The Devil said:
This just displays your total ignorance of what a Mana stand is made of. Do you know about the laminated wooden boards which are sandwiched between the steel frames?
Hooray, he's finally remembered his wooden boards!!
Those boards are merely MDF - the very material that your speaker cabinet is made of. Your cabinet is a good deal thicker though, and yet it isn't soaking up the vibrations is it?
Why do you think they are there? What do you think they might be doing?
What are they doing? Nothing special. If they were absorbing the sound from above, then your stand wouldn't ring would it?
How am I supposed to 'prove' it?
You could supply some evidence from the manufacturer - but there isn't any, their "evidence" is a collection of typical hifi reviews, but those are just opinions, nothing more.
Mana was recommended to me by Paul Stevenson, the MD of Naim. Prior to releasing their own support, the Fraim,
naim, there's another bunch of bullshitters. You will of course be aware of naim's own hatred of all things ferrous - their technical (mis-)director Roy George needs flogging for his promulagation of "microphony" too, but I digress.
Naim recommended Mana stands, most of the top people at Naim used them at home, and Naim supplied Mana Acoustics with Naim equipment to showcase both Mana and Naim at numerous hi-fi shows. Why do you think that Naim might have done this?
I've heard similar things said about hutter...
Moreover, naim have a penchant for bullshit themselves: "microphony", recommending bizarre stands, they flipped on whether active or passive was a good idea, the "suspended subchassis" in a bloody CD player; a chronically over-priced preamp; and a top of the line power amp that gets kicked into the kitty litter by the likes of Bryston and Crown for less than one tenth the price; and let's not forget the shockingly poor stability of their power amps into not wholly unreasonable loads.
naim speakers do belong on mana - preferably in a skip.
They are an extremely high-profile & prestigious hi-fi brand worldwide, so why endorse Mana so enthusiastically if it doesn't work? To do so would have made them look rather foolish..
Well, they certainly seemed to have back peddled on Mana since fraim became available..
I've heard about off-axis response, I think its importance is vastly overestimated,
And yet many people here (no doubt) take the time to experiment with the "toe-in" of their speakers...
The reason why most people don't use Mana is most probably an economic one. Multiphase rigs are expensive, but the basic rack is very reasonable, and can be upgraded with soundstages as finances allow. I didn't buy all mine in one go.
They only thing that matters in your system is your speakers: your naim cd player and preamp could be replaced with a Benchmarkmedia DAC1, and a $50 dvd player. You could dump your angle iron, glass and mdf (lets not forget the mdf), put those speakers back on the factory stands and people would think your system was a lot less ugly and sounded the same. In fact they may even think it sounded better because they were listening to your speakers rather than wondering whether they were going to fall off your mana towers
