F brass---it's too soft.
OK, your opinion - butt really?
For the few who insist brass is too soft a material for musical reproduction or for those who want to understand more on the topic of footers related to equipment racking these are the opinions of our company based on engineering, research and product development slowly evolving into a science.
Since brass is manmade there are quite a number of beta alloys available or you can manufacture your own formula. One has to determine the role in which brass or any other material for that matter is going to function as related to the equipment rack and design thereof.
Did you ever take a hard ceramic conical shape and apply it to steel shelving? That outcome could change your listening and opinion on material hardness immediately.
Since there are hundreds of steels manufactured each with a different chemistry and damping factor, what type of steel does one choose for shelving that manages the pitch variables of hard ceramics in order to outperform a specific brass alloy?
Hardness of materials has little to do with sonic outcomes especially when you take into consideration the rack design which is totally responsible for the cone or footer performance.
Racking functionality is based on a multitude of material choices beginning with the support legs and their chemistry make up. Add to that, the shelving materials and how the shelving is contacting the legs, how the rack mechanically grounds to the flooring where all racking systems mechanically ground to the greater mass either the flooring or the wall. The list of material selections, damping factors within the materials and variables in design methodologies are as vast as music itself.
What about the people who use wood blocks… where are all the wood cones? I only see a couple of wood cone designs so do the blocks have something more to do with performance?
There are more than thirty (our last count) companies selling brass versions of conical shapes and none of them come close to sounding alike. Lots of listeners do not know those sonic differences exist as brass always gets grouped into one generic understanding or becomes a single topic of conversation.
All brass cones sound incredibly different. After thirty years of manufacturing brass cones even we have changed the chemistry and damping factor of the brass currently used in our products as this was a key to our technology continuing to evolve all these years.
Is stone harder than brass? Whatever happened to all the stone cones that were made in the early days?
Important: The cone or whatever shape or material used as footers are going to provide a level of sonic performance dependent on the shelf and material science and how the shelving relates to the rest of the racking materials and design technique. The rack itself determines overall function and sonic performance as the cone is only one part of the formula.
Some say stone shelving is much better than wood. If you take two cones designed using the same “geometry”, one made of brass and the other ceramic and place them on a piece of granite both cones will provide two entirely different sonic results. The results will vary even more if you use wood as the shelf medium since wood is in a constant state of flux due to temperature, humidity and aging.
Did I mention geometry? Any material shaped as cones, spheres, blocks, etc are entirely dependent on geometry for function. You can change the attack, sustain and decay sonic characteristics of any component chassis or speaker system by simply altering a shape no matter what material is being used as a foot.
Lastly, does the material matched to rack function produce a desired result?
‘My cone sounds better than yours’ disappeared from our vocabulary when the Sistrum geometry was invented twenty-two years ago. We wish racking would follow those same business progressions but people rarely if ever compare the sound and performance of equipment racking. The majority of listeners have no guarantee on how their rack functions or what it sounds like.
Does your rack actually serve as a functioning device or is it simply holding up the gear? Do you believe a rack is absolutely capable of holding back or excelling the performance of the equipment residing on it? Are you aware there are quite a few racking companies boasting isolation control, etc… but have little or no function in that regard?
Everything coming in contact with the rack’s shelving including the thousands of aftermarket and factory footers will yield various sonic results so again, material hardness is a non-factor in determining what sounds best until you know what shelving and rack design is being used prior to forming an opinion.
The equipment rack is the foundation of the audio system and governs the outcome of sonic entirety and therefore should be one of the key components considered for auditioning.
Every decision you make in choosing electronics, loudspeakers, wire, power distribution ET all over your lifetime is based on how your rack functions. If you indeed seek more from music and sound, do the labor and compare racking designs - more importantly compare the sound.
All this and we have not discussed the most important aspect of why our company chooses brass shapes and a specific steel for use and that is - Vibration Management!
Robert
Star Sound
Questions? Please feel free to telephone us.
