Vibration Theory - Isolate or Drain?

I go with the ones that say coupling could be good or bad. Sometimes the shelf could vibrate more,and cause more problems.Coupling to something with more mass,or isolation, may help.I think it's situation dependent.

Isolate, except as Elizabeth noted drain, for the speakers. Consider an acoustic screen in front of your components, in addition to 'moon gel' used as dampers.

I have 4 players in my set-up. So from the player down this is the order they are in. I place all 4 players with there stock feet on a 15x20x2in thick Maple cutting board. I then put 3 roller bloc Jr. under the cutting board, two in the front one in the back center position. The roller bloc Jr. sit on top of another Maple cutting board the same size. This second maple cutting board sit on top of 3 rubber/cork squares like the one Mapleshade sell. The rubber/cork squares are place 1 in front center position and two in the back on my equipment rack shelve. I have two racks and both speakers that I use this 2 maple platform on. I removed the 1/4 20 brass spikes that came with the speakers and replaced them Audio-Point brass spikes which were an improvement. The real jump came when I replaced the Audio-Points with the 1/2 inch grade 25 Tungsten Carbide ball, which fit perfectly in the hole left by removing the spike cones. That was over 6 years ago. I have not looked back since. And as of today, I don't have 1 cone or spike in my system. It is MY belief that Tungsten Carbide ball work better than spikes when using the maple cutting boards. Please remember this is just MY opinion base on my fooling around with spikes ,cones and metal balls for 7yrs in my system only.

Placing my friend's TT directly on the rack, it played fine. Putting cones under certainly seemed to improve the sound. Flipping them upside down, putting the cones 'point up' caused it to mistrack on some passages. This, to me, suggests "draining" does occur. By the way, the cones were short, wide and made of aluminum.
There are two sources of vibration: Internally generated, and externally generated (sound). I would think that using something like sorbothane would isolate. But what about vibration from a component itself, or picked up from sound waves?
How about both approaches? Cones under a component that has damping pads/and or weight, sitting on or "draining into" a platform that absorbs and is sitting on sorbothane feet to isolate.
Someday I plan on trying something like this under my TT.

I sometimes wonder why I don't simply don't trust Ed Meitner to know what kind of feet to put on his players for good performance - the latest generation does appear to have given some more serious thought to design of the footers. Which did not stop me from putting 3 brass pucks, with a Sorbathane layer, on top of the player for mass loading and Herbie's Tenderfeet underneath. Not sure it improves anything as it is a pretty solid player to begin with, but it looks nice and wasn't too expensive. I get the sense that for every isolationist there will be an equally vociferous drainer - both with "happy" results.