Equipment Rack - How important in the grand scheme of things?
Tube or SS, turntable or CD, everything benefits from vibration control. Don’t think of it as a rack. Think of it as vibration control. Because that’s what it is. Also don’t think of a rack as a piece of furniture. Unless that’s what’s important to you. In that case then yeah sure fine, your system, buy whatever looks good. But looking at a rack to improve sound then first is vibration control, followed by ergonomics and organization, and finally acoustics. For vibration control you want a rack that is massive, stiff, and highly damped. Materials like glass are awful because of the sonic signature glass imparts. Wood is more natural. Composites are best. But you have to weigh all that against ergonomics, acoustics, and cost. Ergonomics is being able to get access to components and connections. Organization is being able to route all the cables so they’re not all tangled up back there. Acoustics is not having all the components in a monolithic arrangement that reflects sound and messes up the stage you spent so much money on the rack hoping to improve. Click here to see what it can look like when you get all these things right. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Bear in mind this is what it might look like after 30 years of persistently chipping away at it. This is not what you do right now. Not unless you have a whole pile of money and a devoted room and tolerant wife and more. This brings us to the 64 dollar question: how important is the quality of the equipment rack compared to other upgrades I could consider? You are right. Everything matters. Not just a little bit either. Still there is an order to these things. First most cost effective step is get Cones under everything. You can try the flavor of the week if you want but myself and others swear by BDR Cones and for good reason, they are awesome for the money. Open, dynamic, revealing incredible inner detail, improving imaging, just everything across the board excellent. Put them under everything, speakers, amps, everything. Look at my system again. Everything. Next would be a combination of fo.Q tape and TC. These are a bit special situation so PM if you’re serious. In your situation I would also recommend full sets of Synergistic Research HFT and ECT before even thinking about a rack or other component upgrades. Every one of these will give you way more bang for the buck than any component and certainly more than any rack. I have by the way done exactly what you ask, gone from a cheap rack to a good one. Look at my system. That’s a Target rack over in the corner. There’s a reason its used only for the record cleaner and retired vintage gear. Cheap racks suck. But notice I also don’t use a rack except for the turntable. Racks in general suck. Racks basically are for guys who want stuff to look good to other guys. Which again if that’s you, its your system, fine. I write only for guys who don’t really care all that much what anyone else thinks as long as it sounds good. |
My room is well treated with tube traps (in the front corners) and many GIK panels - bass trap/diffusors along the front wall, art panel absorbers with scatter plates at first reflection points, 242 panels on the ceiling. I'm pretty happy with the acoustics at this point. I haven't tried the isoacoustic pucks under the amp. I am using the Gaia IIs for my speakers. Why would placing the amp on granite cause issues? Seems like this would be a pretty solid platform, but I'm mostly doing it to provide good ventilation to the amp. I'm working on building a set of monoblocks (based on the FirstWatt F5 turbo v3 design with a few tweaks) and these will sit directly on the tile floor behind the speakers. I will look at some kind of isolation footers on these when I'm done building them. I'm mostly wondering about the value proposition with a more expensive rack for all my front-end equipment versus, say a streamer upgrade (currently using Bryston BDP-2 with audio card upgrade) or power cable upgrades (currently using DIY cables made from DH-Labs Power Plus and Red Wave with Furutech and Wattgate connectors). |
@millercarbon - didn't see your response before posting. I do need a rack since I have limited space for my gear and it has to be organized vertically for the space I have available (other than the power amps). Anyone with experience with the Solid Tech racks? These seems like they offer good vibration control as well as being somewhat attractive. |
Why would placing the amp on granite cause issues? In a word, because granite rings. But like everything else it depends on how you use it. Vibration control is as much about shape as material. Tuning forks ring forever not just because of the metal but mostly because of the shape. Your granite being leftover kitchen counter is probably only about an inch or so thick and fairly wide. So you won’t notice it as much. But if you sit it on edge and hit it with something you will hear the sound it makes. Whatever that sound is you will notice is being imparted into the music of whatever component is sitting on it. Sounds crazy but totally true. Looking at my system what is hard to see is the amp on the granite has a bit of sorbothane between the granite and the BDR. The granite under the turntable is on a sand bed. Both of these are in order to control the granite. This is a great example of why its so important to understand what you’re doing is not isolating (of which there is no such thing) but vibration control. Even if you somehow had the perfectly isolated shelf or rack or whatever you will still have the problem of the vibration generated in the component itself, which actually turns out to be the majority of the vibration. So ultimately it comes back to vibration control. Granite is great for mass and stiffness, but it rings and if untreated will impart a hardness to the sound at certain treble frequencies. But the mass is great for putting the music on a solid foundation. Listen to my system you will be astounded at the degree to which this is true. Would never be that way without that 750 lb under the turntable and 150lb slab under the amp. Tile is even worse than granite. Isolation footers are a misnomer. They’re vibration control pretending to be something other than what they are. Imposters never are quite as good as the real McCoy. The best rack is no rack so the floor is great, just put some BDR Cones and Round Things between the floor and the amps. |
