Active isolation; what can it do for music reproduction?

I did not say vibration control was not important. For turntables in particular it is very important for rather obvious reasons. My point is that there are ways to do it that are just as effective and seriously less expensive. It seems to me this is analogous to driving a finish nail with a sledge hammer. 
Folkfreak, whenever someone uses hyperbole in reference to sound my BS antenna goes up. Describe what it is you think you are hearing.
Mike, unfortunately few people will give their real opinion in such circumstances, not to hurt your feelings. I only have one close friend who will let me have it when I screw up. Not that there is no improvement but I would suspect It is primarily to isolating the turntable. Get it out of the room an it will be even better. I am very skeptical of isolation platforms improving the performance of purely electronic devices. I would only believe a well run double blinded study on that issue. I would not even believe myself. I love experimenting and it be loads of fun having your resources to play with.

Mike 

Thinking about it from a scientific standpoint, the reasons for isolating a turntable are obvious and I have been using passively isolated turntables exclusively since the late 70's with one silly exception ( a Transcriptors).
There are two types of vibrational influences on turntables, structural vibration and air born vibration (sound). Both the SOTA and SME shield themselves from structural vibration down to 3 Hz with dampened spring loaded systems. The isolation platforms do essentially the same thing. Do they do it better? Mike thinks so but I am not so sure. The isolation platforms are limited to 200 Hz, the SOTA and SME are not. I can jump up and down right in front of both turntables without any effect on them. That is pretty decent isolation. I assume you can put something like a Clearaudio table on an isolation platform and get the same result...up to 200 Hz. Then there is air born vibration. On tables with massive sub chassis and platters air born vibration will have virtually no effect. The problem will be exposure of the record, tonearm and cartridge. As far as the record is concerned both the SME and SOTA have excellent record hold down mechanisms that fix the record to the platter. Then there is the tonearm and cartridge. The dust covers I use give almost 6 dB of attenuation at 1000 Hz (measured with a meter) which is better than nothing. The best way would be putting the turntable in a sound proof room. The isolation platform does nothing for air born vibration only structural. Funny thing is that with new phono amps that have balanced outputs you can now put the turntable and phono amp at some distance from the preamp without ill effect making this a more practical idea and indeed if I ever build another house I might just design it with a turntable closet! So, IMHO the best way to isolate a turntable would be to get a well designed suspended turntable with a good record hold down mechanism and put it in an isolation closet. 
Next comes other electronics. The reasons for isolating a scanning electron microscope are pretty obvious. It takes several seconds for the microscope to complete a scan with resolution down to angstroms. The object being scan has to be absolutely still relative to the scanner or you get a blurred picture. It is a purely mechanical problem not an electronic one. Does motion or vibration affect electronics in any way? You could argue that mechanical devices like switches, relays and mechanical contacts might be affected. You could argue that capacitors might be affected. Is there any evidence for this. Not that I can find. If anybody can find something on this please post a link. Can vibration affect the travel of electrons through anything else? Only in your worst nightmares. Imagine what the traction control in your car would do. Or the auto pilot in an airplane. IMHO anybody that argues that it does is not lighting up on all eight cylinders. 
What about people like mikelavigne who say they can hear a difference when they turn the isolation platforms off? I do not expect anybody to take for granted what I say I hear. That is entirely a matter of my perspective and psychological state at the time. If 100 people hear exactly the same thing at the same time now perhaps I can make a believer out of you. Whose brain (ego) wants to admit they just wasted 17 K on a lark? Maybe some day I will get to hear Mike's system and even hear what he hears. One good thing I can certainly say for Mike is that he does not sell these things which makes his assessment more valid even if he has the silliest looking amplifiers on the market:)  Never believe a human who is trying to sell you something. 

mikelavigna, any comments on that?

Only $17,000/each. I would need 10 of them. Piece of cake.

Ok Mike, I know what you are talking about now,

Mike