Silent Running Audio Craz² Equipment Rack

Marc Mickelson has posted a review of the Review:Silent Running Audio Craz² Equipment Rack (starting at $11,500) at The Audio Beat. Some of his observations:

The magnitude of the sonic gains for which it is responsible means it becomes an indispensable piece of an audio system — just like those that have drivers, tubes and on/off switches. The improvement in focus — the system's ability to portray instruments and singers with ultimate solidity and resolution — was matched by a peculiar sense of calm, the music sounding relaxed, yes, but also as though the microdynamic depths of each recording were finally reached…

The improvement in focus was especially obvious; image outlines with all kinds of music were more substantial, as though they had somehow been Photoshopped to improve their relief from the recording's background…With all of the electronics on the Craz², the piano achieved supreme clarity throughout its range. However, it was the intensity of attack of each note that made the SRA rack's presence known, the piano ringing with heightened vitality, expressing Monk's incomparable pacing and phrasing all the better…

With LPs, the Craz² performed sonic miracles. The stereo spread was wider and the mono stage better layered and more material. Attack was fierce and decay trails stretched further into the void of the noise floor…The noise floor with the Craz² wasn't so much deeper as finer and blacker, akin to that of the Ayre MX-R amps….

The Craz² wasn't adding anything to the music, but it certainly was removing a great deal from it. The sound took on the sort of quality that follows a thunderstorm here in the desert: the view is more vivid, not so much scrubbed clean but devoid of particles carried in the air that cast a fine haze. With that haze gone, everything looks purer, more like itself. With the Craz², the same was true of every piece of electronics and the music they made. Nothing escaped the Craz²'s isolating caress…

You can read the full review here.