quartz as shelving

Hard surfaces like marble, granite, glass and your quartz countertop are kryptonite to your stereo equipment.

Hard surfaces can work well as shelving as long as they are bonded securely to an acoustically inert substance such as MDF. As always it will depend on the weight and type of equipment you are placing on them as well. This is an area for experimentation.

redoing my bathrooms with quartz countertops. They are expensive. We managed to find some end pieces for about $1k, which is 5 foot by 2 feet. Its also heavy.

Lowens, So, how does your bathroom system sound with the quartz countertops?

Quartz and other hard surfaces will not drain unwanted energy from your equipment. The better equipment stands use wood like the stand Zargon uses. Check the photos of his system.

Rrog is being overly dogmatic. Unity Audio made some very high quality speakers using Corian (not quartz, but similar). If it worked as a speaker cabinet material it can probably work as an equipment shelf. There are several different brands of quartz-like countertop. Some may be quartz all the way thru and some may be a layer of quartz bounded to a substrate. I think the later may work better as a shelf material, but I'm purely speculating. Countertop installers are probably the best source of practical info. Try it an tell us the results.

Onhwy61 is in fact speculating. Unity Audio speakers like my Green Mountain speakers use a synthetic marble to eliminate cabinet resonance. This has nothing to do with placing your equipment on a rock hard surface that will make your system sound bright and glaring.

Uru975, Notice the photos of Onhwy61's systems. His equipment is on wood. There is a good reason for that. Stereo equipment on wood is known to give the best sound.

marble, granite, glass and your quartz countertop are kryptonite to your stereo equipment

Yet you have speakers made from synthetic marble! What am I not getting?

Stereo equipment on wood is known to give the best sound.

If this is such a well known "fact", then how come HRS, Sistrum, Arcici and Gran Prix (4 very well regarded stand manufacturers) don't use wood platforms?

Rather than talk in absolutes and make hyperbolic statements all I'm suggesting is give the quartz material a try and let us know how it works. I freely admit, again, that I'm speculating that it might work well.

(As a personal note, I do use maple boards under some of my equipment. I also use carbon fiber, MDF and acrylic. At one point I used 1" thick glass which when combined with rubber/cork mats worked well. I then switched to a Mapleshade wood/metal stand which was a definite improvement. I'm now seriously considering taking out all the maple boards and switching entirely to acrylic, except for the one carbon fiber piece.)

What you are not getting is, I don't use my speakers as a shelf to set my equipment on and speaker designers use this material for speaker cabinets for reducing cabinet resonances.

I think you should take out the maple and replace it with quartz. Then you can tell us how bad it sounds.

Now do you get it?

So reducing resonate behavior in speaker cabinets is somehow different than reducing resonances in equipment shelves and different materials should be used?

"Quartz and other hard surfaces will not drain unwanted energy from your equipment."

Can you tell us the origins of this "unwanted engery"? lol

BTW, I use solid marble slabs for amp stands for 200 lb monos. Anyone can build with flimsy wood and come up with vodoo logic as to why wood is better. (arn't some of the truly great speakers made with concrete- Theil?) (See allot of older Speaker Builder Mags)

i think it would be most accurate to say that the job of vibration management is a function of may variables such as freq and amplitude of the driver, weight of the load, materials used and the design. complicated enough to say that there is no one size fits all solution. I'm, still hazy on the effects of vibration (even minimal)on solid state electronics. I've read lots of stuff that is frankly BS but lots of folks report noted improvements so............

anyway there is no magic material.

Rrog, u mentioned that glass is kryptonite to stereo equipment. I m curious why Mana stand and Naim Fraim (expensive) used glass as shelf. Appreciate your input thks