Standing Firm!

By Roy Grégory.
Original article in English: https://gy8.eu/review/standing-firm/

Using the Neodio Harmonie footer under racks…

In writing about the excellent results achieved with the Neodio Harmonie Footer under speakers, I speculated that it might work even better under racks. The reasoning behind the supposition is simple: the Harmonie has a flat base (as opposed to a pointed contact). The requirement to adjust speaker attitude means that loudspeaker cabinets are rarely set level, compromising the Harmonie’s contact area: racks on the other hand, should be set exactly level, which should maximise the Neodio footer’s sonic benefits. Throw in the fact that used on a rack those benefits potentially extend to more than just one box and you can see why the idea would be attractive… Too attractive to ignore.

Of course, you need a suitable rack to fit the Harmonies – and I have just the thing. The Blue Horizon Professional Rack System (or PRS) is a classic, modular design based around threaded uprights that screw together, clamping shelves between them. It’s a basic structure that’s been used by everyone from Quadraspire to SolidSteel, but the devil is, as always, in the details and variations on the theme are legion. The PRS ticks a couple of what are, in my experience, important boxes. It uses solid stainless steel uprights with integral threads (rather than threaded studding inserted into their ends) and it uses laminated bamboo shelves, a material that takes a lot of beating in performance terms, unless you are going to get seriously exotic/expensive. Normally it employs solid stainless-steel cones with 10mm threaded posts and lock nuts to facilitate levelling and mechanical grounding. All of which makes it an ideal test bed for the Harmonie. With a set of 10mm adaptors on order, I built two identical racks from my available kit of parts, each consisting of a four-shelf ‘stack’, supported on an independent isolation layer or sub-table. One was fitted with the standard cones beneath both rack and isolation layer, the other with Harmonie footers in the same locations.

With both layers of both racks carefully levelled, I set about installing a simple CD and integrated amp system, placed backwards in the standard PRS rack, so that it could be slid out and moved sideways into the Harmonie equipped version. Having said that, using the CH Precision D1.5 and the Levinson 585 means that the transition needs to be as easy as possible! Even so, it wasn’t without its challenges. The top-caps on the PRS are dimpled to accept the tips of the cones on the layer above, positively locating the rack on the sub-table. The Harmonie’s flat base is way too broad to engage with the dimple, so sliding something as heavy as the 585 into the rack risked nudging the whole upper section sideways off of the sub-table’s supporting caps. It proved possible, albeit requiring some considerable care. However, the results were more than worthwhile.

Reviewing the Harmonies under the Living Voice OBX-RW4 loudspeakers, I wrote, “The Neodio feet delivered more scale, more weight, considerably more texture, a more developed acoustic but most impressive of all was their impact on the music’s sense of rhythm and flow.” It’s a set of benefits that apply even more powerfully to their use with the PRS rack. With the Levinson’s output terminals connected to the astonishing little Vienna Acoustics Haydn stand-mounts, the increase in separation, dimensionality, depth and acoustic coherence was little short of remarkable. Yet that palpable sense of acoustic space, so rare from such a small speaker, seemed almost musically trivial when compared to the increase in temporal clarity and space. The placement and spacing of notes, the pace of a piece and changes to that pace became more natural and far more ‘legible’: not just that the musicians have set a particular tempo, or opted to change it, but how and why they’ve done so.

Playing Patti Smith’s cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (Twelve, Columbia/Sony Music 8888 37 49272) those iconic opening notes are almost sluggish on the ‘standard’ rack, the bass lethargic and blooming with an uncontrolled spread. But transfer the system to the Harmonie-equipped rack and it’s all changed. There’s a deliberate, measured spacing to the notes, the bass is ‘fat’ but far from flabby and the band enter, spread in a coherent space. Smith’s vocal is present and intimate, her diction natural and lacking the hard edge it had previously had. There’s a conscious restraint in the pacing, the tempo deliberate and the notes poised in space and time. As Smith starts to pick up the pace, it’s just as deliberate, generating an inevitable momentum and musical power. What started as something almost deconstructed grows into a track that carries the same or even more emotional weight than the original, the precision in the playing and the space it gives the vocals allowing the lyrics to be heard and understood that much more clearly, giving them that much more intelligibility and impact.

This ability to retain spatial separation and temporal spacing is crucial to understanding music, to fully understanding the performance captured in a recording. Playing Patti on the standard rack, the presentation is still impressive, but there’s no escaping the way in which the recording hardens and congeals as the level and intensity increase. Using the Harmonie footers under the rack allows the system to present more information, both in the time and space domains, but also to arrange that information far more naturally: to make far more sense with and of it. In doing so, it allows the rack and the system a wider margin of control, making more music more accessible, more communicative and ultimately more worthwhile. That’s a pretty fundamental shift, but then the Harmonies seem to operate at just that fundamental level.

Having eight Harmonies on hand, I naturally went the whole hog and fitted tt he rack on its sub-table, with only friction to keep it in place ain’t a brilliantly practical arrangement. Problematic in the case of these comparisons, I’m not sure I’d recommend it in a domestic situation either. It’s stable enough, it just isn’t secure against lateral impacts of the sort generated by pets, children or clumsy adults. Which got me wondering: just how much of the Harmonies’ benefits are provided by each level? Are they, equal, cumulative or exponential? There’s only one way to find out – so back to shifting equipment between racks…

With the PRS cones re-installed between the rack and the sub-table, I repeated the back and forth comparisons, with what can only be described as win-win results. Using Harmonie footers on both rack and sub-table does afford an increase in performance, but it is definitely in ‘icing on the cake’ territory. Using the Harmonie footers only between sub-table and floor delivers between 85 and 90% of the musical benefits. Listening to the Andrew Davis/Bergen P.O. recording of Karelia (Chandos CHSA 5134) the single set of footers still delivers that increase in space, dynamic graduation and flow when compared to the standard PRS set-up. The Harmonies allow the system to capture that tingling anticipation in the opening movement, give the brass real punch, clearly define the percussion and scale the dynamics beautifully. Just when you think the orchestra can’t go louder, it lifts itself through the final crescendo far more convincingly, with almost explosive impact combined with control. The whole orchestra stays put, with no tendency to tumble forward or crowd between the speakers. Adding the second layer of Harmonies does further refine the dynamic steps and brings extra texture and colour to instruments – a worthwhile upgrade if your rack allows it and the option is practical in your situation, but the footers between the rack and the floor are doing the heavy lifting. Which, given that most racks are essentially single piece structures (at least once assembled) is just as well. That and the fact that most racks use three or four posts, means you’ll need half as many Harmonie footers to support your rack as you’ll need for the average pair of speakers, making it a far more cost effective option too. More performance for half the money, what’s not to like.

On a practical note, the flat nose that the Harmonie sits on is only 1cm in diameter. While it works perfectly on hard floors, don’t think that it won’t work on carpet. It’s a small enough area to compress carpet effectively, if not instantly, especially given that in most cases, the rack will be supporting a serious weight of electronics. It might take time to settle, but it will achieve stasis, allowing you to level the rack easily. Which brings me to another aspect of the Harmonie, which makes it peculiarly efficient when it comes to its use with racks. A lot of systems either stand in corners or use two racks placed next to each other. In either case, there’s always a spike or footer that’s incredibly hard to access and adjust easily. The large diameter of the Harmonie makes it easy to adjust precisely by hand, even when barely accessible. If you use lock-nuts, they are also easier to tighten, given that you can hold the footer in place and prevent it moving.

Mentioning lock nuts brings us back to the issue raised when using the Harmonie with speakers. The supplied M10 adaptor threads are relatively short. You might not need a huge amount of thread on most racks, certainly less than on speakers, but if you lose half of that thread to a lock-nut things get pretty marginal pretty quickly. I’d really like to see the Harmonie supplied with longer threads, even if only as a cost option. Of course, if your rack uses M8 threads (and many do) then getting longer threads is just a case of looking on Ebay. Otherwise there’s little to criticise here and a whole lot to like.

As good as the Harmonie is when it is used on speakers (and it is really good) it’s even better and more cost effective applied to equipment racks. Not only do you need half the number, but you are spreading the cost/benefit across everything supported in the rack. Experiments with shifting individual pieces on and off of the Harmonie-equipped PRS demonstrated that, while the D1.5 CD/SACD transport scored the biggest musical improvement, the benefits were just as obvious on the C1.2 DAC, the T1 clock, the L1 line-stage the VTL TL-5.5 or the Wadia S7i, all of which were added to the basic set up to see how they fared, the side by side set-up making quick comparisons a piece of cake. With the system – whatever the system – supported on the Harmonie footers, the music took on a natural clarity, presence, life and texture, a more relaxed, communicative and fluid presentation. Once heard, it’s an improvement you’ll not want to do without. The best thing about having eight Harmony footers left over from reviewing them under speakers? Being able to fit them to both of the PRS racks!