Mechanical Resonance

There are hundreds of brands out there that claim to give the ‘ultimate’ in every sense. Unfortunately, in most cases, the sound ‘shifts’ in the system. The racks usually improves the three-dimensional soundstage, since they tend to isolate the components from the vibrations on the floor. A tripod for photographers usually do the same. The material of the rack is very important. Woods, aluminum, composites, natural stone(marble, granite) rubber, egsotic composites like carbon fiber, Cast-Iron, or combination of these materials are usually used to manufacture racks. There is no absolute truth (just like everything else) in racks as well, but my choice is towards wood. I had the chance to listen to different types of wood in the past few years. Common woods such as  maple,oak, cherry, walnut, to egsotic ones like Teak, African Blackwood, Ebony, Pallisander were the ones I auditioned. I have manufactured differing sizes of feet from each wood in order to avoid any misperceptions resulting from the shape of the feet. Egsotic woods: Pallisander, among all other woods, had all the ‘healing’ acts of a system.  Untreated Ebony has sounded similar to Pallisander as well.  Teak was colored and less-controlled, African Blackwood sounded slightly ‘darker’ which I would define as a tonality-change as well. Common woods: Maple is closest to the truth within her category. Although not having the ultimate touch of Pallidander, for a low-budget system, a Maple feet, cone, or a rack should do perfectly fine. It is possible to use these woods as separate feet, or make platforms that fits perfectly to your components, or manufacture complete racks out of them. I personally prefer not to  mix the wood with any metal when manufacturing a rack. A 2 inch thickness is ideal for the racks feet and top. Mechanical isolation is as important as the purity of the signal path. If your system does not behave like a musical instrument, you simply can not listen to an instrument's true harmonics. The signal just don’t emit from the driver with truthfulness. An experienced audiophile would surely hear the difference.