I’m in the market for a good audio equipment rack that does all the normal stuff well—vibration isolation and looks good. Any recommendations? In the 1500-2500 range.
I’m not a big fan of the steel or metal look, have been thinking of butcher block racks.
Look at Mapleshade Audio. I have had a Ver. 2 for over 20 years and a Ver. 3 for over 10 and love them both.
I use the Mapleshade Samson.
Check out Timber Nation:
+1 on Timbernation. I own two of them.
I don’t have but am considering a couple of different enclosed BDI products for two different systems. The linked would be for the 2 ch and is a bit more than mid point of your budget. But I’m also quite interested in the other recommendations.
BDI Mirage
I was looking as well. Nothing nice is cheap of course so I had one built. I like it as much as anything I saw out there and it was less than many (especially with shipping as this was local) and I love it. The shelves are 2.5 in and 1 inch curly maple and the legs I got from Pangea.
The main issue in my mind with wooden racks is that they aren’t going to provide “vibration isolation.” Resonance tuning more accurately describes what they do. I always found I needed additional expensive footers when using wooden platforms. However, for $1500-2500, there aren’t many racks that provide much genuine vibration isolation. Most in that price range have either solid wood or MDF shelving instead of multi-layered composite shelving. The best performing racks at the lower end of the price spectrum IMO would be either Adona Modular Series or Symposium Acoustics Foundation series. Those racks are primarily metal of course but sometimes decor and performance are at odds in the audio realm.
https://www.thecableco.com/accessories/racks-and-stands/foundation-ultra-rack.html
My table uses sub woofer footers on bottom legs to dampen vibration. Also it’s bleeping heavy. I do a very technical test. I play music and put my hand on the table. It doesn’t move or vibrate. All good!
That’s a nice looking rack! No doubt a heavy maple rack like that can improve the sound of many systems.
Yeah I was looking at the adona and the others. I don’t know what I want more. Isolating vibration or resonance.
Maybe with the maple racks it’sa decent compromise.
Photon may be right about the wooden racks. I also use PS maple platforms, PS Audio PowerBases and VooDoo Cable Iso-Pods. Overkill perhaps, but quite effective totally.
I like the maple shade things, they’re quite expensive. If I decide on wood, am tending towards timber nation. Dunno the difference in sonic characteristics between the two
As one’s components and speakers become more resolving it’s hard to get to the point of “overkill” with regard to noise/vibration control in my experience. Those with more engineering expertise than myself say the main reasons that vibration control footers provide additional dividends even if one has effective isolation from structural and airborne vibration is because components themselves generate vibration internally. Galen Carol has a nice summary of the issues on his website:
https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/vibration-origins-effects-solutions/
Following the Glen Carol rathole, I followed the link to QuadraSpire. Any comments on those?
I’ve heard that the maple that maple shade uses could warp in dry weather. I live in Santa Fe, NM which rarely gets above 25% humidity (was 7% during the fires) it’s a concern. They use air dried I think?
Yes air-dried:
https://www.mapleshadestore.com/airdriedambrosiamaple.php
I’ve had mine in central Texas and nE Ohio so don’t know if they warp in very dry climes.
I wonder if one reason Mapleshade racks could warp is because some of their shelves and plinths are glued up from quite wide lumber. On their website you see shelves glued up with anything between two and five sections of lumber. Wide material may sound better but it is more prone to warping than shelving glued up from smaller dimensional material like Butcher Block Acoustics uses for their shelving. Their shelving looks like it’s glued up from 1.5" wide wood.
I ran across this interesting review of Quadraspire’s upper tier rack several years ago:
The advantage of buying a solid wood rack is, you’re killing two birds with one stone. Not only do you have a nice stereo rack, but you also have a good supply of prepping firewood in case the grid goes down in the middle of winter.
None of the shelves on either of my two racks are glued together. I have one Mapleshade platform out of many that is two pieces glued together, the others are not glued together platforms. That glued together one has not warped (it is 4" thick though).
