Solid ground is best I guess. Bedrock. I remember my Thorens TT sounding very good indeed in a basement on the concrete floor. Like my Bose 901s sounding much better by a brick wall compared to wood wall. Now i live in a wood house and have to make the best of it. I was able to install two struts in the basement right below the system on the ground floor. HUGE difference. I can jump in front of the TT with no mistracking. System is in a Larvikite shelf - comparable to granite. Very large and heavy. Never heard any ringing but damp the shelves underneath with butylen anyway. TT is now a Hanss t30 with maglev feet and i am happy with the sound as it rests direct on the top shelf. But with my Vpi hw 19 I preferred more tweaking - - a Bright star sandbox, ceramic cones under the player, even some air using bike tyres....quite a pain to setup but it did benefit the player spring suspension.
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.