I have been auditioning new interconnects and in the process I was forced to move my Chardonnay due to differing IC lengths which forced me into a new quest for isolation for my preamp.
What a fortunate turn of events. I previously had my Chardonnay on DH Labs ceramic cones, points down, sitting on a Neuance platform. I have been fighting an upper mid-range glare that I suspected was coming from my Berning ZH270 amp. Frankly, I didn't suspect that my Supratek was the culprit.
On my Chardonnay, I had the DH Labs cones attached to the underside of my chassis with two cones mounted beside the screws where the original feet were installed and one cone in center-rear of the chassis. Initially, I removed the Neuance and replaced it with a Lexan shelf supported four Herbies Tenderfeet, one under each corner of the Lexan. I placed my Chardonnay back into the system and the imaging immediately became much tighter by removing the Neuance shelf.
I then decided to cut another 1/2" thick Lexan shelf and I placed it on top of a piece of bubble wrap, sandwiching the bubble wrap between the two sheets of Lexan. Wow, much more clarity and better imaging still. The mid-range glare was still present so I decided to move the cones in front of the unit out to the very edges of my preamp underneath the wooden frame of the unit. Much better yet.
On a lark I decided to turn the front DH Labs points ups beneath the wooden frame and now things really popped into place. Midrange glare still present, but the imaging and clarity were magnitudes better. I then moved the center-rear DH cone to one rear rail, adding a fourth cone to the other rear rail, making it one cone under each corner of the wooden frame. What I immediately concluded was the metal plate on the bottom on the preamp was a source of fuzzy imaging (which escaped me before) and also the source of the slight upper mid-range glare in my system.
I have concluded that using the bottom plate for support with either the stock feet or with cones is a major mistake in my system. I did find however that using cones under the four corners of the wooden frame imparted a very analytical quality that became too much of a good thing. I subsequently replaced one cone beneath the rear-center of my preamp; point up on the very rear edge of the unit with a Herbies Big Fat Dot between the tip of the cone and the plate on the bottom of the preamp. This brought the warmth back to the music without losing any of the clarity and focus. It was a home run solution in my system.
I will spare you all of the experiments in between with maple blocks, metal cones, damping materials, etc. that I tried in between the "home run" recipe and my initial Neuance setup. In the end, anything added or subtracted to my home run recipe was a step backwards.
Incredible clarity, separation of massed violins, separation of voices, even more holographic imaging and a more expansive soundstage in all directions are the results of my experiment. If you are like me and are constantly looking for that bell-like clarity without the often associated sterility, I would highly recommend experimenting with getting your Supratek off of the stock feet or any other type of foot that rests on the bottom plate of the unit. Try the edges of the wooden frame for isolation and see if you get similar results. I can't believe the sheer amount of information I am hearing now compared to before.
I do realize from earlier posts in this thread that some like the more romantic, diffuse sound of the stock Supratek unit. (Not me - I installed V-Caps and a DACT attenuator which removed a great deal of the diffuse imaging and haze in my unit.) So, if you are happy with the way your Supratek sounds, leave my isolation ideas in the dustbin of history. If however, you feel like experimenting, I hope you enjoy similar results in the end. I do have some Sorbothane coming from McMaster Carr that I am going to substitute for the bubble wrap as an experiment. After reading the Sorbothane website and their design "guide", I realize that I have used the wrong implementation of Sorbothane in the past. If anyone has any further interest in the Sorbothane results, I will post them here.
(To make it easier to follow my final recipe, I will recap it here for simplicity.)
On top of my Salamander Synergy cabinet is:
four Herbies Tenderfeet, followed by-
a 1/2" Lexan shelf, followed by-
a sheet of bubble wrap, followed by-
another 1/2" Lexan shelf, followed by-
two DH Labs Cones, points up beneath the very front corners of the wooden frame of the preamp and one DH Labs cone, point up, in the center of the back of the unit on the very edge of the metal frame/plate. Between the point of the cone and the bottom of the metal plate is a Herbies Big Fat Dot
(By the way, I have all of my components on a Lexan shelf now with Herbies Tenderfeet beneath the four corners and Lexan has given me the best results yet of any isolation material I have tried. My other components did not respond to the *additional* isolation tweaks of my Âhome run recipe like the Supratek did.
