Harmonihyllan

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magnuska
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by magnuska »

Thanks Oz!

Yeah you`re right- pictures from users is always preferable and says perhaps more than a website picture.

It sounds very good , only small problem, I need a lot of boxes for that. .smile... Have just now retighten the rack columns again wich is important to do once a while esp after assembling a new. A big difference after tightening. Tigther and clearar music not so blurry...

Am now listening to Bruce Springsteen first albums on CD - hadn`t listened to "The wild , the innocent" for example. Nice hours ahead!!

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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Ozzzy189 »

I might make do with something rubbish if I sell my russ Andrews torlyte rack and save up for a harmonhylian some day, I really like the ethos behind it. Also looks really good and we know how well regarded it is in the sound department. I'll be more easily persuaded to buy one by forum posts and pictures like the ones above than the website, it needs a bit of a face-lift, much like Fredrik did with his site.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by rcmc77 »

I am a customer of Thomas OK, and I had heard from him about the Harmoni racks for several years, but had not had the opportunity to try one until recently.

I have been demoing the Harmoni rack that Thomas OK showed a picture of in his earlier post of 2010-08-21 on this thread, although the bottom shelf is no longer a Mimer as in the picture, it is now a reference shelf (upside down Tor). The top 3 shelves are Mimers as in the picture. All wood is birch.

I'm hearing some very interesting things with this rack, but I've also run into a couple issues. It looks like there is quite a bit of experience with the Harmoni racks on this thread, and I'm curious if anyone else has dealt with any similar issues.

One issue is that, similar to speakers, the position of the rack, i.e. distance from the back wall, seems to be very important in terms of its effect on the sound, and it seems that small changes in the rack position can have fairly large effects.

Once I discovered this, I tried to find the best position for the rack, but I found it difficult. I am not really that experienced at things like speaker positioning. I understand the basic idea, but I lack the years of experience of someone like Tom. He had set up my speakers initially, and at one point they were not moved for over 7 years. So although I was determined initially to position the rack myself, and at times I felt I had it really close, I could not get it in a position where I stayed happy with it. I was moving the rack in pretty small increments, on the order of a quarter inch, on my carpeted floor. I spent quite a bit of time trying, but eventually I gave up and had Tom come out to do it. He was able to get the rack into a position where he felt it sounded the best, I agreed, and on subsequent listening sessions it was still good.

After this I noticed that with the Harmoni rack in the system there also seemed to be a similar type of "sensitivity", which affected the sound, to even minor changes of other kinds.

Two examples come to mind. When Tom came out to set up the Harmoni rack, an Archidee turntable stand which I had borrowed from him was also in my system. At a later time I was comparing the Archidee to my original Audio Tech stand. I had made the comparison between these two turntable stands in the past when I had my original equipment rack in the system, with the Archidee being the winner, but the difference between the two stands was much larger with the Harmoni rack in the system, so much so that I didn't want to listen to the system anymore with the Audio Tech in place.

After my experiences trying to find the best position for the Harmoni rack, this made me wonder if the Harmoni rack needed to be repositioned to get the best sound with the Audio Tech in the system, but I didn't really want to start moving the rack around and likely repeat the same scenario that I had already gone through including possibly paying Tom to come out again, just to find out if this is the case.

In the second case I borrowed a single spruce shelf from Tom to try in place of one of the birch Mimer shelves. At the time I was also doing A/B comparisons between my LP12 on the top Mimer shelf of the Harmoni rack and the LP12 on the borrowed Archidee. While the LP12 was still on the Archidee, and with no component on the top Mimer shelf, I changed the wood in the top Mimer shelf from birch to spruce, just to see what difference if any, this would make.

The difference was somewhat surprising, especially because there was no component sitting on the shelf. The surprising part was that although there seemed to be something of a sense of more detail, it was not making my toe tap after the spruce shelf was installed. So I put the birch shelf back, and whatever was making my toe tap had returned.

It was also surprising since the spruce shelf is an upgrade from the birch and the consensus on this thread is that the spruce is definitely better than the birch. It made me wonder again if a readjustment to the position of Harmoni rack was needed to get the best sound from the spruce shelf, which then might make the spruce shelf sound better than the birch.

These types of changes reminded me of when I was trying to position the rack myself, and made me start to wonder if anytime something in the system is changed, does the position of the Harmoni rack need to be re-optimized.

I would be interested to hear what others have experienced in this regard -

Besides the issues mentioned above, another issue is that I can't use my LP12 on the Harmoni rack at anything above a moderate volume without getting acoustic feedback. From what Tom is telling me this likely has more to do with the floor in my house than with the rack, but still it is something of a disappointment.

As already mentioned I normally use the LP12 on an Audio Tech stand, and although at one point I did have a feedback problem with the Audio Tech, I was able to reposition the Audio Tech to where I don't have an issue. The Archidee stand also works fine in the same position as the Audio Tech, but I wasn't able to find a position with the LP12 on the Harmoni rack where I don't get feedback if the volume is increased above the middle of the listening range. It did improve somewhat after Tom positioned the Harmoni rack, I could turn it a little higher before getting acoustic feedback, but unfortunately I still had the problem. Tom himself has said on this thread that in his opinion the latest version of Mimer is even better than Archidee, so this kind of adds to my disappointment in that it appears that I won't be able to use the LP12 on the Harmoni rack as I had hoped. I'm not sure how many on this thread have LP12's, but I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had a similar issue.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by magnuska »

Hello!

Have owned Harmoni for many years now so I may have some input on this matter.
I have never experienced problems with positioning racks , as you say distance from the wall. What matters
to me more is that it is sensitive to humidity meaning that one have to torque the columns and all whats needed. More or less during seasonal variations in humid. This could be the case now for you as well as its a demo rack. But I guess Thomas would have helped you with this.

Secondly, I´m not sure how it behaves with spikes on a carpet. I have spikes directly on to a wooden floor.
It could also be sensitive of how many devices you place on each shelf and where they are placed. I have noticed this with mimer K shelf.
With mimer ref bottom shelf it needs a damping pillow on top - nothing else and no touching from cables and such..

So yes one can say that it needs "some attention" in setting up and taking care of.

This was not perhaps so much of help but it would be interesting if other users could comment your issues as well.

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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Charlie1 »

Shame you can't have the LP12 on the Harmoni all the time due to feedback. Was the Harmoni better than the Archidee at low volume and prior to any feedback?

If so, then probably worth pursuing things further in an effort to find a location that will work. Is it possible to relocate the rack against another wall entirely? Just wondering if the feedback is caused by a bass hump or something particular to the floor in the current location. I appreciate that perhaps your speaker cables will not reach. If so, maybe you can borrow some longer ones.

Is the wooden floor suspended? If so, then perhaps try the rack in a corner since this might provide a more stable foundation. I know some people recommend avoiding corners but might be worth a try in this tricky situation.

Just some ideas. Hope you have success one way or another.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Music Lover »

magnuska wrote: I have never experienced problems with positioning racks , as you say distance from the wall.
My experience is that position of the rack is very important for performance.
It's all about musical understanding!
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by rcmc77 »

Thanks for the replies -

Magnus - your reply is helpful, as at this point I'm mainly trying to find out what others have experienced with the Harmoni racks.

Charlie 1 - I thought the LP 12 on the Archidee was better than the LP 12 on the version of Harmoni rack that I'm demoing, however from what Thomas OK has has said the newest version Harmoni rack with Mimer K is better than Archidee for the LP12. One thing I'm considering is whether to get the newest version Harmoni rack, and one of the factors to consider is whether I could use the LP 12 on it.

I would probably be pretty happy with the rack I'm currently demoing (which I could upgrade later to spruce and Mimer recut), if I also had the Archidee, but I don't own the Archidee, and although I know that Tom wants to try and manufacture a version of the Archidee, it is unknown right now if and when this will happen.

It sounds like Thomas OK has a later version Harmoni rack with Mimer K, 2 Tors, and reference bottom, that I may be able to borrow and compare to both the Archidee and to the current Harmoni rack that I'm trying. If that is possible it may help to sort things out.

Regarding your suggestions (which are appreciated) - a long story short is it's probably not practical in my room to try the rack on another wall or to put it in a corner (yes the floor is suspended wood) although if I found that the newer version Harmoni was better than Archidee at the lower volume where I don't get feedback, then I would probably want to find a way to try those things. Thanks -
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by moog_man »

rcmc77 - not sure if you checked the FAQs on the Hamonihyllan website, where it says:

How can the Harmonihyllan be optimized both for an LP12 and a DS?
"It is not exactly optimized for a particular device - but rather an "electro-mechanical device that plays music" Even a DS consists of mechanical components – such as the internal crystal oscillator in the clock chip. But all of the components consist of different (micro) mechanical parts which, when subjected to vibration, influence the music. A turntable or a CD player, however, is more sensitive than a DS, and in practice, LP12, Lingo and Akurate CD are substantially improved.
What possibly could be adapted is the damping of the Mimer shelf to be as far from the component’s feet as possible, and the amount of damping needed can be affected by the damping in the feet of the component. Trampolin feet have little attenuation for example. The Harmoni rack system is not optimized for a turntable combined with a springy floor, in most other situations it works perfectly."
http://www.harmonihyllan.se/eng/faq-sv.html#vadopt

And then continues with:
Is there a Harmoni wall shelf?
Probably not. It would likely be unduly expensive due to small quantities. The closest that is in development is a Mimer isolation platform. It could be placed on an existing wall shelf, or on an ordinary piece of furniture.
Isn't it better to have a separate table for the record player?
Possibly, but not necessarily. Harmoni shelves are optimized for best performance on the fourth shelf. The lower shelves have a certain disturbance-absorbing function, and the bottom shelf is clearly the worst.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by rcmc77 »

Music Lover wrote:My experience is that position of the rack is very important for performance.
Thanks Music Lover for the reply - did you ever run into any situations similar to what I mentioned where something in your system was changed and then it seemed that the position of the Harmoni rack also needed to be changed to get the best result -
moog_man wrote:rcmc77 - not sure if you checked the FAQs on the Hamonihyllan website,
Thanks also moog_man - I used the link you included and read the FAQ's, it looks like you included the most important ones for me in your post. It kind of seems that my situation with the LP12/Harmoni rack is not unusual for the type of floor I have, although below my room is a basement where I could conceivably add some bracing. I wonder if any owners of both LP12 and Harmoni have been successful in doing that kind of thing to resolve the issue where they could not use the LP12 on the Harmoni rack.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by hcl »

rcmc77 wrote:
Music Lover wrote:My experience is that position of the rack is very important for performance.
Thanks Music Lover for the reply - did you ever run into any situations similar to what I mentioned where something in your system was changed and then it seemed that the position of the Harmoni rack also needed to be changed to get the best result
I have used Harmonihyllan since 10+ years now and even the quite early versions were on another level from even the best of the competition (Naim Fraim come to mind as one that is clearly inferior). Less focus on spectacular sound and 100% focus on the music. Strange that it can be done, but non the less. It seems to have been twaked, by ear, with musical aspects in mind. Fabulous!

How the shelf is positioned affects the end result and as far as it can be confirmed I can also soth your mind about the question if there are any correlation between how the rest of the system is arranged. What could influence is if the rack is positioned with the rest of the system completely off optimum so that it is difficult to hear which position is the best. If the positioning is done with the system fairly well set up I think it is fine.

Altough these differences can appear rather big when one docus on it I think it is important not to obsess about it. All in all there are a lot of parameters to optimize in a hifi installation and one should never let the optimization issues detract from enjoying music using the system. Bother about the most important ones and leave it at that. Most people do best by having an expert optimize the system and just relax and enjoy the end result. One can then focus on finding the right retailer and to find the right equipment. If it is not the main part of your hifi interest, just leave the fiddeling to an experienced retailer!

The biggest problem is likely to find a retailer that actually also is experienced enough to be able to perform this level of installation optimization, also I would not bother to trust the advice from a retailer not being able to do it.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by DelNaja »

Hi all,

I got my new Harmonihyllan rack yesterday and thought I'd post a couple of pictures and share some thoughts with you.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n56sa5d9hyu9 ... CoA6a?dl=0

It's the new rack called Yggdrasil. Well, actually it's not new per se, it's been around for some years, but it's only recently become available to accomodate a whole system, not just a NAS or switch, which was its initial purpose. Anders (Simonsson, the developer of Harmonihyllan) told me that this rack is among the first ones (if not The first one) he has made for the purpose of a whole system. There's six shelves, the K reference bottom shelf and five standard shelves on top of it. The K reference bottom shelf is left empty, save for a small "blanket" thingy (lacking a better word, it's a light and fluffy thing).

A bit smaller than the ordinary Harmonihyllan, the Yggdrasil is made for smaller units, like the Klimax series and Lejonklou. It is, in my humble opinion, very sleek and nice looking. I'm very pleased with the end result, especially the columns in black were a nice touch!

Anders installed and tuned the rack yesterday. Actually he'd assembled the rack last friday already, so it had had some time to settle in and Anders had made some initial tightening. More tightening was needed after we'd set it up in my living room and moved over the units from the previous rack, a Quadraspire Q4 (for sale, by the way, check out Blocket ;-)). Sadly we didn't manage to compare it directly to the Quadraspire because the network cable was too short. Well, when all units were in place and we gave a first listen, it sounded okay, but there seemed to be some anxiety, blurness to the music. We continued the tuning and things changed rather quickly, not just because of the tuning itselt, but the rack seemed to literally settle in by itself in a few minutes, as we were working on it. Anders said that there's probably all kinds of tension and unbalance in the rack from the transport, that after a few minutes start to even out. It was stunning to actually hear this, within a few minutes time!

I can concur with Music Lover's experience regarding positioning. We checked a few positions and there was a difference. So in order to get the most out of it you'd have to tune dem that aspect, too, not just put it anywhere. It's definitely worth it.

Regarding the "thingy" on the bottom shelf, as mentioned above, we did try three different ones in different sizes, to see which sounded best. To be honest, I myself can't say that I heard a difference, but we settled for the largest in size.

Although we didn't make a comparison to the Quadraspire, we did compare the rack (the top shelf) against Anders' standard Harmonihyllan Mimer K rack at the store (Tonläget) earlier that morning. Anders' rack consisted of four shelves, all Mimer K (if I remember correctly). A Klimax DSM was moved back and forth between the top shelf of his rack and the Yggdrasil, as well as a third four shelf rack with Oden or Tor (not sure which). The Mimer K was clearly better, of course, there was more detail and firmness soundwise. The Yggdrasil was not far behind, however, and musically the differences were smaller. The Yggdrasil has an advantage in size, being a bit smaller, and Anders thinks it has some sound advantages, too. Something about the size being more in harmony with the smaller unit sizes of the Klimax series and Lejonklou. It's also worth to note that there is no K shelf available to the Yggdrasil as of yet. Anders is thinking of ways to develop a K shelf. He thinks that if he succeeds, there's a possibility that it might sound even better that the Mimer K. All speculation at this stage, of course, but it'll be exciting to see what Anders can come up with.

To sum it up, a very nice looking rack, in my humble opinion, and it sounds fantastic! You should definitely take a listen to it, if you get the chance (not easy, though, since so few have been sold yet) and consider it when thinking of what rack to invest in. You're welcome to drop by at my home for a listen if you're in the Gothenburg area :-)
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by tokenbrit »

DelNaja wrote:Hi all,

I got my new Harmonihyllan rack yesterday and thought I'd post a couple of pictures and share some thoughts with you.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n56sa5d9hyu9 ... CoA6a?dl=0

It's the new rack called Yggdrasil. Well, actually it's not new per se, it's been around for some years, but it's only recently become available to accomodate a whole system, not just a NAS or switch, which was its initial purpose.
Very nice - thanks for posting. Are they standard height risers? The shelf height doesn't look quite as tall as in the pics on the harmoni site: http://www.harmonihyllan.se/yggdrasil.html
I'm trying to work out if that's from the different view angle, or a trick of the colours with the white shelves. I'm interested in these for my DS & Fred's best - just need to work out what to do with the LP12.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by DelNaja »

tokenbrit wrote:Very nice - thanks for posting. Are they standard height risers? The shelf height doesn't look quite as tall as in the pics on the harmoni site: http://www.harmonihyllan.se/yggdrasil.html
I'm trying to work out if that's from the different view angle, or a trick of the colours with the white shelves. I'm interested in these for my DS & Fred's best - just need to work out what to do with the LP12.
Hi tokenbrit,

Thanks! The height risers (columns) are 12 cm. The choices are 12 and 15 cm. I went for the shorter ones to keep the rack from getting too high. Anders told me that according to his tests there isn't a big impact, if any at all, in sound.

I have to say I was initially a bit sceptical of the thought of white shelves. They're not solid white, you see, they're a little transparent. The paint is thin and the wood pattern is visible. There's probably a painter's term for this, I'm not sure of it. Hope you understand what I'm getting at. Anyway, the end result is very nice, I think!
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by tokenbrit »

Got it - I like the 12cm rather than 15
I think it's called pickling - the white & black looks sharp
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Ozzzy189 »

Thanks for sharing with us. That's a beautiful looking and quite different from the 'norm' looking rack. It's interesting to hear that racks 'settle', I'm not sure that many people would even be aware of that. Like you mentioned though, it's probably the tensioning affected by transportation. I have looked at harmoni but it's just too far out of my budget for the foreseeable future but one day I'd love to own one. Congratulations, it looks great. You need some white speakers now!
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by DelNaja »

Ozzzy189 wrote:Thanks for sharing with us. That's a beautiful looking and quite different from the 'norm' looking rack. It's interesting to hear that racks 'settle', I'm not sure that many people would even be aware of that. Like you mentioned though, it's probably the tensioning affected by transportation. I have looked at harmoni but it's just too far out of my budget for the foreseeable future but one day I'd love to own one. Congratulations, it looks great. You need some white speakers now!
Thanks Ozzzy189! Yes, white speakers would look good. Or black. In fact, almost all colors match with white, in my opinion. We'll see what comes my way :-)
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Ozzzy189 »

Hopefully I'll be trying out the totem element standmounts soon, the Ember and the bigger brother, the fire. I'll report on here with my thoughts. They're white so they must be good! ☺☺☺
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by ThomasOK »

Ozzzy189 wrote:Hopefully I'll be trying out the totem element standmounts soon, the Ember and the bigger brother, the fire. I'll report on here with my thoughts. They're white so they must be good! ☺☺☺
I'll be interested to see what you think of these. I heard the Fire at a CES show a couple of years ago when they had just come out and it was one of the better sounds I heard at the show. I was never able to hear them with familiar equipment or music so I couldn't verify the impression but they certainly seemed to have promise.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by tokenbrit »

Seems the Yggdrasil in a size suitable for Lejonklou electronics is too new for the Harmoni website. Does anyone have an idea of msrp compared with Odin, For, or Mimer?
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by tokenbrit »

With the help of Google Translate, there are details & brief review in Swedish, and there are prices in SEK, but not in English. Prices seem much the same as Oden.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by ThomasOK »

I would expect the prices to be the same as Oden except the bottom Reference shelf which should be the same as Tor. Not enough wood saved in the smaller shelf size to make an appreciable difference in the cost of manufacture.

I had meant some time ago to mention that I found the position of the rack in the room to indeed make a musical difference. I did send a PM on this to Fredrik a few months ago to see if he might have time to try it and get back to me. I was hoping for some independent confirmation before I posted such a crazy finding. But when rcmc77 mentioned to me that he had the same experience and then had me out to his house to fine tune the position I had all the confirmation I needed. When I did that he, I and another friend all heard differences from small position adjustments of the rack just as you would when moving speakers. Literally fractions of an inch were audible.

I actually stumbled on this at home purely by accident. I was wanting to do some comparisons between third and fourth shelves on a Tor rack with Reference base and also compare to Mimer K. I decided to do some of the testing with my Radikal power supply as it is sensitive to support and easy to move. In order to make it easier to do the comparisons I moved the rack out from the wall enough to allow me to pull the Radikal out the back and move it to a different shelf. This way I didn't have to unplug anything and risk that change to performance. So I moved the rack so that instead of about three inches between it and the back wall there was more like six inches. (My racks are on skeets on solid hardwood so it was relatively easy to slide them.) After I finished the A/B comparisons I pushed the rack back into place and played the same piece of music I had been playing. Imagine my surprise when it sounded decidedly less musical in the original position! So I pulled it out to about the same position and it sounded better again. Then I pulled out the other rack that has my LP12 on it and it sounded better as well. I tried moving them in relatively small increments and found I could hear the differences there as well. I don't have the exact position nailed yet but it is pretty close to having the front of the rack 22" (about 56cm) from the back wall. When I did the setup for rcmc77 we were also pretty near 22" but I think a touch more than that if I remember correctly. So this is something I recommend anyone with a Harmoni rack try. There is nothing like a free musical upgrade to your system just by a little repositioning.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Efraim roots »

Interesting, I'll try that in the future. Right now I have the spikes penetrating the parquet (concrete below) and there is barely any room for positioning either. What I have tried tho is comparisons between Linn skeets, Naim fraim chips and then letting the spikes penetrate the parquet (which is ok just because the rack isn't moving around). I was careful in my evalution and I also did som hi-res recordings of the different steps as complement. I'm pretty confident in my finding that the Naim fraim chips (think Tundra sound) sounds better than Linn skeets (think A2200 sound), and letting the spikes go down in the parquet is clearly the best option.

In general I also have a feeling that the rack really come on song after several months after any big rebuild, and the first months include some more careful attention to get a harmonic "tension"(lacking a better word) in the rack as whole. It's also difficult to find a really sharp peak when you're optimizing it IMO, but you get a feeling of when you're up there and it's not a problem in my book, maybe it's good because everyday is a little different in temp, humidity and such.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by jewa »

I'm not sure how to explain this but, and I haven't recently tried to reposition the rack, but in my mind the placement of the power strip makes a big difference as well.

So moving the rack and also the electronics will at the same time make the placement of the power strip – better or worse.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by ThomasOK »

I do understand that the racks are most musical when the spikes go into the wood. I have so far avoided this at my home as I just tend to change things around too often - more in order to test different things than to make actual equipment changes although that has been part of it recently as well. Now that I have Sagatun Monos I had the need to go to two racks and that should suit my needs for the future so I might get to a point where I will sink the spikes in the wood. Just don't want a bunch of spike holes in the hardwood floor.

As to the power strip, I can see this having an effect as well. I haven't tried a lot of positioning options on the power strip but I did find it sounded better on the floor than it did on the rack or on cones. Moving the rack out from the wall does move it farther from the power strip so this could certainly be part of the change although I did find the same mind of improvement in the rack that was a distance from the power strip as with the one that was right in front of it.
The LP12 Whisperer
Manufacturer, Distributor, Retailer and above all lover of music.
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