Hi End rack really deliver?

A dealer for Grand Prix Audio told me his technique to sell GP racks.

He let the customer hear a system with all gears on GP rack except CDP which sits on another high end rack. Then he moved the CDP from that rack to GP and let the customer decide. 10/10 times, customers heard an improvement.

I am a believer in vibration control since 20+ years ago, started out with big wood rack and Mod Squad tip toe. Now I use Grand Prix Audio Monaco thru out, just debating if I need to continue using Black Diamond Racing cones.

Solid construction & heavy weight does not translate to better sound, unfortunately.

As Frank pointed out, I also own a 300lb granite that is used in multi-million dollar semiconductor equipment. For those who knows, it's for reticle inspection. Like wafer inspection, to resolve that 20nm geometry vibration has to be well controlled. In typical wafer inspection system, regardless bright field or dark field, chuck that holds the wafer will sit on a massive slab of granite which is suspended by air table. But to completely eliminate vibration introduced by the stage which moves the chuck, active damping is required to compensate the force exerted from the stage.

So in theory, one can build an active vibration control rack by reading in the sound, reverse the phase like noise cancellation headphone, and counter the vibrating transmitted thru air and floor with active device. It will probably cost half million to build such rack, maybe with all the insane audiophile on earth we can volume productize it and lower the cost to $100k. But when your system cost fraction of that amount, it does not make economic sense.

Grand Prix Audio designer was a race car chassis designer (Swift engineering who dominated CART in the early 90's). He knows the drawback fighting vibration only with mass, so he came up with something more creative, a combination of geometry, material, and assembly. Go read his white paper, I don't believe you can buy a more advance rack for less money.