High End Isolation - HRS, SRA, Active platforms

Greetings,

Many of the products mentioned are indeed quite good from a first hand usage perspective (SRA, GPA & Symposium being three audiophile oriented brands for which I do have some affinity/bias). Machina Dynamica's Nimbus is certainly a cut above the Promethean mentioned -- however does have mass constraints imposed due the nature of the air spring-based design.

In terms of cost-no-object I must qualify that a typical audio style rack in general is a logistical compromise between performance, aesthetics & general space constraints. This is in a way no different to having to share outlets from an electrical perspective.

If given an opportunity for an optimal configuration it would consist of a composite of dedicated high mass / active isolation stands for the most sensitive source components & an advanced multi-tier solution for the remaining portion of the system. Do keep in mind for larger reference systems tertiary sources aren't used in parallel so it's far harder to justify a dedicated means of isolation. Plus it saves some space in the long run.

Following with this theme is relying upon the existing room structure to augment the isolation method (alcove or partially enclosed area). The simplified 'room-within-a-room' principle can be used to decouple the equipment from the surrounding area yet still maintain a somewhat amicable appearance. Some things quite frankly are easier to avoid entirely. An example being some time back I loaned a Vibraplane to an associate only to discover his listening area was directly adjacent to the primary HVAC.

Symposium (with Billy Bags+filled stands), GPA & SRA do fine job of providing a high performance tiered rack solution. In terms of active platforms as always the Vibraplane seems to come up in audio related discussions. If you do any research you'll quickly see that a single high quality active isolation platform can commonly exceed the costs of some of the most esoteric racks available (albeit keeping to the theme of costs no object).

As a final commentary if you're considering a significant investment I'd encourage you to work with a party who can provide a sufficient 'try before you buy' policy. Each of our environments are unique as are our components (and personalities for that matter). The final outcome may certainly require a hybrid approach to get things dialed in where you want them to be. Again depending on your budget it's not always necessary to simply buy off the rack if you have a more specific requirement.

Some of the individuals best known for their room tuning solutions also have exposure to some very good mechanical isolation products. Ultimately tuning in this well rounded fashion seems to turn out the best.

Cheers,
Bish

Hi, I went from a Arcici Suspense stand with Symposium Ultra shelves on top of the stock acylic shelfs, to a Finite Elemente Pagode master reference. Also added Finite's cerabase feet for the rack and 5 sets of cerapucs for the equipment.

The diff? Noise floor dramatically dropped. Allows details, spatial clues, coherence etc emerge. This was not subtle.

Hope this helps you some...

For active isolation (ie. Halcyonics), is there a benefit to isolating each individual component to it's own platform, or could one place several stacked pieces. I'm thinking of a DAC/transport stacked onto one platform. Appreciate anyone with first-hand experience.

Be careful, there isn't a "one size fits all" isolation solution. It is sort of like asking - "what's the best food?". Depends upon what your system needs and what you have a taste for.
My preferred "cost no object" strategy is to get the room / environment right and not even try to deal with transmitted vibration after the fact. A neat benifit is that stand choices can then be about looks and convenience and economy.
I have to deal with vibration sourced quality & reliability issues as a job thing now and then, it is pretty tough to get the best vibration readings if you are measuring something mounted on a vibrating floor structure. Also, the fix for one problem (adding mass for example) is the curse for another.

In my experience air isolation is not the Valhalla of isolation. Sometimes the sound becomes a bit disembodied, loosing some of it's palpability. Imho some sort of constraint layer damping is superior in case of audio. Of course in high tech laboratories they use tables with air isolation. But laboratories have nothing common with high quality sound reproduction!

Chris