When I had my first audio store I loaded up on accessories without thinking. There was a part of me that figured "it's high end audio stuff, surely it's going to sound great". At that time the rubbery type products were starting to be used so I got a wide selection. Sure enough I heard a difference and talking about them was cool. They started moving through the store pretty good, and my register was ringing. I started using a little, then a little more, then well...maybe a little more. I did a bunch of other tweaks (this was before I was a designer) and the more I got into the rubbery something was catching my ear. I would walk by the room where the system was rubbered out and it was starting to bug me. "what's wrong?" I thought I had spent a fair amount of time focusing things in, but something wasn't right. It wasn't untill I put my audiophile recording in my car and listened on the way home when I realize there was a ton of music my car was playing that the dampened system was not. I turned around, went back and started to remove the dampening from the system. "Holy Smokies", that poor system was choked to death and I didn't notice because I was too busy going down my one way street of dampening.

Now I'm not talking about just those feet (pucks). It started with the feet and the pads, then when I got that all over the place like a madman it went to the weight, pieces of marble stacked on top of components and speakers, rubber lifters for cables wrapped transformers. In fact you know that duct work insallation with the foil and rubber. I got that stuff and even ordered some in custom. I made all kinds of layers out of a bunch of different materials. When I start something I'm possessed. Ask some of my early store clients LOL. I order Rubber bands made from different materials for my tubes. I had dampening all over my stock room and every material known to man to use as layers. I had spring setups and things hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of stuff.

All of that stuff ended up coming out of my systems. Once I figured out the sound and what came up missing I can now hear when even a little piece of rubbery dampening is put in a system. You know those overbuilt drivers with the thick rubber surrounds and thick cones, same sound. Rubber gaskets on speakers? listen closely, same sound. Doesn't matter if it is inbetween other layers or what type of table your setup is sitting on, put it in your system and listen carefully. If you have another system hooked up to reference with, your going to hear it, a rubbery sound and holes in the stage. You might even hear the music gather around the speakers. All kinds of nasties, listen. Listen to it and listen to a system without it.

There are better ways.

michael green
MGA?RoomTune