AV Racks. What difference does it make?

Slappy, vibrations affect sound by smearing it. With turntables the relationship is intuitively obvious, but the fact is that vibration affects transformers, which are present in all audio components, motorized devices (like cd platters), wires (mechanical resonances), and likely many other subsystems.

If you have never heard the effect of vibration, you have simply never tried, as vibration can easily be experienced with cheap gear as well as expensive gear. The smearing effect becomes more noticeable and more intolerable as the resolution of your system goes up.

There is a basic article called "Bad Vibes", by Shannon Dickson (Nov., 1995), in the Stereophile archives at www.stereophile.com. You might read this for a basic discussion on the construction of resonance-damping platforms. I would certainly do this before accepting any particular design philosophy of audio racks.

Also, you might check Alvin Lloyd's discussions on vibration control in other fields as well as in audio itself at his website for Grand Prix Audio (www.grandprixaudio.com).

Twl...Cool it! Those who disagree with you may be just as experienced and knowledgable as you. You can't prove a technical point by personal insults.

I hear Gunbei, all these little things that supposedly make a difference do seem far out. Just keep an open mind and observe the sonic effect of these quirky variables before fighting for a rationalization.

To add to the list of vibration effects including the ones I mentioned above, vibration produces microphonics in susceptible devices (wires, tubes) and also produces chassis ring if the chassis is flimsy. These effects manage to superimpose on the audio signal.

A High End audio system does not sound wonderful because it has "magical" speakers, the best tubed amps money can buy, or super expensive interconnects. Every small tweak from positioning and balancing the speakers, using special wall outlets, dedicated lines, room acoustic treatments, cleaning the stylus, using record clamps, cleaning the RCA jacks, isolating the componets on the shelves, using a rack that is not prone to transmit vibrations, etc. all add up to let your system perform to its best ability. The old phrase, "THE SUM IS EQUALL TO ALL OF ITS PARTS" applys very well to our hobby of reproducing music in our homes. The system sounds so real and natural because of all of the small things required to eliminate the negative aspects of the very componets we spend big money on to listen to music. For years, I had a solid wood rack with glass doors made by CWD. It retailed for about $700 dollars. I replaced it with 2 Sound Organisation racks, Z-560, Z-545. My entire system was transformed into a more solid, open sound. It can't explain why this occured, but is was worth the effort to switch racks.