Performance
Adding mass and isolation to audio components, especially turntables has been a path many music lovers have taken for decades. Whether it was a piece of granite, a heavy butcher block, or whatever, people have experimented with adding mass to help their gear sound better. Heck, we even remember cutting tennis balls in half before any isolation components were on the market.
A real shocker in terms of audio improvement was the first time we heard an HRS isolation base. HRS uses some pretty special tech to improve your sound but does carry a much higher price tag than these IsoAcoustics bases. What we heard then was much tighter bass, more dynamics, better imaging, and a far more effortless and involving sound. In other words, tons of improvements.
We decided to give these IsoAcoustics bases a real challenge and see if they could improve what was already a great turntable. A new turntable from Mark Levinson had just hit our demo floor and this 75 pound beast of a turntable already had some really good isolation. As an aside, the new 5105 turntable from Mark Levinson sounds fantastic and is quite beautiful.
We set this up on the Mark Levinson 5805 integrated amp, which was driving a pair of Aerial 7t speakers. It took two people to move the table each time and add the big IsoAcoustics 3” thick larger base. On every record, the difference was immediate! The sound was more effortless, had more detail, but the interesting part was it even sounded like the surface noise was reduced. Needless to say, it was a most impressive demonstration for us!