*Price shown is for each tier/level* *Made to order, can take anywhere between 4-8 weeks to arrive* I’ve been listening to quite a few hi-end (or should I say high priced) hi-fi supports recently and being candid it has been quite a disappointing experience. Some of the racks, which will remain nameless here, certainly looked impressive but sounded between average to poor, and in no way reflected their elevated price points. So it came as quite a breath of fresh air to finally spend some decent time listening to the X reference rack from Quadraspire. I’ll start with a brief description. The look will be familiar as it has many styling queues from other Quadraspire models, but look closer and a few things become obvious. First, this is a pretty lightweight rack, and that’s a good thing,as lower mass stores less energy and all things being equal sonically results in a cleaner sound, which tends to time better and sounds more open. Also rigidity has not been chased at the exclusion of everything else, and again, I would say this is a very good thing. Make something ultra rigid and you make the resonance's more obvious by focusing them into one narrow bunch of frequencies. Allow a degree of decoupling (ideally without adding elastomers) you help spread the resonance's and reduce their audibility significantly. Different materials have been used throughout, and this I feel helps further spread around resonance's and reduces the dominance of one materials tonal character. The X shaped structural frame of the rack is made from mdf, with as much material cut away to reduce its mass. Upon this the lightened bamboo shelves are supported on bronze spikes, where even the cups that the points rest upon are not rigidly fixed (but securely mounted nonetheless). The uprights are made from aluminium, and like the bronze pieces are turned from solid bar and beautifully made. So on to the important bit, how it sounds, or rather as is the case with a good rack, how it doesn’t sound. I would have to say that this is up amongst the very best sounding racks I’ve come across, for overall balance and neutrality it is very impressive. It is open, sounding large, natural and expansive as the recording requires. It’s fast too and doesn’t hang onto notes, allowing them to finish when they should (which I know sounds odd when typed, but is oh so obvious when heard), the bass times well and doesn’t sound thick and ponderous like other manufacturers racks tend to at this price point. So it’s a resounding recommendation from us and is clearly a very well thought through design, not following fashion but doing its own thing and I think it’s a great hit sonically. The shelve spacings are available at 200, 250, 300, 350 and 400m but please note that due to the height lost to the spiked Bamboo shelf you do lose 70mm of internal usable height from each these spacings. The overall width is 720mm and the overall depth is 590mm. The equipment shelves are available in several different bamboo finishes, the X support level are in black and the aluminium uprights are a matt black finish. Quadraspire have an excellent ‘product builder’ section on their Quadraspire website, which makes designing a rack very easy.
