It’s like the cask strength versus the bottle strength version of your favourite single malt whisky; or espresso versus Americano; fresh leaf tea from a pot versus teabags in a mug. Yes, we can enjoy wine in a paper cup on a picnic, but you’ll enjoy it even more from a decent glass. The basic experiential elements are not altered, but they are heightened in intensity – and our senses respond to that.
This is not about deconstruction. My attempts to analyse what’s happening at the level of individual notes or musical elements shouldn’t leave you with the idea that AcouPlex pulls the music apart. It’s why I was reluctant to get too buried in the question of ‘sound’. Instead, what it’s doing is helping the system present the music as a whole, as a single, complete entity assembled from individual but related musical parts, in much the same way as you do at a live performance. It’s an important step with significant implications. Your perception, your brain, is freed from some of the inevitable ‘post-processing’ it usually has to do when listening to recorded sound, and can get on with the much more agreeable task of just enjoying the music.
AcouPlex seems to have this effect regardless of what it sits upon. I’ve used slightly smaller sheets simply laid over shelves made from acrylic (the MusicWorks ReVo), wood veneered MDF (a Lateral Audio Cadenz Vr), and directly on a wooden floor. I’ve used cones under equipment, spikes under loudspeakers and small disks as floor protectors under metal spikes. I’ve replaced the ReVo with its successor, the MusicWorks ReVue and added AcouPlex platforms to its acrylic shelves, and AcouPlex discs under its cone feet. 
I’ve used it with relatively inexpensive kit, by Amphion, Russell K, Hegel; more expensive (Accuphase, FinkTeam, EgglestonWorks); and really expensive (CH Precision) and in all cases, the response, the change in the level of the performance, has been on similar lines and to a similar extent. So, in my experience at least, it’s pretty agnostic as to what you partner it with. As well as the spaciousness and the freedom in timing, probably the most common effect has been how my system lets me hear and understand the musicians’ phrasing, the way they shape their lines so you hear how the music fits together and flows, how it drives on, or languidly lingers; that moment of surprise when what you thought was just a throwaway line develops a new significance. When Patricia Barber uses a backing vocal group on ‘The Hours’, a track on Mythologies, AcouPlex shelves under CD and Amp resolve those voices so you hear a group of individuals, rather than a single blended mass; there’s a spatial element to that, but it’s structural too. You get to hear how each voice contributes its character to the whole. All of a sudden, the backing vocals are a vital thing, a key ingredient, not just part of the seasoning. It’s entirely clear what Patricia Barber wanted when she chose this particular ensemble.
It’s still early days as far as AcouPlex is concerned. There’s a range of different products as well as a complete rack in development. One intriguing prospect (if only because of the undoubted furore it will provoke) is a replacement arm-board and sub-chassis for the evergreen Linn LP12. But one of the material’s real benefits is that it seems to deliver at whatever level you buy in. If you’ve got support tables or platforms already, there’s the intriguing prospect of substituting AcouPlex for the existing shelves or platforms. You could add AcouPlex ‘slabs’ between the equipment and what it’s already sitting on. Or you could simply use AcouPlex cones to get more of a ‘virtual shelf’. The further you travel down the AcouPlex path, the greater the benefit, but the good news is that you in doing so, you are also maximising your return on existing investment. You can improve the performance of an existing support system, but in doing so you’ll also be realising more of the potential (and more of what you like) that is lying dormant in your electronics.
You can have your cake…
Sceptics (and not a few dealers) might well be muttering about, “just upgrading the electronics.” Well, you could do that, but as I suggested earlier, the benefits you’ll achieve using AcouPlex are different to and difficult to achieve those you get through switching electronics. So my answer to that suggestion would be, “Well yes, and no; but mostly no.” Firstly, while AcouPlex isn’t cheap – a set of cones will set you back three or four hundred pounds, a small shelf a few hundred more – that’s a lot less than a remotely equivalent performance upgrade from even budget electronics. Once you start talking serious kit – Accuphase, let alone CH Precision – then the cost differential becomes starker still. And how are you defining ‘better’ here? Are there trade-offs between what you’re evaluating and what it may replace? Which brings me to my second point…
