Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

@neoshah, what make of balanced isolation transformer are you considering? Probably best to keep analogue and digital separate?

@mattnshilp , have you heard about the Center Stage footers from Pitch Perfect Sounds? They are getting excellent user reviews. Any plans to try?

I have not toetapaudio. But I’ll check it out.

Neoshah - glad to hear I’m helping. 👍🏻

Toetap - I lied. I do know the CenterStage. They are not actually from Pitch Perfect, they are from Critical Mass racks distributed exclusively by Pitch Perfect. They are a footer version of their constrained layer damping shelf technology. As such, I have no doubt whatsoever that they will be effective. HOWEVER, like the Qpods I question the efficacy of the constrained layer damping technology in a footer, since the physical size of th footer may simply not be enough mass to truly allow any statistically significant amount of damping to occur. The Qpods clearly work but I found them (although my jury is still out) to not be 100% even across the full frequency spectrum. I attributed that to the limited size of the footer. Now Critical Mass is the premier leader in the field, so if anyone is going to do a constrained layer damping footer right, it’s them! I would need to hear them to give them my formal support. 

I have officially decided to go with Symposium so I don’t need CLD footers on my shelves and my footers need to conduct that energy to the shelves to be properly managed. A similar size/shape top level CM shelf would be 3X more expensive. 

Hope that helped. 

Yes, thanks. That was a good summary. The mystery is that users report that the CS footers take a while to “burn in”, up to 7/10 days apparently and before that point, they sound terrible. Sounds like some sort of annealing process going on due to the vibrations passing through? 

I have the IsoAcoustic Orea’s Indigos on test at the moment. They work really well and considering their cost they are a great starting point. I’m sure the Symposium will be a step up though, but with shipping costs from US it will be a much more expensive set up.

 I’m also talking to Stacore in Poland about their shelf’s. I’m in touch with someone who really likes Symposium and who has gone over to Stacore. He currently uses both. It’s seriously expensive though and weighs 100kg. Something I’m going to explore in the longer term.