Expert advice or gut feeling on my two rack dilemma.

I think you'll find that rack stability greatly falls off after 6 shelves. So based on that I'd not entertain the 10 shelf option.

I think FraimLite is overlooked too often. It's still a fantastic racking sokution fit for any level of eqipment and I mention it because you migyt find it more aesthetically pkeasing than Farim (I certainly do).

There's also Quadrapire options which may be preferred visually but again (and I say this from experience), do not exceed 6 levels. We have identical systems and I use the Quadraspire 4 evo with 6 shelves and nothing on the top shelf except an ornamental bowl. 100mm spacers beteen all level except the bottom level at 140mm for the 250DR and 2nd from top level for the NDX so that 282 at 1st from top and 250 on the bottom are the most separate from each other. 

I'd actually like Fraim/Lite but it just isn't safe in earthquake prone locations.

Thanks, sorry didn’t explain that too well. The 10 rack option would be split into brain and brawn, so max 5 levels on each stack only.

I showed the SWBO the QS, it didn’t get the thumbs up unfortunately.

yea I’m in earthquake prone NZ, so that is always in the back of my mind.

cheers

Ahh I see.

Safety issues first. Only you can decide. On independently isolated levels, a 250 can easily become a pointy cannonball. That might be an okay risk if there are no kids around.

How about a single rack of Fraim/Lite just for the hifi and an extra top shelf for SWMBO to decorate with whatver she wants?

No kids luckily. 

I,m pretty set on the two options, ’m really trying to work out which is the lesser of two evils.

Fraim single stack standing on the same wall, 300mm away from the speaker 

or

Isoblue brain-brawn stacked to the side wall, away from the speakers with a unitiserve on the rack.

Full Fraim but bear in mnd my earthquake experience is limited to a few minor ones in the UK. The building I was in could be felt swaying gently duiring the first one but it was built on clay, there was no damage, anywhere. For the second I was on a canal boat near the epicentre, possibly in the Netherton tunnel, and didn’t even notice it until I heard about it on the news.

Fraim 1 Isoblue 0

I don’t think either rack will have issues with earthquakes.......unless its the big one, then the system would be the last of my concerns.

Yes its a strange feeling when the building is swaying. It’s totally mad when the building starts moving in all directions, left, right, back, forwards, up and down.....you sit down under a door frame and hope like hell it goes away.

Hutter?

boom posted:

I don’t think either rack will have issues with earthquakes.

Pfff. I've had things in my home substantially heavier than a 250 or a Fraim rack fly across the room during a quake before. A fully decoupled rack is asking for trouble. I've decided that a Fraim will have to wait until I move somewhere where M3.5 is strongest quake to have hit the area in recent history. To underestimate what even a lower magnitude quake can do if the waves hit your building the wrong way or wavelength happens to match the height of the building is, frankly, a position taken by those who have not been in quakes that have resulted in serious damage or who have but have short memories.

I remember once, the room I was in just had some wine glasses tipped off shelves but the next room just meters away, my entire chest of drawers with a very low centre of gravity just flew 3m across the room.

Most quake related deaths are in fact related to room objects falling on people. 

feeling_zen posted:

boom posted:

I don’t think either rack will have issues with earthquakes.

Pfff. I've had things in my home substantially heavier than a 250 or a Fraim rack fly across the room during a quake before. A fully decoupled rack is asking for trouble. . 

Mmm, I hadn’t really thought that one through, glass on ball bearings...in an earthquake. Good point

Bob the Builder posted:

Hutter?

Never liked the look of Hutter.