Yeah. J. I live out in the country. Nearest neighbor is outside of baseball throw away. Street is over 250 feet. Small airport a few miles away. Im on my own transformer. My listening room noise floor is about 29db and dropping. There are only so many things to work on but im still searching. I do know every bit of isolation and precision is one bit closer to perfection.
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Thanks Anup. Ill check out the link. Im not terrified of spending more but i need a reasonable thought that i may actually see a gain. Sounds like the quorum indicates its a bottomless pit with no likely real solution.
Best. B
Racks are a funny old subject really, and i think any gains to be had from a good designed rack come from firstly how bad your gear is at dealing with vibrations, and then how much vibrations are in the room caused by your speakers, traffic, etc, etc.
Also floor construction comes into it, so lot’s off different thing’s that will either add up to a lot or not so much.
Obviously a nice rack can look nice, and hopefully help keep the vibrations down, but in the end it comes down to you personally as to whether you go for it or not.
For me personally i wanted a nice rack, i haven’t a clue if it’s making a difference but it certainly isn’t making it worse.
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I agree with all you say but I have a comment on the above. I have been using dedicated racks for audio since the early days of audiophile rack manufacture in the UK. That was the early 1980s with the first Sound Organisation units. These were replaced with the first version of the late and missed Max Townhend’s Seismic Sink “pendulum” suspended rack and later with my big Quadraspire SVT.
So that’s three racks successively in the same room. So some sort of comparison could be attempted. I have to say that each replacement gave me clearly audible improvements. I can’t easily itemise them but the overall sound and music seemed better each time. As a classical listener string sound is important to me and that, at least, can be thought of separately and got better and better.
I am hoping that this is a little encouragement.
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Get a Quadraspire rack. I have the mid range SVT and it opened up the sound from my equipment.
I have no links with Quadraspire other than being a very satisfied owner of one of their products.
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Ditto Custom Design HiFi racks of which I’m a fan https://www.customdesign.co.uk/Milan-6-support-hifi-furniture-hifi-stand-hifi-table-hifi-stand-hifi-support-hifi-table-hifi-equipment-support-CDht2221-speaker-stands-speaker-stand-milan-Compact-hifi-furniture-hifi-support-hifi-table-hifi-stand-speaker-stand-hifi-furniture-hifi-tables-s
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I don’t consider it a rabbit hole. It isn’t something easy to compare like two dacs or something.
But I will tell you if you can ever hear a dCS set up on a Grand Prix Audio Silverstone rack, you’ll buy it. You won’t care about comparing after you hear it. And it’s exactly what you say in your original post, less background noise, Improved sonic accuracy. I’d add resolution and tambre. My Grand Prix Audio Rack takes my Vivaldi Stack to a new level, it’s NOT subtle and you can’t go backwards once heard. My 2 cents
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Speaking of isolation devices and mechanisms, I’ve often wondered why dCS doesn’t include upgraded footers on its components, especially with major upgrades like the Apex. Considering the price levels of the gear and dCS’ obvious concern for the best sound quality from its products, it seems like a reasonable expectation. Maybe the implication is that better footers aren’t needed. Anybody know?
The only way you can get a proper answer is from the person at dCS who makes such decisions. Otherwise one can speculate. Mine is based on experience that the footers supplied to units such as Rossini or Vivaldi are perfectly adequate. That is not to say that there may be opinions here and there that alternatives may be substituted but there is no uniform decision on what is best.If they supplied one type then immediately there will be calls for another so the issue remains. In this case there is no definitive science to he called on.
In any case aside from Lina these are now established units and replacing feet mid production results in an upgrade programme being requested by existing owners. Wait for the replacement line in due course and see what they may supply then.
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I think everyone has different levels off vibration in their system that they may or may not need to deal with.
A decent rack that will independently support each bit off kit is the right start, and more than likely enough. But obviously you can keep going, and only then would you find out if they are needed or not.
But i feel if you are going to place them stacked on top off each other then probably better isolation feet would be more beneficial, or if say you have a normal piece off furniture that it all sits on.
But really unless you feel like you have a vibration problem then the standard feet are fine, as i tried isoacoustic feet under my rossini kit years ago and didn’t find any inpovement, but this was also on a hifi rack, i even had my rossini colck and player stack at one point, and even then i couldn’t hear any difference with the isoacoustic feet on both unit’s.
Cheers dunc
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Thanks for the detailed response, Pete. I agree the only way to get a proper answer is from dCS. Good to hear your view that the stock footers are adequate. They may well be, and it would be unlike dCS to overlook this issue if they weren’t. So logically one would conclude that they are. But as you say, this remains speculation. Of course one could go through a personal evolution trying different footers which, worn-through audiophile that I am, is not appealing. Especially for 9 grand for the Apex upgrade, one would think that new footers would have been included if warranted. As you say, we’ll see what happens in the future, although it would be nice to get a comment from dCS now. Jim Heckman
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dunc, good to hear your view that a decent rack (which I have) will probably defray most vibration issues. I must say I don’t know how one can tell if they have a vibration problem just from listening. It’d be like electronic noise on the signal, you don’t know you have it until you install a good noise filter and clearly hear the difference. But then my comments come at the end of a very long, laborious and frustrating summer of upgrades so taking on another audiophile experimentation project is not in the cards. “You’ll have this…” 
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I also don’t have a clue if you can hear you have a problem, i guess only a well experienced dealer might hear something is wrong?
But it doesn’t stop anyone trying isolation feet to see if it makes a difference. But i would have them on demo just in case.
This has been my experience too.
That said, living in a (busy) village, I may have fewer vibration issues than if I were still living in London, so everyone’s experience may vary
Point well made 
Incidentally, I think the same could be said of so many potential upgrade paths. Such is the world of us Hi-Fi enthusiasts!
I guess this is what makes concrete measurements almost impossible as the vibrations aren’t consistent from one millisecond to another, let alone from one location to another
Approximately 6 years ago at RMAF I was listening to the then newly introduced Magico M3’s in Magico’s suite at the Hyatt. During the show they had a drawing for a set of their footers called QPods (developed in 2011 for front-end internal use at Magico), and I was fortunate enough to win the give-away. I brought them home and they’ve sat in their case in the closet adjacent to my listening room since. Three weeks ago, I was reading something in WBF about isolation and remembered that I had these cool-looking unused Magico footers. On a whim I thought why not install them and see what they can do. I found the case, took out the footers and placed them under my Rossini APEX. (As a side note: my gear all resides on Finite Elemente racks which are designed to use resonators to dissipate vibration and isolate associated noise, so I’m not totally off topic here.)
It’s hard to state the immediate positive difference the footers made in the sound quality I was hearing. Not that the SQ was bad before, far, far from it. I’ve long thought my Rossini with the APEX upgrade, coupled with the installation of AudioQuest’s WEL Signature Digital Coax Cables (between the clock and DAC) was as good as it would get in my system. But now it was surprisingly (and somehow) better – the lower noise floor was allowing greater musical detail and more expansive bass to be heard, the mid-range and highs had greater clarity, yet sweeter sonics. My wife came into the room and said, “something’s different, it sounds wonderful.”
These will not be coming out of my system. What was I thinking for the previous 6 years to have left these in a box in a dark closet? Silly me. More than any other upgrade to-date, the addition of the QPods has done more to help forget about the equipment and be able to solely focus on and enjoy the music.
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Thanks for that feedback. Based on everyones input i think my next isolation upgrade will be the wilson audio acoustic diodes. Im guessing the stillpoints are getting the job done on the front end and the speakers may be next thanks again. B
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Barry, I just installed these about 1 month ago on my Alexia 2’s. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest. I even thought that 2 hours later my acoustic memory would have been long gone so it would be tough to sort of A/B in my head. Well, I was definitely wrong there. For me, it took about 5 seconds to hear a noticeable difference in my system—not subtle. Good luck on that and I hope you get the same outcome.
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Thanks Ryan. Im trying to do it before the holidays. Best. Barry
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Just an anecdote about the importance of an isolation rack. When I bought my Ayre QX-5 many years ago I auditioned it fairly extensively at the dealer and was mightily impressed. It presented a beautiful sound aesthetic and the best I had heard at that point.
When I got it home however I was surprised to find a really noticeable (mechanical) transformer hum, especially when I listened via headphones with the Ayre only a couple of feet away on the desk in my study. It was clearly audible over the music in the quiet passages.
Took it back to the dealer and we set it up again. Hum gone. This is weird! It took a little while to realise that it was his Finite Elemente Pagode rack that was successfully grounding all the noise.
Long saga ensued with correspondence back-and-forth with Boulder, which culminated over a year later with them sending a revised power supply board that could be retro-fitted. Hum gone completely. Happy customer.
But that Finite Elemente* rack made quite an impression!
'* and the sharp-eyed may have noticed that I use their Cerapuc footers under the Ktêmas.
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