The New Feet
Posted by: jimlevitt on 23 April 2003
This is something of a follow-up to Ross Blackman's topic of yesterday, in which he described the improvements in his system's musicality after placing some Vibrapods under his equipment. I would hope someone from Naim will respond.
Do the feet on the new components make them less susceptible to sonic variations depending upon the rack underneath them?
I've had Target, Base, Mana, Fraim, Hutter and even Grand Prix Audio in my system at one time or another. I've no desire to start a stand war (again!). With the exception of the Grand Prix Audio, none of the "usual suspects" in the list above seem to make any provision for the vertical component of vibration isolation. The feet on the audio component will therefore have to deal with some of this element. There's clearly a huge difference between the metal feet of a CDS2 and the compliant feet of a CDS3, or the feet on the older line of preamps and those on the new line. If the Fraim (just as an example) was "tuned" to best correspond to the sound of the older feet, shouldn't there be some need to make changes to the rack design when components with more compliant feet are placed on the same rack?
Or do the new style feet serve to isolate the components much more effectively from the stand - which would mean those obsessive types among us won't need to worry about racks quite as much?
So far I have only an XPS2 with the new feet, which hasn't told me a whole lot about the isolation capabilities of the new feet.
Do the feet on the new components make them less susceptible to sonic variations depending upon the rack underneath them?
I've had Target, Base, Mana, Fraim, Hutter and even Grand Prix Audio in my system at one time or another. I've no desire to start a stand war (again!). With the exception of the Grand Prix Audio, none of the "usual suspects" in the list above seem to make any provision for the vertical component of vibration isolation. The feet on the audio component will therefore have to deal with some of this element. There's clearly a huge difference between the metal feet of a CDS2 and the compliant feet of a CDS3, or the feet on the older line of preamps and those on the new line. If the Fraim (just as an example) was "tuned" to best correspond to the sound of the older feet, shouldn't there be some need to make changes to the rack design when components with more compliant feet are placed on the same rack?
Or do the new style feet serve to isolate the components much more effectively from the stand - which would mean those obsessive types among us won't need to worry about racks quite as much?
So far I have only an XPS2 with the new feet, which hasn't told me a whole lot about the isolation capabilities of the new feet.