Where Does The Rack Fit In To 'Source First'

The main advice from Naim and Mana (John Watson) is buy all of your black boxes and when satisfied, buy the Rack.

Ignore any Mana zealot who will come in screaming to get yourself 28 layers of the stuff, they are misguided t*** p***.

Regards

Mick

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Ade

The main advice from Naim and Mana (John Watson) is buy all of your black boxes and when satisfied, buy the Rack.

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The advantage of Naim is that you can buy another level if you need it.

Fraim (and good racks in general) will organise the music, and give you a consistency of performance across good and mediocre recordings.

It is probably quite a different kind of change than you would expect from box upgrades.

cheers, Martin

I think Ade's question was one of prioritisation.

Should he spend money on boxes or on a rack.

It is true that the Fraim can be added to, as indeed, you can add on Mana etc. The point Ade was after, was would he get the best return in sound on buying boxes or racks.

The concensus, is to buy the boxes and speakers and then the racks. Ideally, one could do it all in a single hit, but thats unlikely in the real world.

Regards

Mick

Problem is you'll never be satisfied until the system is setup right.

It is better to have good boxes on orange crates than have low grade boxes on expensive racking.

This is one instance were professional opinion is united and it makes sense to follow it.

Regards

Mick

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
This is one instance were professional opinion is united and it makes sense to follow it.

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OK, I'll have to stay as an amateur, then.

I certainly feel you should get some sort of racks well before getting to CDS/52 level.

cheers, Martin

By experimentation, I have found that you can get dramatically different results even on lowly sound org 2 tier tables. You can put them on cross head screws, paving slabs or the floor. Each sounds different and better or worse. You can also hear the sound change over a day or two as they settle. this is enough to tell me that they matter.

The only way you are going to make sense of things is to listen to different systems, audition boxes and stands in your own home and make sure that you experimnent enough to understand what works for you and what doesn't.

You already have a pretty good system on a pretty good rack. If I were in your position I would be thinking of an XPS for a digital upgrade fix and a better (dedicated) stand for the analogue route.

Regards
Steve

Cheers
Ade

I didn't get involved in all the bitter arguments about stands until I found that the CDX I borrowed last summer sounded worse in my system than the CD5/Flatcap2 that I had at the time.

Puzzled by this finding, I returned it to my dealer who suggested that my Optimum Prestige rack may have been to blame for the underwhelming musical performance from the CDX. Certainly, it sounded much better than a CD5/FC2 on the standard QS in his demo room.

Not long after this, in July, I heard the demo of QS standard versus QS Reference, and I was blown away by the difference - using CD5/FC2/112/150 and CDX/82/Hi/250 systems - both into Credos.

Answering Ade's question, the CD5/FC2 on QS Ref. was sounding better than the CDX on standard QS - going on my recollection of how the CDX sounded when I had heard it previously on standard QS.

Around this time, I was interested in hearing Mana, as my eyes (and ears) were now opened to the difference that a performance (as opposed to a furniture) stand can make.

I enjoyed hearing the three different Mana systems - and Mana surely made a big difference, but despite the offer of a straight swap of the QS Ref that I had just bought, for a Mana amp rack, I decided to keep the QS Ref, as I prefered its style of musical presentation over that of Mana.

The Fraim was also beginning to appear around this time, and although I hadn't (still haven't) heard it, I thought that it was too expensive, so I dismissed it from my list of options on that basis, although I think that it is the most visually pleasing of all the racks on offer.

If the Fraim is the only rack under consideration, the only way to resolve this issue would be to do an A/B dem of a naked CDX on the Fraim, versus a CDX/XPS on the Ash Designs, and the outcome will determine the price level in terms of equipment, at which the Fraim should be purchased.

It's always a nice day for it Have a good one!
Steve.
It's good to get back to normal.

Mick, I'm not sure what you consider low grade boxes, but I would be ashamed selling someone a system without proper supports. That would be a system as small as a Rega2, Creek amp and Wharfdale Diamonds. I would take a modest well set-up system over a more expensive poorly set-up system anyday.

I haven't any experience with Fraim, but if it's anything like other supports I've heard I would certainly make it the part of ANY Naim system I was putting together. You'll never hear what your system is capable of until it is set-up properly.

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If someone currently has a half decent rack (Ash Design in my case), at what point in the hierarchy does the performance benefit of replacing it with a Fraim outweigh the cost involved. For example, would I benefit more from replacing my rack with a Fraim, or adding an XPS to my CDX, since both would cost in the same region.

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Stands are part of system setup, and system setup is usually more important than the system itself - any visit to a hi-fi show will prove this. Room after room of megabuck systems sounding like total crap.

The concept of a decent support system for turntables has been around since the 50s, I remember playing about with concrete slabs and bicycle inner tubes in the late 70s with my first turntable. I have stood turntables on things that are more than simply verging on the ridiculous. Back in those days we were thankfully allowed to stand our amplifiers and speakers on whatever was left over. Speakers got decent stands first, then the electronics. Recently we started to realise that the bloody stands sounded as different to one another as the electronics.

Stands have a sound. Each of the stands favoured by people here sound remarkably different from one another, this makes the choice very much a matter of personal preference. I have absolutely no idea what Ash Design stands sound like, they may be great, so you need to hear your stand against some competition to see if it is any good or not. Don't assume that paying more is necessarily gets better, I chose my QS Reference against phase 2 Mana and Fraim, and both of those are considerably more expensive (my mistake was already owning the Mana… Doh!). I am not saying the QS is better for everyone, it just is for me.

The proximity of metal to a decent hi-fi system has a sound too, and it annoys me sufficiently to remove as much as I can from the environment closely surrounding the equipment. It is impossible to remove everything, but every bit helps a little.

As to where stands sit in system hierarchy, well that is a really interesting question, and one that I am not sure of the answer. As an example there are people who are prefer a cheap tatty CD player on a big stack of Mana to an expensive Naim CD on the floor. Then there are people such as myself who do not. Who is right?

I certainly think that stands are important, as is every aspect of system setup. It’s a cumulative effect, every setup error that is removed obviously gives the equipment a better chance to perform as (or maybe even better than) intended. Stands having such a range of different characters also allow a welcome chance to better tune a system to a given room, and if you ask me the room is the most important aspect of the lot, and by far the hardest to get right.

Tony.

The Fraim is an excellent stand which is the convergence of many ideas and the development of some new ones, but if it were me and I owned an Ash design stand I would upgrade my boxes untik I was happy and then think about stands.

happy x-mas

When he offered it me, I was actually in the process of putting together a DIY rack, which now serves as a 5 shelf power tool rack in my garage.

Cheers
Ade