DIY audiophile rack

It's easy to build a DIY HiFi rack if you have tools, here are some links

1. Tactics & Ways - Another Way of Manipulating Resonance - DIY Audio Rack

2. The TNT FleXy Table

3. diyrack

Good luck

Built the TNT Flexy. 6 shelves of 18 mm prelaminated MDF. The rods, washers and bolts are stainless steel.
Need to add some nylon washers so that it does not keep getting loose.
Anyone planning this should be careful not to cut their hands on the threaded rods (studs).

I'm building one myself. Is prelam a good idea? Wouldn't it reflect sound the way glass does? Also, I'd really appreciate some photograpghs of your project. Mine is going to be a four-shelver with 18mm mdf, 3/4 inch allthread rod which is 1 m in height.

very cool. thanks.

i have a question though, that might seem a little silly, but i cant for the life of me figure out how a rack for audio equipment can make a difference to the sound quality.

if one is using a turntable or a source that is mechanical in nature, a rack might make a difference (and i can understand why), but what if the audio comes purely from a source that isnt affected by the relatively small vibrations caused by audio. for example, in my case i have my audio coming out of the optical port of my computer, into a DAC and then into a pre/power combo on towards speakers. how would a rack make the sound "better"? what is the theory behind this?

i can however see the need for a good rack, but wouldn't that be for the convenience of keeping the equipment clean, well ventilated and easy access to the rear? i guess even for turntables where vibration and resonance will directly affect the sound. I guess CD's and the like wont suffer from this problem nearly as much, as the rotational inertia would keep it pretty stable.

i dont mean to offend anyone. any info that would help clear my doubts would be much appreciated.

thanks

Even solid state devices are sensitive to vibrations and rogue resonance. It is known that even amps and pre-amps perform better when they are acoustically insulated. Any material tends to go into a mode of undamped simple harmonic motion and experiences displacement about its mean position when excited to its natural frequency. This is resonance. Amplified cabinets can ring, vibration can get passed on to the power transformers, if it a air core transformer there will be a constant change in the magnetic lines of force, hence induction in secondary would not be linear. Hence a mechanical irregularity is converted to electrical which can now affect performance

Even CD transports need to be acoustically isolated atleast as much as turntables if not more. You do not feel the speed irregularities as there is an elaborate error correction built into all cd players. This would correct for errors that occur (but can never be the same as if the error had not occured). But how will you know if error correction is activated and your CD player is constantly involved in correcting it. Also the above problem of cabinet resonance is applicable here too. Look into a reputed brand CD player (no CD rom drives please!). See the elaborate isolation systems, free space design, shock absorbing rubber mounts in place

For a computer based audio system the above points would not matter much because the source would have all sorts of disturbances anyway- RF, EMI, Jitter, power supply irregularities, fans, hardisks etc spinning and inducing their disturbances. Resonance would just be one more element to the already polluted signal

Acoustic dampening and physical separation of components is a must for high grade audio equipment. They are designed to retrieve the most subtle details in music and need to be isolated to perform at their best

Thank you for the info. I finished building the flexi rack yesterday and here are the results.

Pics are 640x480 res.

Appreciate your posting the info - I had few reasonable choices in the market and really enjoyed making the rack.

Cheers

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Hi Moonlight

It made a BIG difference to my setup. I listened with my amp/CDP on an mdf plank placed on the floor for FOUR full weeks while I spent weekends sourcing material for the rack, priming and painting. Yesterday I finally assembled it and what a difference it has made!! I thought my system sounded good before, but I realized yesterday - I was only kidding myself. Only now I can call it a Hi-Fi, coz it realy sounds like one now - the attack has improved - umm let me say it wasn't there before, the sound is now more more crisp and dynamic.

Additionally got speaker spikes a day before I setup the rack and that improved the sound too - the frequencies have leveled off and the sound has become more even. It is hard and a little foolish to quantify the improvement, but if I were compelled to, I would say the sound improvement was 15% with speaker spikes and another 25% with the rack ( as compared to placing on floor). Wait the net result is 40% improvement? Wrong!! It is simply Outstanding!! Put simply, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts!! Two of the the Steel rods in the rack have 3mm elevated points from the casting process and therefore on "tip-toed" spikes ( will add custom made spikes for all legs later). Its not mumbo-jumbo I can testify. Room acoustics are a much neglected area by amateur audiophiles like us, and I discovered many things in the last few weeks about it that amazed me.

cheers

Nice work.
Can you help me with a few answers:
* What is the blue material? Is it available in other colors? What is the thickness?
* The legs bolts, are they one single piece from top to bottom?

~dich

Thats 16mm MDF sheets , I primed and painted in clover blue shade (asian paints).

The S.S threaded screw rod, nuts, bolts washers need to purchased seperately, and the planks/M.S and rubber washers needs to be shoved in all the way while the nuts need to be screwed in patiently over 200mm of threading on average.

Cheers

The screw rods, are they one rod per leg (3 rods in all) or did you use multiple rods for each leg joined by nuts.

~dich