Mark Orr is the man behind Something Solid. Here are his thoughts on stand design.

A SUPPORTING ROLE: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT BACKGROUND.

The preceding sections have dealt primarily with product specifications. It seems

easier to deal with the how and why separately, as there is a common thread that

runs through many of the designs. Having done this since 1985 on a commercial

basis, there is probably more development than design in the products, given that

the prime aim has been to get more music from hi-fi equipment.

Why use specialist supports?

Like cables, specialist supports are a cost effective way of getting more out of a

system. Electronic components benefit from individual shelving, speakers from

being still on a stand. Unfortunately, not all supports are the same, and don't all

work in the same way. Put it this way: if you bought a high performance car

would you run it on remoulds? This is, metaphorically, what you are doing giving

a hi-fi system poor supports.

How do you judge?

Often, when talking to people who are not enthusiasts, the comment 'I could

not tell the difference' is made. I have a stock reply ' You could, but you might

not think it is important.' This is something you will have to work out for

yourself. This is how I do it. The starting point for most component evaluations

is to substitute them into a known system: used in selling as an A/B demo. It

is really the only way to start but the upsetting of system synergy means being

aware of 'shooting the messenger'. Rapid A/B substitutions are not a good idea.

With hindsight I will guarantee that 20 minutes doing this will result in a

mistaken judgement, and maybe an expensive mistake. Why? Because you start

to listen to odd bits of the music, a bass line, a voice, an audience noise, and so

lose track of the whole. I have a collection of albums where one track is used

for an 'odd bit' just to give a reference point, to work out exactly what the

change is doing, but a better indication is when you end up listening to the

whole album. When I stop thinking about the system is when it is really

working. If you are listening to albums you have left for months, making

sense of music you had struggled to understand, then the changes are working.

After all what the extra expenditure should be buying you is access. I am

increasingly convinced the 'golden ear' beloved of critics should be made a

notifiable disease. Back to A/B comparisons: in the early days when stands

were a new idea I did use them a lot but made the mistake outlined above

[often]. A better way is to put in the new component, leave it for a while,

in my case for at least a week, and the changes will be obvious when the

original is installed again. Not using the system is also a giveaway. Any

product that gets this far is then tried in other known systems, in other rooms

to check these findings before the search for customers begins. All systems

operate in context: the room, the listener, music used, major components, and

accessories all contribute, but in the end it is your judgement that counts. There

is no such thing as a universal component. All operate within the system

context, but over the years as my product has improved fewer mismatches occur.

This is, in part, due to an insistence that improvements in system sound are

essentially musical and not 'hi-fi' or just 'moving things around', and a better

understanding of the compromises involved. Yes, there are always compromises!

One final thought: the systems that I have really enjoyed listening to have one

thing in common. And it is not cost. They have all been put together with

great care and no little effort.

How does it work?

There is no simple answer to this. The scientific approach is not particularly

helpful since it requires definition and quantification of the variables, and

there are too many, though it is still physics in the end. The ear is the only

valid measuring instrument, and being objective about a personal response to

music [distinctly subjective] is not always easy. I have another principle that

has held good over the years: the closer I think I am to understanding this the

closer I am to having all theories turned upside down. And yes, it just happened

again!

Start with a visualisation: think of everything around you vibrating.[ A good

analogy is an electron microscope photo of a surface you would always think of

as smooth. Extremely lumpy.] Into this you put music- a lovely collection of

resonances. If the loudspeaker baffle is moving, the cone will not reproduce

accurately, electronics may act as microphones, internally energy is produced

from transformers and so on[only obvious when they buzz.] All lead to inaccuracy,

loss of definition, dynamics etc. So equipment supports are seeking to manage

the physical energy reaching and leaving components, trying to hold

equipment still while everything around is moving. Think in terms of the

suspension and tires of a car: to transmit power from the engine to the

road contact and grip must be maintained over surfaces of varying texture.

With hi-fi supports you are attempting to prevent a moving environment

from corrupting the sound that is being produced by your combination of

components; essentially attempting to allow it to transmit power cleanly.

Prior to the development of the cord tension supports for the X series racks

I had tended to treat loudspeaker stands and equipment racks as different. With

speakers you are trying to deal with a large amount of energy produced by the

speaker, while avoiding its corruption by structurally borne energy. With

electronics smaller amounts of energy produced within have to be protected

from larger amounts from the underlying structure. The recent use of

Missing Link feet with XF stands has simply wrecked the idea that rock solid

contact between spikes and floor is essential. The damned things even work on

carpet. The thinking for the structure of the XR rack came from the XF stand,

and development of the Missing Link foot has applications under speakers, as

well as its intended use under racks. So the same problems plague both

speakers and electronics and can be dealt with using similar techniques.

So how is all this put into practice? There is an historical element here.

Early work was with loudspeaker stands concentrated on pedestals and

how to effectively fill them. [The answer was halfway but solid.] Most

fillings were high mass as this was easier to sell. The reality was that this

invariably led to bass overhang. There is a contradiction here: cheaper pedestals

were [are?] made with light gauge material which is consequently much easier

to excite into resonance, so filling helps to disguise the structural inadequacies.

Add to this thin gauge shaped base plates and you have found a better way

of doing things badly. One of the recurring design themes over the years is

mass. It is generally counter productive. [Are there any high-tech. solutions

that depend on adding mass?] Enough must be used to ensure the

structural integrity of the support. The HS stand, just returned to the full

price list, is an example. A relatively high mass stand, the structure has a

heavy duty top and bottom plate coupled with a massive rectangular upright,

but the stand has a low mass vermiculite damping. It is as good as I can make

high mass, but in most cases the XF stand will get more music out of a

speaker. Rising steel costs forced me to look at different ways of building bases;

and so all plate disappeared, structures could be made stiffer, with lower mass,

and cost. There was a big bonus here: the removal of plate gave a remarkable

increase in clarity. The second generation of these designs gave rise to the

SL stands, which need no damping, and behave more like a frame stand

than a pedestal. A second factor in these designs is the grade of steel used.

With the exception of the uprights in the ER racks, a low carbon mild

steel is used which is not available in thin gauges. This just sounds better,

probably because the softer, thicker walled material soaks up energy better,

but there is a penalty as the finished surface is not as good. The XF stands

followed from this work, replacing tube with solid bar and a frame

structure that got the compromise between mass and structure so right that

all subsequent attempts to improve them have failed! The use of carbon fibre

pads on the top was the outcome of a fascination with this material. After

attempts to build both turntable and speaker supports with it [wonderful,

clean, open, uncoloured sound, but totally gutless and uninvolving] I

found that a small pad got the benefits with few of the drawbacks. Lucky.

because it is frighteningly expensive.

The development of the XR rack followed the Dissipating Feet and Shelf.

I had used balsawood in the 80's as part of an aluminium turntable support,

and a routine check back through materials reminded me how good it was.

It had been used in end grain form then, because it sounded better that way,

and was also stronger in compression. I would claim that this will help

move energy away [my carbon fibre pads are also cut in the same way] but

talking to suppliers, it has also been used in end grain form to line railway

carriages, which suggests some serious damping properties. Availability of an

end grain sheet made the development of the Dissipating Shelf possible; and

fortunately the ubiquitous MDF proved to be the best way to strengthen the

shelf. The mass thread reappears again: balsa is very light, but the MDF seems

to act as an energy dump and dropped the noise floor of my system. Around

this time I had changed CD and amp [not done very often as stability here

helps when judging changes] and with a simpler set up had abandoned

existing racks an gone back to my old turntable support as a benchmark

that had to be improved on. A simple rack did not do this, but using the

tensioned shelf supports on a structure built using the same materials as the

XF stand did the trick. Why? The feet and shelf seem to move energy away

from components quickly. The cord seems to prevent the mass of other

components interacting with the shelf: there are elements of damping.

obstructing, and dissipating here. The frame itself is slightly live, and

will lose energy this way: as long as this does not find its way back into

components this shouldn't be seen as a problem. The easy tag line for

this rack would be 'move it and lose it'. By repeating the rope trick with

Missing Link feet the performance available increased again. This is an

interesting accessory, open to creative use as it seems to make everything

easier to listen to.

Look at this range of products a set of tools to help get the best out of

a hi-fi system. Compared to what you would have to pay to get the same

gains from electronics, they are cheap. Some of the gains you cannot get

in any other way. All of this should be demonstrable. If you want to

assess a system start with what you are going to put it on.

Mark Orr 2004