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The following equipment comparison was published in The October, 1998 issue of The Absolute Sound. The Arcici Suspense Rack Vs. The Townshend Seismic Sink Stand Hard on the heels of (our five-tiered version of) the Townshend Seismic Sink Stand, which really is a beautiful finished work (yes, Dave), and represented a breakthrough in the sonic isolation of components, comes Ray Shab's Suspense Rack from Arcici, which is a real looker, although of a different sort from the stainless steel tubing that adorns the Townshend. The Townshend, as you may recall from my comments on it in the Burmester review in Issue 113, provided the same leap forward in isolation devices that his original Seismic Sinks did over the competition of its day (though the competition didn't take long to catch up and at much lower prices, vide, the quite wonderful Bright Star air isolation platforms). The Townshend provided a welcome and socially superior alternative to the Vibraplanes, whose constant air leakage drove the set-up folks here wild. I always thought the Vibraplanes were overpriced (especially when I found out what their OEM price was) and our experience never jelled with the assertions of the Sounds of Silence people that these things didn't (or shouldn't ever) leak air. The townshend, as we came to see, doesn't support as much weight as the Arcici will, and the entire thing sways if set into motion, which surely makes turntable placement on its top level a shaky proposition. Additionally, as Scot Markwell reports, the Townshend leaked air too, while the Arcici, to date, has not. We were able to set the Basis Vacuum Reference table atop the Arcici - the top level remains rock stable - without incident, and found the improvements to LP production jaw dropping. |
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There was more high-frequency information in our reference recordings than we'd heard over the years (notably, Casio Royale and Mona Bone Jakon), Bells, guitar notes, overtones. We had observed the same phenomenon in the reproduction of the high frequencies with CD players on the Townshend, but who would have thought that airborne vibrations would have played such havoc with the micro-movements of a stylus tracing the intricacies of high-frequency information? (Should have kown, of course.) One other thing I haven't reported upon, but should have, is the fact, as demonstrated by Townshend, that if you let the air out of the stand, the human voice drops by what sounds like a third of an octave, which is symbolic of what you're losing in terms of high-frequency fundamentals and overtone information. The Arcici is flexible in another way: You can adjust the respective shelf heights in the tower itself, thus allowing a much wider variety of components than you can stuff into the Townshend. Considering the price: $2,090 for the Arcici (five shelves, top included) versus $2,290 for the sexier looking Townshend, and you can draw your own conclusions. As for me, I'd like nothing more than to have all the equipment under evaluation here on Arcici stands so I could be sure I was hearing the equipment, not the interactions between airborne vibrations and the operating mechanics of CD and LP playback decks. - The Absolute Sound, October, 1998. PO Box 272, New York, NY 10024 Phone: (631) 922-8479 |