Platforms: granite, marble, maple or other?

I can't comment on the speakers, but I just put a 15' X 20" X 2.25" thick maple cutting board under my McCormack DNA-0.5 Gold Rev. amp, and 1" thick cork/rubber footers from Rcreations (an A'Gon member) under the maple board. It's excellent w/ good detail and some warmth. The ones with horizontal grain rather than end grain are supposed to be the best sounding, and that's what I got.

Try www.cutleryandmore.com for the John Boos maple cutting boards. They have a lot of different sizes, and prices are pretty good. Cheers. Craig

Jafox; you're apparently a non-believer when it comes to vibration control/management, and I won't try to convince you here. I've already briefly stated the improvements I got using the maple board under my amp and stand by them. There was no need to go "back and forth", but I easily could.

To use Jeffloistarca's acronym, STFA. Prior to using the maple board, I had this very high performance amp sitting on a Townshend Seismic Sink with very good results-- but lacking the warmth, then the amp on the Sink on the maple board w/cork/rubber isolation footers. This combo added the pleasant warmth and worked very well, but finally I preferred it w/o the Seismic Sink in the stack-- more warmth. If interested, you might check the Mapleshade Music website for more info specifically on maple.

I would note that with the amp just sitting on the MDF of my stereo stand, music quality/character was muddy and sort of incoherent with poor detail and not very musical at all.

Consideration of vibration control/management really is essential in a high performance system (which I have) to get the full potential out of it. Personally, I think there are many potentially excellent stereo systems out there that are not optimally tweaked for best performance. IMO, the same kind of attention to detail needs to be applied to all system components that is typically used in a high performance analog system. Cheers. Craig

Jafox; A good statement. The best way to explain my observations re audio, is actually by comparing it to a TV watching experience.

When the TV color balance is very slightly to the green side of neutral, viewing is vaguely unpleasant or even irritating, but with a slight turn of the color balance control, the viewing experience can be greatly improved, even to the point of now being very pleasant. So, in an absolute sence, the change was very small, but improvement in the level of enjoyment was quite significant, and some may even say great (my wife would say great).

When I added the maple boards, the improvement in music quality/character, in any absolute sense, was small, but the (subjective) improvement in listening pleasure or enjoyment was definitey worthwhile and fairly significant to me. Over the years I've developed what I think are very good "critical listening skills"-- and yes, sometimes this can be a curse;>)

As construction quality improves, potential performance improves, but so do the affects of negative outside influences such as poor AC supply, sensitivity to excess vibration, room acoustics, poor outlets (read .79 cents) and other associated AC conditions. Good manufacturers do their best to optimize their components musicality, but they cannot account for ALL conditions under which their equipment will be used. You can put $100K equipment in a cube shaped room and realize only poor performance.

Finally I would say that not all tweaks work, and I've rejected many either because their was no improvement or they actually made things worse. Cheers. Craig

Jdombrow; The McCormack amps all have large soft Sorbothane feet, and I now have the amp sitting directly on the maple board (spike not used), but I use-- and recommend-- Rcreations cork/rubber footers under the maple block. Cheers. Craig