hifi stand for allmy gear -where to get a good one?

[richardcooper2k]

i attached mine to a solid wall with brackets as i figured this would be better than any stand would be on the wooden floors i have.

[richardcooper2k]

in fact i havn't bothered with shelves yet apart from for the turntable, which i'm looking into changing the shelf material from veneered chipboard to some kind of stone/ceramic to get me effectivly towards a second tier for my slatedeck 401

so the cases of my amps rest directly on the metal shelf brackets, bypassing their rubber feet. is this better than having shelves under the rubber feet ? i don't know because i havn't tried it yet

has anyone else tried a similar thing both ways and can report any results (for wall mounting) ?

[Anthony Godwin]

When you first fitted your kit to the wall did you notice any improvement in sound quality?

I assume as you have a direct drive turntable you are of the mass loading persuasion.

I drifted into this myself with a Mana stand and very heavy target speaker stands. Quite frankly with the rack - and cd at the time - I would have been hard pushed to notice an improvement in sound quality compared to my temporary improvised setup. That may well say more about my powers of discrimination than the rack of course.

However, recently, I have noticed that my system does sound more lively and engaging using my home made lightweight wooden speaker stands.

There was one particular track on LP. I was listening to it and wondering why I ever liked it. It seemed a bit dull and lifeless.

I had changed the stands for some open-framed steel types sometime before and a quick listen hadn't really convinced me one way or the other. I had mass loaded the stands with heavy slabs of slate.

I swapped the stands for the wooden ones - and, I could hear why I liked the track.

This is a bit of a revelation for me so I am now tending toward the Russ Andrews school - yes I know his name is like a swear word in this forum and no, I don't have shares.

Anyway, if you are into the mass idea then screwing your kit to the house has to have merit surely. I like the idea myself but with the equipment decoulpled/isolated via very lightweight shelves.

[richardcooper2k]

i've never had an equipment stand, my amps and tt have been on various walls since i got started. prehaps initially because it was cheaper but now i suspect a purpose built stand would be a backwards step, having a wooden floor, though i havn't done the experiment due to the expense. you often see separate wall mounting shelves for turntables with floor standing racks for the rest of the kit.

i would say the slate plinth is medium weight compared to the huge block of glued together mdf i once owned - the decrease in mass and added spiking was a definate improvement, particularly in the higher frequencies, and as you say 'lifelyness'

working out what works for you in the room you are using is the trick you seem to have learned. when i find something that makes an improvement somewhere i often try to implement it everywhere else and over compensate. it seems you can have too much of a good thing.

[Black Stuart]

I use TV/VCR tables I bought from Lidls a couple of years ago @ €14.99. They have steel section legs with veneered MDF shelves. I was going to get slate shelves made, which would be cheap to buy where I live, about €25 per piece but the combined weight would be considerable. Now I am about to order slate plinths just a little bit bigger than my CDP etc and with use them on top of the MDF shelves. Whether I will use the Soundcare spikes between remains to be seen as I have found that 'coupling' the 2 sections of my DD slate system makes for a deeper, clearer more insightful presentation

Yesterday I saw that Lils has a very attractive wooden 'centre table', which had 2 shelves and a top 100 x 50cm. The two shelves did'nt have a lot of headroom but were entirely adequate for CDP/DVD and they were seperated by vertical sections so that PSUs could also be accomodated as well.

I must say that it's WAF factor was high, price €45. Maybe they have come and gone in other Euro countries but as I know Lidls corporate policy is to order enough for 2 sales slots - definately worth a looing out for.

[richardcooper2k]

hi stuart, how are your layers of slate coupled ?