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I was first brought the early proto-type of these shelves at the beginning of 2006 and put it under a very fine CD player. It was not the first isolation platform I had put under the player, but it was a considerable improvement on my own preceding effort.
The effect was a lifting of distortions, or so it seems to me, and the function of the player became not only more focussed and articulate, but also more natural as to the actual sonority of the instruments being played back. The effect seemed to make listening to music that much more informative, whilst being more natural.
Over the following months better and better proto-types came along, and eventually a finalised version, which I definitely would not want to remove! Each time a new version came along, I put the previous one under the amplification where almost as fine an increase in musicality resulted. Even the separate power supply for my CD player seemed to produce an improved end result in replay when it was mounted up on a shelf.
The final version has very real benefits in terms of musical lucidity and ease of listening in the resulting replay. The main gains for me are that the balances between instruments in complex music are that much easier to perceive, which is rather important. It allows for an easier appreciation of the music and musicianship of the performers even in the most complex music.
This is gained not by getting an un-naturally bright or clinical effect, but rather a remarkable increase in accuracy of the actual sonorities relayed. The upshot of this is that weaker instruments are in natural proportion but more clearly focussed, so that, for example, the harpsichord is beautifully pitched rather than as so often a rather ill focussed tizz. Often the middle voices (or lines) in music are the hardest to perceive, and these become as easily followed as the higher and lower lines. It also seems to me than all the lines take on more clarity and a genuine sense of the weight or lightness intended by the performers.
Perhaps the greatest effect was found with mounting the CD player, but amplification benefits almost as much, and even for resultant performance of replay where a separate power supply is used, benefited from these shelves.
A further offshoot of this, and one that would yield a real surprise, was mounting high quality speakers on a variant of the shelves, designed initially for electronic components. I had already made simple platforms for myself to counter the effect of a suspended wooden floor spoiling the results. These new isolation platforms under the speakers are much finer, and produced a similarly successful lift in the quality of performance of my speakers, which I had found when I fitted the electronic component version under my CD player.
The effect is one of clarification and reduction in un-natural artefacts. Articulation becomes naturally clearer and pitching more easily perceived, but most of all the sonority of the instruments or instrument and sung lines (and even speech) becomes a quite startling degree more natural. This runs in parallel with gains in the lucidity of musical balances between the lines, and a real gain in evenness of tone and volume between pitches, which allows for a very real perception of the phrasing of musical lines in the original performance, because the dynamic of the individual notes is clearly more musical than when the replay is less even. Again I would not want to part with these new speaker isolation shelves.
- G. Johnson
The effect was a lifting of distortions, or so it seems to me, and the function of the player became not only more focussed and articulate, but also more natural as to the actual sonority of the instruments being played back. The effect seemed to make listening to music that much more informative, whilst being more natural.
Over the following months better and better proto-types came along, and eventually a finalised version, which I definitely would not want to remove! Each time a new version came along, I put the previous one under the amplification where almost as fine an increase in musicality resulted. Even the separate power supply for my CD player seemed to produce an improved end result in replay when it was mounted up on a shelf.
The final version has very real benefits in terms of musical lucidity and ease of listening in the resulting replay. The main gains for me are that the balances between instruments in complex music are that much easier to perceive, which is rather important. It allows for an easier appreciation of the music and musicianship of the performers even in the most complex music.
This is gained not by getting an un-naturally bright or clinical effect, but rather a remarkable increase in accuracy of the actual sonorities relayed. The upshot of this is that weaker instruments are in natural proportion but more clearly focussed, so that, for example, the harpsichord is beautifully pitched rather than as so often a rather ill focussed tizz. Often the middle voices (or lines) in music are the hardest to perceive, and these become as easily followed as the higher and lower lines. It also seems to me than all the lines take on more clarity and a genuine sense of the weight or lightness intended by the performers.
Perhaps the greatest effect was found with mounting the CD player, but amplification benefits almost as much, and even for resultant performance of replay where a separate power supply is used, benefited from these shelves.
A further offshoot of this, and one that would yield a real surprise, was mounting high quality speakers on a variant of the shelves, designed initially for electronic components. I had already made simple platforms for myself to counter the effect of a suspended wooden floor spoiling the results. These new isolation platforms under the speakers are much finer, and produced a similarly successful lift in the quality of performance of my speakers, which I had found when I fitted the electronic component version under my CD player.
The effect is one of clarification and reduction in un-natural artefacts. Articulation becomes naturally clearer and pitching more easily perceived, but most of all the sonority of the instruments or instrument and sung lines (and even speech) becomes a quite startling degree more natural. This runs in parallel with gains in the lucidity of musical balances between the lines, and a real gain in evenness of tone and volume between pitches, which allows for a very real perception of the phrasing of musical lines in the original performance, because the dynamic of the individual notes is clearly more musical than when the replay is less even. Again I would not want to part with these new speaker isolation shelves.
- G. Johnson