A very worthy tweak, if you’ve got the do-re-mi. The veritable Porsche 911Turbo of vibration-reduction feet, the QPods are built like all Magico products without any prior constraints, cost like all Magico products a lot, and work like all Magico products exactly as advertised. Unfortunately, and once again, three of these hefty pods (upon whose flat tops a single component is seated) will put you out $1310 (a set of four, for larger items like amplifiers, is $1680). With Audio Research and Technical Brain electronics, the QPods lower image “smear” and improve focus, resolution, truth of timbre, transient response, and dynamic range and scale to a quite noticeable degree.
I myself can attest to their effectiveness under components that handle low-level signals, such as phonostages or preamps. Magico, as usual, has done its homework on these items (you can find cumulative spectral decay plots on the Magico Web site, which clearly show the effects that the QPods have when a component-in this case a preamp-is seated atop them). Originally designed for Magico’s own use in developing loudspeakers, these large, beautifully made, constrained-layer “feet” combine layers of hardened stainless-steel, oxygen-free copper, and aircraft-grade aluminum-all CNC-turned-and-milled-to “create a single traverse dissipating unit” that turns vibrational energy into heat. Granted this is a lot of money (especially if you combine the ART with Hallographs, as I do), but it is a WHOLE lot cheaper than custom-building a dedicated listening room and-from my experience of “scientifically designed” dedicated listening rooms-a whole lot better sounding. A starter set of ART products (including a Vibratron for the front wall, a Bass Station for the front wall, a Gravatron for the back wall, and two Magnetrons for the sidewalls) will set you back $2995. In combination with Shakti Hallographs, which have much the same effects, they can do wonders for reducing brightness in an overly live-sounding room or for controlling midbass resonances in a smaller one. I will be reviewing these temple-bell-like objects in The Absolute Sound in the near future, but for the time being know that all four parts of this system (the large Vibratron, which sits on a tall tongue-depressor-shaped stand, the smaller Bass Station, Gravatrons, and Magnetrons, which sit on wooden stands in front of your speakers or on little wedges of wood attached to your walls) work together to improve room acoustics by masking early-arrival reflections and comb-filtering, thereby clarifying and seemingly expanding the soundfield. The first item-or items-is an unconventional room treatment from Synergistic Research, called the ART (Acoustic Room Treatment) system.
Over the last few months, I’ve come across a number of new devices for room treatment and vibration/resonance control that really work in the ways that I like such things to work-which is to say, all of them lower coloration, increase transparency to sources, and raise resolution without killing dynamics.
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