How important is a good rack?

Scott,

I went the Salamander Synergy route. While it's sturdy and provides good rigidity, some may not classify it as an "audiophile" rack. I liked it's modular design and removable shelves, allowing me to experiment with different shelving materials for each component. I can also adjust the height of the shelves relative to shelf thickness and component height. And since the bottom has threaded inserts for feet, I can easily level the rack and experiment with different spikes/footers from manufacturers like Eden Sound or Mapleshade.

Rpeluso,

"Men are so stupid, and predictable. Why?"

For the same reason some women can be overly sensitive and unpredictable.... we're different.

Once you reach the threshold of isolation sufficient to keep your TT (or CDP) from skipping with light room vibrations, I wonder.

I don't have to wonder, I know.

I've tried many rack and isolation systems beneath many phono rigs. A rack affects more than skipping. It also has a major influence on sonics. Preventing skipping is only the minimum level of acceptable performance. It's like riding a bicycle... learning not to fall over is essential, but it's hardly the last word in performance.

A phono playback system is designed to detect extremely tiny physical vibrations, convert them to electrical signal, then amplify the signal by ~8-12,000 times.

Any vibration magnified by thousands becomes audible. This includes both vibrations induced by groove modulations (aka, music) and vibrations coming from all other sources (aka, noise). A phono cartridge can't tell one from the other. It picks them all up equally and the phono system amplifies them all equally.

GI/GO... and a vibration-prone rack sends a lot of GI.

+1 to Svkelleher's post

Salamander Synergy is well engineered, sturdily built, usefully modular and pretty good looking. But it's not an audiophile rack in that it makes little effort to control or diminish vibrations. That said, its modularity allows for quite a bit of tweaking, e.g., use of other footers for both the rack and the equipment on it, addition of isolation devices, etc. For not much money it can be made to sound notably better than it does OOTB.

And the other thing too. ;-)

Thanks Dougdeacon, that's helpful; I can certainly see why racking matters for turntables.

I'd be very interested to hear accounts of people doing serious ABs comparing a "merely competent" rack (say like my homebrew rod and block) with a SOTA rack, say like a Finite Elemente, which costs 10 times more.

What I was wondering about whether investment in racking yields cost commensurate improvements comparable to other elements in the chain, once the fairly modest "threshold" I suggest has been reached. My speculation is that for many of us, the money might be more noticeably placed elsewhere.

Best,

John

While the theory that a component such as a turntable is better low rather than high, the top shelf is probably easier to play records.
To solve this issue, I simply "attached" the top of my rack to wall studs. I can't budge my rack in any direction no matter how hard I try.
I'm sure many can be done in a somewhat similar way if you just give it some thought.