hear The Memory Player mini as a server with their own stand alone DAC as I be it's a killer for the money. Heck the mini server maxes out at 3500 or so I think and they may even be willing to move a bit on that (I have no clue, but it never hurts to ask for help). That has all their software goodies and even their defragmenting hard drive which is amazing for the price. That's the Aurender X100 territory as well as some of the new ones coming in.
