AcouPlex isn’t mass-produced in 8’ x 4’ sheets like acrylic, but is cast and then trimmed or machined as necessary. Unfortunately it’s an expensive process. The amount that can be made to is limited by the small batch production, with the associated costs that implies. Which brings me to the vexed question of value (tries on the GY8 ‘Voice of Sanity™’ hat for size): I’ve not found a totally reliable measure of value, especially with something as subjective as musical enjoyment, but one helpful principle I try to keep in mind when assessing what some refer to as ‘accessories’ or ‘peripherals’, is to ask myself whether I could achieve a similar lift in performance by upgrading an active component and, if so, what sort of cost that would incur. In the case of equipment supports, mains and signal cabling, the answer has often been “no, not really – not even close”.
The improvements have also tended to be of a different nature to those you get from upgrading active components. They’re more about letting the existing components give more of themselves, releasing the system’s brakes, rather than an overt change in presentation. One aspect of the value is in getting more of what you, presumably, already like about the stuff you’ve already bought, and paid for! The other is in the increased potential you can realise from products yet to be purchased. But it’s still relevant to ask yourself whether the magnitude of the change is in some way comparable to a hardware upgrade, and if so, what would that change cost?
Bringing out the flavour…
My first experiment with AcouPlex was in the form of replacement shelves on my ReVo II table. The ReVo II still has the swoopy, skeletal structure and can still be used in ‘virtual shelf’ mode where the components rest on the structural bars of the rack directly, not unlike a somewhat simpler version of the Stillpoints approach; but it can also now hold acrylic shelves, the better to accommodate a wider range of products, as well as providing some means of levelling. For quite some time now I’ve been using shaped acrylic shelves, treated on the underside with a damping layer of PEEK film, which have been a useful upgrade over rectangular, undamped acrylic, and pretty much as effective as the ‘virtual’ shelf arrangement the ReVo can offer. The acrylic seems to create a quieter, calmer background for the system to work from when compared to veneered wood, or glass, shelves, but it’s quite ‘massy’, which can often hold things back a little (the rationale behind the ‘no shelf’ arrangement of the original ReVo table). Leaving everything else the same, I simply swapped the existing shelves for similar-sized rectangular shelves in AcouPlex.
With the AcouPlexshelves in place, there was an immediate increase in the sense of spaciousness; there’s a more generous, expansive quality to the sound, a greater freedom to allow the music to breathe. The system now has more scope to scale up, to generate a bigger, deeper, more energetic soundscape. Instruments develop more character, phrasing becomes broader and more expressive, the musical content reveals itself a little more clearly. You hear this even when substituting just one shelf, and the effect grows as you replace the others in succession.
