It would be highly inappropriate for me to comment on your daughter's criticism of your listening skills, but I repeat: wood and bamboo are both anisotropic. I provided standard examples above. Not my room; the OP's room. My Solidtech and Quadraspire racks work quite sufficiently well, thank you. My experiments with a wide range of maple, birch, oak, ash, hickory, chestnut, reclaimed wood and aged barn wood boards, manufactured cutting boards of all kinds, bamboo, fibreboard, MDF, HDF, foamed plastics, synthetic composites, natural composites, cast cultured stone and so on, have all resulted in a limited number of recommendations for only a narrow range of products along with associated recommendations for footers in a few variations.
Agitater, I hereby move that the Steve Hoffman Music Forums create and bestow upon you "The Patience of Job Award" for your incredible posting efforts in this thread! Anyone care to second the motion? Jeff
Please be specific on bamboo, strand-woven? # layers & orientation? dimensions? Interesting that you've a Quadraspire rack. Veneered MDF, or bamboo shelves? Does it have: The new Q4 Bamboo hifi rack out performs the Q4EVO wood veneer due to the solid bamboo’s inherent superior dampening properties : Intricate machining on the underside of shelf to further reduce mass and resonance without losing any of its strength Sound Performance Lauded by many in the Manufacturing Industry as the “Material of the Future”, Bamboo, with its high tensile strength and vibration suppressing qualities, is the ideal material to use in Quadraspire hifi rack to further improve sound performance.
I was meaning any person's room and what you described I've followed the same path over 30 years, MDF, Plywood, Granite, plate glass and Bamboo, sorbothane, roller blocks, RDC cones, Nordost cones and more all based on recommendations from friends or from this site. My daughter's not criticising my listening skills but pointing out placebo causes the release of neurotransmitters in the brain and once we're in the metaphysical world our knowledge is presumptive.
All of the bamboo cutting boards I’ve tried have been made of long-grain strips, in a variety of laminated thicknesses (12mm, 25mm, 40mm), or additionally cross-laminated by planing and gluing under pressure two boards across each other and then trimming them to size (7cm thick, 55cm long and 42cm wide). Veneered MDF. Can we please, as responsible audiophiles, stop quoting manufacturers’ marketing babble that is unsupported by anything resembling proof or test results or demonstrably better field results than competing products, or indeed anything other than the manufacturers’ and the bamboo producers’ declarations that some choice must be good because the bamboo product manufacturer made it. Quadraspire states the use of “solid bamboo” but that is highly misleading. All dimensional bamboo board is actually laminated bamboo strips. The techniques used to make such board are well thought out and the result looks a lot like the same sort of solid board that a mill would produce, e.g., from a Spruce tree. But it’s not, because bamboo strips are made from the outer hull of the grass and that useable hull is inherent thin and of relatively small diameter. Bamboo is grass - not trees - and the only way to make workable boards out of it is to cut it into strips and then glue them together under pressure to create workable boards. Bamboo has been “lauded” by manufacturers only because it is cheap and plentiful, and (perhaps most important) because Chinese R&D on the grass has come up with all sorts of reliable, efficient and relatively inexpensive ways of turning natural bamboo into a wide variety of products useful to large scale manufacturers. In the West, bamboo also offers a non-traditional look that is appealing to many people. Nothing wrong with that. I purchased the Quadraspire and Solidtech racks I currently own because IMO they look very good, and because they are rock solid, heavy platforms that don’t measurably resonate when music is playing at the typically moderate volume at which I listen. That Quadraspire does “intricate machining on the underside of shelf” to “futher reduce mass and resonance without losing any of its strength” only tells me that Quadraspire’s designer and its marketing lead are imaginative. Further along in the marketing collateral,what specific vibration suppressing qualities does bamboo possess? I know that raw bamboo stalk that is split along its length retains its fibrous and sound-absorbing interior. Old house construction in Chinese towns and villages made use of such split bamboo walls and roofing, and the result was a relatively quiet interior especially when the walls and roofing were doubled up. Solid bamboo stalks that are cleaned and treated with pesticides are used as construction scaffolding posts and beams in many parts of central and northern Asia. But those aren’t anything close to the sorts of bamboo that ends up in flooring boards and cutting boards and so on. In fact, under pressure during raw bamboo processing after harvested stalks are cut into strips, all of the fibrous inner material is carbonized to remove it and all the pests that live in it. Bamboo in various forms is workable, useful, inexpensive, and sometimes also good looking. It has no unusually beneficial inherent qualities of use to audiophiles.
Sure, how about Damping Performance Of Bamboo Fibre-reinforced Green Composites Functionality of natural fibre-reinforced composites continually attracts attention and offers a unique possibility. We fabricated several types of unidirectional and random bamboo fibre green composites, and examined their damping properties as a function of bamboo fibre content, fibre length, and fibre morphology. The loss factors of the bamboo fibre green composites decreased with increasing bamboo fibre content. However, the loss factors gradually decreased in the composites reinforced with fibre content higher than 40 mass%. The loss factors of random short fibre (10mm) reinforced green composites were higher than those of unidirectional ones. It can be seen that the damping factor of bamboo fibre green composites depended on fibre length and fibre content, and that vibration damping properties of the bamboo green composites were better than those of glass fibre reinforced plastics. Or maybe an anecdotal review of your Quaraspire's veneered MDF vs bamboo shelving: The Audio Beat - Atacama Audio Eris Eco 5.0 and Elite Eco 6.0 & Quadraspire Sunoko-Vent T Bamboo Equipment Racks But the best was yet to come. Shifting the electronics (and couplers) onto the bamboo shelves produced a far more impressive improvement. Yes, you need to use the couplers to really appreciate the benefits, but given their ratio of cost to contribution, that should be a no-brainer anyway. Once the source components were correctly supported on the bamboo shelves, the musical impact was not far short of revelatory. Right from the opening bars, the significant improvement in transparency, the blacker background and wider dynamic range were startlingly apparent in the increased musical drama and tension. The broader, deeper soundstage stepped away from the speakers, giving the performance a sense of spatial and expressive independence. Bass instruments gained shape, tonality and texture, with far easier separation of overlapping instruments like bowed bass and tuba. The upper strings extended properly, to occupy their seating, with the contrasting tonality of violin and viola and the way Shostakovich loves to pass melodies and phrases between them and the oboes both easier to appreciate and musically more effective. Woodwind interjections and brass punctuation were much easier to identify, as well as making more musical sense. But for all the impact and drama that’s so immediately impressive, again the real benefits come in the realm of timing and phrasing. The tempo of the performance as a whole becomes more natural and persuasive, the sense of Previn controlling and directing it much more apparent. The notion of being able to "hear" the conductor might seem odd, but it’s central to any great large-scale classical performance -- and any system that’s trying to reproduce it. The bamboo shelves bring plenty of sonic benefits to the system, but their real strength lies in the way they enhance clarity and separation whilst simultaneously binding the orchestra and the space around it into a single, coherent whole. The evenness and uncluttered organization with which they underpin the proceedings simply makes it much, much easier to concentrate on the message in the music, rather than trying to unravel what’s actually happening. This review was from 2014. It's anecdotal, just as you own perceptions of your own experiments with a wide range of maple, birch, oak, ash, hickory, chestnut, reclaimed wood and aged barn wood boards, manufactured cutting boards of all kinds, bamboo, fibreboard, MDF, HDF, foamed plastics, synthetic composites, natural composites, cast cultured stone and so on, have all resulted in a limited number of recommendations for only a narrow range of products along with associated recommendations for footers in a few variations. Footers? The reviewer prefers coupling: myrtle-wood blocks, & then goes on: I decided to take things to the next level by substituting Stillpoints Ultra SS's for the myrtle blocks. Bang! Suddenly the performance just came alive with color, impact, poise, energy and intent. But let’s not forget that as impressive as the Ultra SS's are (and you’ll be hearing a lot more about them) it’s the rack that’s acting as the foundation for that performance, providing exactly the firm footing they need to do their thing. After all, the two sets of Stillpoints come close in price to the complete four-shelf rack they’re sitting on. I appreciate your defense of your experimentation. Could Quadraspire | Kimbercan there in Toronto connect you with a dealer willing to loan bamboo shelves?
As I said in my first post(?), my experience was jaw dropping, whatever that means. The improvement was increased as I worked through my amp, what surprised me was that the biggest change occurred with my power supply then power amp and least of all the pre-amp. The improvement on my CDP, whilst there wasn't nearly as pronounced as that on the power supply and power amp. Of course this says nothing about the relative merits of other materials, apart from it's probably the cheapest upgrade you'll make.
I'll throw another material in to the mix, PEEK, not tried it myself but a friend was raving about his PEEK cones a few years ago and my daughter mentioned it recently. Anyone know anything about this and why it may live up to my friends raptures? Polyether ether ketone - Wikipedia
That’s has nothing to do with damping of audible resonance. The data and the comparsion to fibre-reinforced plastics are completely off-topic. Presuming that one sort of damping factor in the industrial application described above is somehow applicable to the sort of resonance damping of concern in this thread does not follow. The review is so full of vaporous adjectives and vagueness as to be useless, IMO. That anybody believes that an equipment rack could impart the properties claimed by the reviewer begs disbelief by any rational-minded audiophile. The reviewer is reporting benefits that by any analysis or definition cannot be derived from the rack use he describes. The review is a promotion of a rack design he happens to really like. Mazel tov to him. The reviewer seems more intent on enthusiastically telling readers about all the ‘cool’ audiophile products he was using than actually rationally examining or analyzing anything he was doing. Anyway, I am neither defending nor promoting the results of my experimentation over the years, rather merely reporting the results in the context of the OP’s interests. Interesting idea, but I doubt that it’s possible. Retailers don’t keep stock of shelves. Retailers don’t keep much stock of packaged racks of any kind. Whatever inventory a retailer decides to keep in even small quantities is directly proportional to the number of customers who then show up at the store looking for the rack in a completely different color or finish or wood. Retailers wisely maintain two things - a good and deep variety of floor demos, and the best possible relationships with various product distributors. So when a customer comes in who wants a particular rack in a particular post color and shelf finish the retailer can have his order filled relatively quickly by the distributor/supplier. All that aside, there are few distributors willing to subject their products to review by someone like me. Because I have no vested interest in the congregate benefits that can come from a positively effusive product review, I merely report what is observably and repeatably possible. That is unfortunately too frequently negatively different from the results reported by reviewers in the audiophile media. Audiophiles in general - myself included nonetheless - from time to time tend to presume benefits from various sorts of racks and shelves and supports and feet that such accessories cannot possibly provide by any measure in the context of a wide range of home audio setups. That aside, I have no intention of depopulating and disassembling my Quadraspire rack in order to accommodate a bamboo shelf test! Good grief man, I’m actually using the two systems on that 5-shelf rack to listen to music.
Obviously there a big issue around language as a carrier of data as it relies upon a shared understanding of words. However those descriptions do make sense to me and I presume the issue of language as a effective communication tool, causes your difficulty in accepting such things are possible.
I used to use a pizza stone and Vibropods. I really should put something back under it, given that my table is way too close to a speaker with a side firing subwoofer.
I'm not sure about that. A dealer I know does a demonstration of the equipment rack in front of the speakers and well away, to try and demonstrate that ground borne energy is the biggest issue. Most people report either no or a very minor difference in the quality. At the moment my sub is right next to my rack and it's not a issue, as I've isolated it from my floor.
Your comment is interesting. My reading of reviews such as the one previously quoted often leave me wondering what the reviewer wants me, and readers in general, to take away from his review. In fact, most of the reviewer’s statements of praise for the rack product are emotional not factual. He is expressing his feelings, and as such those feelings cannot be reasonably or fairly debated or discussed. In almost every situation in which reviewers are confronted about the use of such language, they react by smiling sagely and replying that their experience and deep product knowledge leads them to such descriptions. That’s not an authoritative basis for product praise. Accept that sort of thing as you see fit. The problem is that a range of audiophiles who read such adjective-laden and non-specific reviews will assume for themselves a widely differing range of definitions about the same reviewer’s language that you seem to imply is perfectly obvious. That would tend to indicate that you’re making all sorts of interpretive assumptions while reading such reviews and then stating those assumptions as incontrovertible and obvious definitions. Unfortunately, IMO you’re completely wrong to do so.
So does it matter what you put the turntable on at that point? If I put bamboo, maple, granite or scrap plywood on a set of isolating feet, does the material make any difference sound quality-wise? Trying to find some kind of bottom line in all this...
Good to know. Since my equipment rack is on a squish vinyl floor and had coned feet, it's probably pretty isolated. Though I am concerned, because the woofer is side mounted and is pointed right at the rack with my turntable and is only two feet away. Plus there is a brick wall right behind the turntable, so resonances would be reflected off that as well. Of course since the wife and kid never allow loud listening I probably don't have too much problem with vibration.
I've mentioned Vibrods here, and think they are a great product for the price. But I recommend putting a piece of wax paper between them and the surface they sit on (unless it's glass). The rubbery stuff they're made of leaches into wood and leaves permanent marks.
I din't read more than the abstract. Did you? You're extremely adept at dismissing/ignoring any aspects of bamboo which in this study were shown to have an effect on vibration damping properties of the bamboo green composites: We fabricated several types of unidirectional and random bamboo fibre green composites, and examined their damping properties as a function of bamboo fibre content, fibre length, and fibre morphology. It can be seen that the damping factor of bamboo fibre green composites depended on fibre length and fibre content, and that vibration damping properties of the bamboo green composites were better than those of glass fibre reinforced plastics. These findings reinforce my belief that bamboo certainly has some vibration dampening properties NOT shared by wood cutting boards or planks. Perspective: I live in the Flint Hills of KS, which were described by early explorers as a Sea of Grass. The large trees suitable for wagon axles on the Santa Fe Trail were not available beyond Council Grove, KS . . . I helped plant 40,000 tree seedlings in 1986 (18,000 on one 80-acre (32.3749 hectares) parcel, we took a lot of jiving from skeptical wheat farmers in the local cafe. As the USDA Conservation Reserve Program required, no use could be made of the trees for the 1st 10 yrs. After that, it was to be utilized for u-cut-firewood, or for the developmentally disabled to market via a local grocery chain now part of Kroger's (4 pack of short logs, $5). I took aboriculture (the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants) in college. At that time, ~ 1976, I heard Barry Commoner speak regarding 3rd world dependence on burning wood as a cooking fuel. He made the case that IF the Dept of Defense would develop a field stove capable of burning fuels other than wood, the world's deforestation problems could be resolved. Don' recall carbon capture being discussed (reduce global warming). In 2018, replacing wood-burning cook stoves in 3rd world countries is a HOT TOPIC. None of that has any relevance to audiophildelity, other than my environmental ethic runs contrary to your insistence on wood . . .
I'm a pretty big fan of Vibropods. I use them in a couple of locations in my system. You may be able to see them under this slab o' slate that supports my turntable. I also have them under my preamp. So having gotten my curiosity up during this whole conversation, I ended up buying a new set of Vibropods and a Bamboo cutting board. The plan was to do this cheap experiment to see if there's a difference between it and the slate, but for whatever reason, I don't feel like moving my turntable because honestly, it sounds awesome. No rumble, no vibration noise, no feedback at any volume. So I'm being hit with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" syndrome. I'm trying to find a good reason not to just let that cutting board be a cutting board...
That's what happened to my pizza stone. I started using it for frozen pizza or to reheat leftover slices.
Under lab conditions, I'd be interested in identical vibrations applied to dimensionally identical bamboo & wood (of Agitater's choice). The change in temperature in both substances should translate into vibrational energy being transformed to heat energy. Thus, the material with greater increase in heat, The Winner.
Pastafarian said: ↑ Obviously there a big issue around language as a carrier of data as it relies upon a shared understanding of words. However those descriptions do make sense to me and I presume the issue of language as a effective communication tool, causes your difficulty in accepting such things are possible. IMHO, @Pastafarian was politely pointing out Agitater's tactics, me, less so:
None of the aforementioned products, in various forms, confer benefits in every single situation. For example, energy absorbing spacers or feet between a turntable platform and a physically vibrating rack or furniture top are most likely going to reduce the amount of vibration that reaches the turntable plinth, platter, tonearm and bearings. That’s a demonstrable benefit to sound quality But if the turntable platform is positioned on something that is not vibrating or resonating in some way that could affect the turntable, then purchasing and installing the energy absorbing feet amounts to nothing more than audiophile accessorizing. Energy absorbing feet or spacers have limits. For example, occasionally audiophiles purchase such things in the hope of combatting the effects of springy flooring at home. Floors that flex and rock your rack or turntable platform have to be stiffened, or failing that the turntable has to be mounted on a secure wall shelf. No energy absorbing feet or spacers can help. Some products just don’t work in any audible or even measurable way beyond a placebo effect that wanes over time. Magnetic plates, little stones, little sticky dots, massive plinths in environments in which such a plinth cannot possibly help, amount to style choices and psychological ploys that some of us enjoy playing with (or experimenting with) from time to time. We do it not necessairly out of absolute trust in a prodct marketer’s declarations but because we sometimes just like to ask, “What if...?” An actual specific problem defines need. The qualified need narrows the choice of solutions. The range or specificity of the solution(s) defines the necessary product to solve the problem. No problem? Then no product is needed and we can just continue enjoying the music.
