Gawd, Kiwi, you are doing some heavy breathing re Neuance ;-) ... but of course with your exhaustive testing you are pretty persuasive. With my little mostly Linn system, I have decided that heavy brass cones are quite useful. But their price gets close to that of a Neuance shelf, and, since I've got an old-style Sound Organization rack that would work very well with Neuance, that's probably the next logical step. If I can replace two elements (a composite board shelf and brass cones) with one (a Neuance shelf), that would suit me very well. I'll put some brass cone comments on another thread.
Sand bags under a cdp - didn't work well
Last night I started the process of vibration control with the use of sand bags (3) under my Arcam cdp. What I found was that while everything became more focused/detailed it also became more sharp/harsh/forward/aggressive. I didn't know what to expect but it certaintly wasn't this. Van Morrison's voice on trk #5 on Sailing to Philadelphia was abnormally aggressive and in the end I preferred the sound without the bags. Any thoughts as to why things became too sharp & aggressive????