I've been playing around with low energy storing racks and supports for some time and having decided that the Atacama plus the sound design and another Atacama shelf for the telly was a bit much, the time had come for a new rack. I was aided in this my the fact that the new OPPO has taken over as a single silver disc spinner, so I could change the layout a bit. People here my know about the Loricraft plinth that uses squash balls to absorb spurious energy and the Russ Andrews Torlyte system that uses torsional box construction to get rigidity without mass, which allows the rack to dissipate these energies. Ikea produce many products in their Lack range that use that use a product called Doofaylite, this is a cardboard honeycomb that is doped with a phenolic resin. The honeycomb gives strength and rigidity for little mass, I have used the "Lack" coffee tables as stands for some pretty high end TTs in the past, up to and including the Garrard 501 and in combination with the "Soundstage" isolation platform I developed for them, they have worked well.
I have been doing quite a bit of research over the last few months to get the construction and isolation right. The top section is actually on hidden ball bearings to improve isolation from the base section. First assembly and test of what I'm now pretty sure is the final version looks like this.
So the million dollar question, as ever is how well does it work? First impressions are a far greater bass extension, it was already really good but now goes way deeper with more definition in the bass and in fact, more definition overall. The imaging is now the best I've heard, the speakers have totally disappeared and the sound hangs in the air, great sense of height and back to front depth. I have been noticing this more and more as i've been trying this material out and now it has been fully assembled it has verified my theory that energy dissipation is the ideal in supports and plinths rather than high mass. Also, it looks cool rather than industrial.