Question for DIY people: Butcher block shelving??

Having played around with vibration isolation systems for a while, I thought I'd add my two cents worth to this thread. A while ago I got a 16" x 16" x 2" piece of granite, and used an epoxy glue to mate it with a 3/4" thick piece of 661T aluminum. The two pieces are separated by an extensional damping polymer to inhibit the transmission of vibrations between the two pieces. Then I got 3 air pistions from Fabreeca, which have a resonance frequency of ~ 6 Hz. This combination of components was rather expensive, but an order of magnitude less than a MinusK system or a Vibraplane, with the added advantage that no compressor is required. To be fair, both of the above a much lower naturaly frequency. The MinusK system is amazing, but also a lot more expensive more than my homemade system. The air pistions are very stable, and have not needed refilling for a couple of years. If you want to isolate one component, a CD player, let's say, then this seems like a reasonable option. I did Fourier transform analysis of the vibrational modes of the final piece, and it was very quiet above 6 Hz. It also made a quite noticable difference in the sound of my SCD-1, and while this is surely a matter of taste, it seemed like an improvement to me. On the other hand I use a Mapleknoll platform under my turntable, and I like that too, but I suspect that it provides very little vibration isolation. On the other hand, my turntable's platter (a Verdier Platine) is magnetically suspended, so perhaps it doesn't matter.

With respect to the inner tube suspension described above, I tried that once upon a time with unimpressive results. I think that the main reason for this is that the inner tube is not likely to have a natural frequency much below 6 Hz, which means that by the second overtone there is likely to be a significant interaction with the component placed upon it. That is, the inner tube does not isolate the system from vibration, it merely provides a spring upon which the system is placed, so that it adds vibrational energy to the system, which of course makes matters worse. Using extensional damping eliminates most of the resonances associated with the shelf itself, but that does not isolate the system from its environment. People who are using MDF shelving could probably make a noticable improvement if they got some extensional damping polymer material -- it's not expensive -- and then made a sandwhich between, let's say, an MDF shelf and a maple shelf. That composite shelf should not ring, i.e., it should be reasonably inert accoustically. This will probably change the sound. The problem is, as everyone knows, that anything one changes in an audio system changes the sound. However, eliminating resonances contributed by a system's components from the playback chain brings one closer to the original master tape, which is as close as one can come to the musical event itself.