Equipment racks - do they make a difference?

[antonkk]

I'm planning to buy a different rack for my system for visual purposes mostly. They sell some nice looking wooden chinese racks for Hi End at a dealer nearby and I'm thinking about those. The question is - can they change the sound and how?

[Scott in DC]

Speaker and source component stands, especially turntable stands are essential. You want to keep vibrations from messing up your turntables platter and tonearm/cartridge interaction. My Linn LP 12 improved drastically when I bought a Mana Reference Shelf (wall mount turtable stand) rather than using the LP 12 on top of my equipment tower. I just couldn't control vibrations from people walking in my equipment room from causing the tonearm to skip.

Many small monitor speakers (ProAcs, Spendor among many others) are essentially designed to work with a high mass speaker stand (such as Target stands) for purposes of enhancing bass performance. You've probably seen high quality Sonus Faber monitors (Guarneris, Cremona Auditors) even being designed with matching stands.

Scott

[antonkk]

Yeah, I know it all - my Spendor monitors and the rest of the equipment all rest on dedicated stands. The only reason I want to change the rack is because of design - the question is if wooden rack will compromise the sound or not? I remember some "guru" told me once that glass and metal racks "sharpen" the sound while wooden ones make it more relaxed but bloated...:confused:

[WHitese]

I personally wouldnt worry about it and buy the one that looks better to you.

I think the gear is usually good enough in reasonably good stands..I think its nuts to go anal over racks.