My turntable is on a steel apollo turntable shelf with a wood shelf/base and bolted to a concrete basement wall. No vibrations and sounds good to me, and its easy to play and clean a record. Works for me. Being inconvenienced imo will eventually cause one to not want to play a record eventually. So its a compromise.
Dumped the rack
So I have a steel spiked Sound Organization table about 2 feet tall. On it rests a 3" maple butcher block. On that rests my slate Garrard 401 with slate feet and aluminum cones.
I had a piece of granite made and installed it on the maple beneath the turntable. Man, that sounded bad. Silvery colored and dull. I reversed the layer order and put the granite below the maple. That sounded a lot better. But not as good as when there was no granite. So I took it back out. Okay back to how it was. But something was missing. The granite did bring a feeling of stability to the image. What to do? I took the whole rack thing out of the equation and put the 401 on the concrete floor along with the preamp. This sounded best notwithstanding the wooden tone lost by removal of the maple. But the best thing, and I’m aware of the effect from reading but never tried it, was that imaging has improved by quite a margin. Like removing a veil of something. Like when someone moves their head out of your face at a concert. Now, I have to bend down to play records.
I had a piece of granite made and installed it on the maple beneath the turntable. Man, that sounded bad. Silvery colored and dull. I reversed the layer order and put the granite below the maple. That sounded a lot better. But not as good as when there was no granite. So I took it back out. Okay back to how it was. But something was missing. The granite did bring a feeling of stability to the image. What to do? I took the whole rack thing out of the equation and put the 401 on the concrete floor along with the preamp. This sounded best notwithstanding the wooden tone lost by removal of the maple. But the best thing, and I’m aware of the effect from reading but never tried it, was that imaging has improved by quite a margin. Like removing a veil of something. Like when someone moves their head out of your face at a concert. Now, I have to bend down to play records.