S2-4 & S2-5
Solid Steel Audio Racks
Solid Steel audio racks are solidly built in Italy. They have STEEL posts. They are conspicuously inexpensive for their SOLID heft and ability to resist acoustic feedback. Flimsy stands do NOT resist acoustic feedback. For that, your system sounds less precise and detailed than it could be.
The S2 Series is black and utilitarian.
The more massively built S3 series is available in black or walnut.
S2-4 $400 Black
30.6h, 23w, 17d
Vertical Spacing Between Shelves 8.25”
Each Shelf .86” Thick
Inner Shelf Width 19.7
S2-5 $500 Black
40.86 h, 23w, 17d
Vertical Spacing Between Shelves 8.25”
Each Shelf .86” Thick
Inner Shelf Width19.7
You can purchase an extra shelf kit to add to the above.
S2 ExtraKit $150.
S3 Series (Walnut or Black)
S3-4 $800
34.8h, 23w, 17d
Lower shelf vertical opening 9.5h
Upper two shelves vertical opening 9.0h
Each Shelf 1.18” Thick
Inner Shelf Width 19.7
The S3 Series racks use heavier aluminum posts. The posts are internally damped with absorptive filling. The shelves use a heavy laminate finish to avoid scuffing.
Solid Steel makes HEAVY, acoustically helpful audio racks. All models come with stainless steel floor spikes. Casters are not an option. The pillars are made of heavy aluminum. Shelves are MDF.
Isotek Aquarius $2000
Aquarius
We have learned over the last 40+ years that every house’s electrical system is chock-full of debris. Even if you have some fancy surge protector in the basement, your house is still a contraption of metal and wires. The ANTENNA your mechanical house IS- adds additional distortion to what WE Energy sends down your line.
The audio hash I’ve described is similar to the snow we saw in our TV reception back in the days of analog TV. When we put our test meter on your line, we ALWAYS see high numbers of distortion and hear annoying honeybees through the test speaker that shouldn’t be there.
When we install an Isotek Aquarius, the numerical distortion drops to zero, or close to it. The honeybees disappear. Cleansing of this distortion makes your music sound more clear- just as eliminating snow from your picture cleaned up what you saw on the screen.
Aquarius has six outlets. Two are high current- for power amps. Four are lower current-
for anything else. Aquarius has six discrete filters within it, hence none of the products plugged into
Aquarius pollute the others. There is no cross talk among these components.
The audible improvement is remarkable! You will hear definition you didn’t know the system was capable of at all frequencies. The stand up bass is tighter. Drum attacks are more percussive.
Plucked guitar strings and piano trills are cleaner. Even human voice stands out more clearly from the backing music. We’ve attached a couple of photos that give you a good idea of what you will hear with Aquarius in, or out of your system.
Hi-Fi+ Mains Cable of The Year: Isotek Syncro Uni $1000
Syncro Uni isn’t a cable! Yet it won the Cable of the Year award. How does that work?
It runs $1k and that includes two, Premier power cables ($195 ea a la carte). One Premier goes to the wall, the other goes to your mains conditioner- which we trust will be Isotek’s Aquarius or Polaris.
“Syncro Uni is a DC offset blocking device that sits in line with the primary power cord, and is commonly used with a pair of Premier power cords. It’s surprising how much noise we put up with in audio, especially when the cure is so easy. You plug in Syncro Uni in between the system and the wall, and the hum goes away. The noise floor gets lower. And the system gets very slightly cleaner sound and more dynamic. The Uni isn’t another power cord. It’s so much more!”
Hi-Fi+ Disc Player of The Year: Marantz SA-KI Ruby $4000
Marantz’s SA-KI Ruby just won this coveted award. Renowned Marantz designer Ken Ishiwata designed the Ruby without a DAC chip! The player plays SACD & Red Book CDs. It upsamples via MMM (Marantz Music Mastering) instead of a DAC chip- which virtually everyone else uses.
All DAC chips have SOME sonic signature. Ken’s goal was to have his disc players escape the audible character any chip brings to the party. Ken introduced MMM with Marantz’s SA-10 ($7000) a couple years ago. How nice to offer the same technology, though carried out to a lesser extent, at about half the price!
This non DAC chip DAC section IS available for you to use on other sources as the Ruby has digital inputs!
Alberto Reyes: A Man Of Many Talents
Born in 1948 in Uruguay, Alberto was a prodigy on the piano. He came to the US to study at U of Indiana in 1966. In 1976 he decided to switch careers. He became a “simultaneous interpreter” and worked at the UN for 31 years. He continued to practice the piano and play some in the NYC area.
He retired from the UN in 2007. Instead of retiring to a beach somewhere, at 59 Alberto took up his piano life where he left off, touring (throughout the western hemisphere) and recording- which he’s still doing at 71.
I have several of his discs- my favorite being of Schumann works. You would have no clue he hasn’t been a touring pro his entire life!