Equipment racks - is the cost justifiable?

[Barry]

I have an Ash Designs Cosmic and I would agree with you that they are expensive.

However, I have now had it for 20 years and it has never broken down or needed servicing, so I reckon it is doing quite well

They look good - I like the styling, though I would prefer to avoid the use of glass shelves.

[hifi_dave]

Sold so many of those, back in the day and the chrome version was very popular.

Nowadays, many racks are so expensive, they make fine furniture look a bargain.

[hifinutt]

john at max has finite racks s/h at 5k !!!

https://www.midlandaudiox-change.co....equipment.html

[tapid]

john at max has finite racks s/h at 5k !!!

https://www.midlandaudiox-change.co....equipment.html

I bought the finite entry level one second hand at 400, quite a big improvement over basic a rack with more solid base etc. Wish I had kept it now.... idiot

[Discopants]

I think it matters tremendously to the sound
But I’ll get shot down in flames for saying it
Noticed a huge difference in both analogue and digital presentations
When I purchased a ‘box furniture’ hifi cabinet.

But yup, ikea is cheaper and if you haven’t heard the difference you’ll never miss it .
It may itch a bit though

I agree, once you get your system resolving enough it can be clearly audible even solid state amps.

Im just using an old Ikea TV unit , but I have 3 of these base units on the shelves Audio Exklusive d C d base. They really make a difference to imaging and especially bass. I also use footers between the units and these bases like Black ravioli but these were more effective (although i did add all 3 at once under my digital front end, solid state amp and isotek sigmas).

https://www.audio-exklusiv.de/en/accessory/mechanical/

I like the decoupling principle , you can do it much cheaper , bamboo chopping boards with sorbothane pods/disks on the bottom and rdc cones (or better still black ravioli pads) under you kit.

Definitely avoid glass shelves if you can but a set up like this on top will dampen most of the glass.

This way each component is isolated from the rest of your system and room. I think you will have to get a very well engineered rack to hear the equivalent improvement.


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[Macca]

I agree, once you get your system resolving enough it can be clearly audible even solid state amps.

So the material that the amplifier is sat on changes the electrical signal that it outputs? How is that possible?

[Pharos]

If we all had the piece of equipment which the BBC designed for testing we could verify whether or not items are microphonic. It was call an Amp/Det, and had a gain of up to 70dB with a monitor O/P to feed into a loudspeaker.

In using it one could use this gain to listen to hum, thermionic, or microphonic noise at normal listening level through a monitor, and tap or shake the equipment to see any correlation between movement and noise O/P.

[Macca]

So what were the results?

[Discopants]

So the material that the amplifier is sat on changes the electrical signal that it outputs? How is that possible?

It has to be down to vibrations Macca.


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[Macca]

It has to be down to vibrations Macca.


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I've experienced the effect myself but I reckon it is entirely psychological.

Firstly it's been tested, solid state amps and DACs have been subjected to large amounts of vibration whilst output was measured, nothing changed.

Also if you think about the levels of vibration in an aircraft, and all the solid state electronics controlling the aircraft, if their performance was affected by that vibration it might have serious consequences. Gauges reading wrong and so forth, it would be a known issue in the real world, not just in hi-fi.