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THREE - 24" SHELF BLACK DIAMOND RACING SIGNATURE

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The Black Diamond Racing isolation products are a series of structures designed to provide a flexible system for approaching the problems of Vibration Control. These structures are complimentary in nature, working together in a manner that may be developed or expanded as your needs require, achieving higher levels of performance with every step. We have found that different types of components frequently require different characteristics of the same basic structure for optimal performance; hence the Mk.3 and Mk.4 versions of several of our pieces, and two different types of carbon fiber platform. In all cases the Mk. 3's are "warmer" in nature, while the Mk. 4 version is more "detailed" in character. It is advisable to try both types of structures, particularly the Pyramid Cones, to see what works best in your system. Our extensive research and testing effort concluded that the combination of high rigidity and high damping rates provides the best isolation performance over the broadest array of applications. This approach results in a structure that is not only extremely resistant to resonance, but will damped off the vibrations to which it is exposed.Sale is for three of them 24x18 weighing over 15lb each.Exhibiting 25 times the Q (resistance to resonance) of 8" of Granite, along with four times the damping rate of 2" MDF, The Shelf may well be considered the most sophisticated isolation platform available. As have our other products, The Shelf has been successfully used to control vibration under all manner of electronic and mechanical components. Place the component on top of The shelf, using the Pyramid Cones between the component and The Shelf under the critical elements of the component. Place offsetting Cones between The shelf and your existing rack or cabinet structure, so that they are not directly opposed to the Cones under the component. Used in this manner, you will get the maximum benefit of The Shelf in your isolation system, taking the best advantage of the panel's physical characteristics. Unless you are using Those Things or Round Things in conjunction with the Pyramid Cones as mentioned above, it is generally best to keep the the flat of the Cone to the Shelf on both sides of The Shelf. For Top Performance, Those Things, Round Things or The Pits can be added to the system as previously described.REVIEW:Carbon fiber is an interesting material: strong, light and extremely rigid. Its tensile strength is five times greater than that of steel. It is utilized in the Stealth Bomber, Formula One racing cars, America's Cup boat hulls, and a variety of high-tech sporting applications such as skis, sail-boards, and mountain bikes. One of the properties of carbon fiber that makes it seem ideal for audio applications is that it actually inhibits parasitic resonant energy. Many manufacturers have embraced the material: Wilson-Benesch utilizes it in turntables, tonearms, and, most recently, cartridges; Sennheiser has begun incorporating it into headphones, as in the HD-580 Jubilee; and the Well Tempered Reference Tonearm sports a carbon-fiber armtube.What stunned me when I received The Shelf by Black Diamond Racing was its mass. It's heavyâ€"nearly 11 lbs for an 18" by 14" platform. Since one of the raisons d'être for carbon fiber is its lightness, this seemed horribly wrong. The carbon-fiber shell must be surrounding something extraordinarily dense to achieve such a weight in a shelf that size. I'd be curious as to: a) the substrate material and b) the rationale for this construction. D.J. Kasser prefers to remain silent on the construction details, however.Shelf design has relied heavily upon the assumption that mass is to be avoided. While The Shelf flies in the face of this design brief, I can't deny that it works well in practice. The day I received it, I substituted it for the platform on my wall-mounted Archidee turntable stand. When I sat back down to listen to the same disc I had been listening to before the change, my wife yelled from another room, "What did you do to the system?" Yes, it was that radical. As I'd heard before, there was a marked increase in perceived silence. Blacker black, if you will. The low-level cues that define the air surrounding instruments or that illuminate the spaces in which the recordings were made became much more prominent.But what my wife heardâ€"all the way down the hall and in another roomâ€"was the way that the performers suddenly inhabited my room. Audiophiles frequently speak of their systems as a window that looks onto the original performance, but I've always been somewhat uncomfortable with this analogy. If that's what our system is, then what is it that we accomplish when we make improvements: apply Windex? The Shelf kicked that analogy's glassâ€"we moved a lot closer to the musicians or, if you prefer, brought 'em home with us.Since then, I've played around with a lot of equipment support shelves, such as Townshend's Seismic Sinks, Bright Star Bases, Symposium Sound Foundationsâ€"all of which also afford many similar advantages to The Shelf. It's hard to rate them on an absolute scale, since none are unflawed, but I keep returning to the carbon-fiber The Shelfâ€"although at $450 each, they don't come cheap. I suspect that there work to be done yet in refining the design philosophy of any equipment support, including this one. But for the moment, when I want to really hear what a component is doingâ€"as free as possible from the effects of its environmentâ€"it ends up on The Shelf.â€"Wes Phillips... available for preview in Charleston SC, call 260-418-6576 or email sales@estateroadshow.com
Length: 24
Width: 18
Height: 3
Weight LB: 45

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