CD vs. SACD vs. DVD-Audio vs Vinyl vs...

I just caught up with the Carl-bashing - sorry I missed the fun. I don't want to be like Carl, but it does not stop me beginning to like the guy. I certainly enjoy Carl's posts and usually look for them and enjoy them. He does resort to rudeness when confronted by someone with an opposite opinion to his own - which does not aid the discussion much - but that's just Carl. Carl is obviously both very experienced and very passionate about this stuff, and adds a very entertaining and interesting dimension to this site. No censorship please!

I have tried Vibrapods, but did not like them. Putting them under speakers yields good and bad effects, but overall they reduced musical enjoyment for me. I feel they would work best under speakers with noisy cabinets, since they reduce cabinet resonance at the expense of doppler effect distortions. Under CD players, preamps, power amps etc they had a similar effect to many of the other compliant footers around. At the price they are good, but in a top flight system I strongly recommend the various bladder products like seismic sinks. Their performance eclipses products like Vibrapods. If you do not want to pay so much then experiment with 12" or 14" inner tubes (with as little air in them as possible). I use seismic sinks under my electronics except for my monoblocks where the sheer weight and the difficulty of centering that weight meant a very expensive sink was required. As a result I used 12" inner tubes between two shelves. This performed hugely better than Vibrapods.

Hi Garfish. Perhaps I should elaborate concerning Vibrapods, to see if we still disagree. In the context of their price they are very good. But in the context of a system that costs more than $15k, I would strongly recommend trying Townshend CD Sinks instead - at a cost of around $200 each (I am guessing a bit as to price because I do not live in the US) - under light weight components. As it happens I do not like the effect of the bigger and more expensive Seismic Sink products (I own some but they gather dust in the cupboard). I tried Vibrapods under my tube monoblocks but found there was a very odd resonance effect in the middle of the midrange that was intrusive - hence my preference for an inner tube - a Sink product not being practical in this application. Like all vibration products, there is the potential for vibration interactions that are very different from component to component. When I first tried Vibrapods under my speakers (both Thiels and Martin Logan) I was very impressed at the improvement in soundstage and the reduction in cabinet resonance. But it took me about a week to realise that I was getting a lot less enjoyment from well recorded vocalists. For some reason there was a problem with articulation and coherence in the midrange with the Vibrapods in place. As soon as I took them out, the thrill of listening to a great singer returned. I can very well imagine that someone with different musical tastes would not notice the problem that I found. As a result of all this I have come to the general conclusion that without some form of compliance in your vibration control system, you get some nasty and intrusive narrow band resonances that often make the sound unmusically forward and which collapses the soundstage. When you introduce something compliant such as Vibrapods, Sorbathane, various polymer footers, various bladder or sprung products, you move the resonances down in frequency and they occupy a broader band. The effect is generally an improvement as it can take away what was previously an irritating edge to the sound. But having played with as many of these as I could get my hands on, I concluded that the CD sink managed to not only remove the edge, but retain dynamics, leading edge definition and coherence. Many of the others remove the edge, but at the expense of one of the other characteristics I just listed. Vibrapods are better than having only the rubber feet on your components as the "compliance" I refer to - except perhaps in the case of some (but not all) Sonic Frontiers products which use very good polymer feet (there are probably others too). I also prefer Vibrapods to Sorbothane (I have not tried the Gel version yet). But if you get just the right bladder product, the result is very much better in a top flight system IMHO.

Yes Garfish - I am from down-under. I live mostly in New Zealand and sometimes in Fiji (hence two stereo systems) and am looking to do more of the latter in future. Unfortunately for me, Internet connections are somewhat transitory things in Fiji. By the way, the big sinks sound absolutely wonderful in the mids and highs, and even in the deep bass. But the upper bass gets smeared and thereby robs the music of too much life. The CD sinks only get half-way there in the mids and highs, but the bass is not compromised - indeed it improves the bass, particularly in pitch.

'Deed I do Eldragon - a relaxed listener is one of the best tweaks I have come across.