Artesanía Audio Exoteryc Rack PRO, at the top of audio

Twenty-five years ago I had my first contact with a rack. It was love at first sight, both for what it visually represented in terms of enhancing the components of the music system and for its functionality as such. The rack in question was the creation of the engineer D. Jose Luis Lafarga. Unable to afford the original, a good friend of mine made me a high-quality copy.

To date, I have been to many presentations and events where Artesanía Audio products are a regular feature alongside the most renowned and expensive brands in the world. Their designs are immediately recognizable to me. I am one of those "weirdos" who, when everyone else is looking at the electronics or the sound sources, spends more time looking at the cables or the racks that hold everything together. And that in the case of cables, nowadays (not before) they are mentioned in the system's list, something that the racks still sometimes remain forgotten. A big mistake.

I apologize in advance, but this article will be long due to the need to explain basic things that are still not valued correctly. Even within the same industry or sector, many of the sellers of musical systems do not take into account this value that is so necessary to achieve the maximum sound that a system located in it can give.

In an age where everyone is immersed in the creation of acronyms to define anything: DAC, ADC, DDC, SFC, RCA, XLR, etc., I join the party and create my own to define this rack BLHC (Beautiful, Low High Converter). I will develop this idea later.

The first impact is always visual, therefore, the work carried out by the engineers of the Spanish firm in this field is exceptional. They know that on their shelves, or without them, the most refined and economically exclusive components of today will be exhibited at the most important fairs or in the most exclusive houses in the neighborhood. This obliges them to have a striking presence and be the perfect culmination of those exclusive dreams that few can materialize. Yes, the protagonist of this article belongs to the top range of audio, and is manufactured, one by one, with infinite attention to detail a few hundred kilometers from my house, and I have been able to visit it in person and interview its visible head and the person most responsible for maintaining the technical level of the company, Eric García.

The industrial line of this rack is designed to work without shelves, in its optimal and strict mode, or with them, increasing the price, although without lowering the quality at all, if they are of the highest level. When operating without shelves, the four decoupled support points on each level can move almost freely until the component's feet coincide with the supports, thus leaving the DACs, amplifiers, CD players, etc. visually exposed.

Always excluding the additional upper shelf (optional and not present in this model) designed for turntables. The feet are made to coincide with the four uprights of the rack and can be made to measure, although some are available in standard sizes.

Let's continue with the basics of this rack. Once I have made clear its aesthetic function and the quality of the materials, we are going to gradually introduce ourselves into its functionality. Within a music system, it is necessary to clearly distinguish the systems that contain mechanical elements within it, such as CD players, SACD, turntables or even servers that are a few years old and that use mechanical hard disks. All of them benefit greatly from being located on a solid and perfectly balanced surface. Not all homes have a perfect floor, of course, but being inside a rack adjusted to the exact level allows us to create a perfect "zero level". This avoids having to unbalance the feet of the different components to achieve a similar effect, although it does force the ideal point of the components somewhat. For all these components, working in an incorrect position significantly reduces their quality, since all the tests carried out with them are based on a zero base point to adjust their mechanics so that they can last for many years without being excessively strained. In the case of turntables, with their exorbitantly heavy platters to obtain the correct inertial mass, this is more than evident.

We live in a world of vibrations. The vibrations in the air produced by our reference transducers transmit musical fiction to our homes. We love vibrations and how they make us vibrate with emotion. It is a wonderful communion until the great enemies of all music lovers appear... vibrations. We generate vibrations when we walk around the house, when a heavy vehicle passes by on the street or when we make a lot of noise. The building where the venue is located also vibrates with the activity of the other neighbors or the wind (depending on its strength). But the main killer in the movie, the most fearsome, is close by, stalking the victim, the speakers. Speakers combined with an inadequate room can ruin any system, especially analog, which is the most sensitive to it.

And we're back to the beginning of everything BLHC, remember? We've spent a lot of time on the B of Beautiful and focused on LHC. The most harmful waves for musical systems are the low ones. They are the most powerful and have the most energy associated with them. Capable of making furniture, glass or... musical components shake. In the case of pickup cartridges, they are added to the primary sound and generate an acoustic feedback loop, known as the Larsen effect.

The Exoteryc Rack PRO uses two combined techniques to combat vibrations, isolating and passively dividing them. We are going to follow, step by step, the path of a bass wave, emitted with a large amount of energy, to try to attack one of the components of the system. And to make it more fun, we are going to call it Armageddon Wave.

Armageddon Wave makes contact with the rack through the floor. The first assault is against the neoprene isolating disks that are between the rack and the floor. The difference in materials, and the very nature of neoprene, weaken the signal. The neoprene disk is located on a stainless steel cone with a small central cavity. In the central cavity, a point on each of the four main supports, rests the weight of the structure. At this point, the limited support base means that the vibrations are greatly reduced in terms of the amount of energy transmitted to the upper part. Once the first obstacle has been overcome, Armagedon climbs up the four tubular columns that act as a stand, although it does so with more added problems. The tubes are neither solid nor empty, but contain materials of different types and densities, which cause the vibrations traveling along the outside of the tube to move at a different speed than those traveling along the inside, splitting the signal.

Once Armageddon Wave, already badly damaged by the battle, reaches the top, it finds that there is a second structure suspended inside the rack. It is as if there were a rack supporting another rack. We repeat the same move as at the beginning, and a stainless steel support the size of a hen's egg, with a central cavity, supports the second structure, connected to the first with a decoupling tip at each foot. This second structure, which may or may not house the shelves of components, is completely suspended in mid-air, having only these tiny four points of support.

On the suspended structure, in this case with three spaces for components, there are four support points, finished in natural beech wood, on each of the levels and which can be moved through the mobile carbon fiber structure until the exact desired position is obtained.

That is to say, within each level we have ferrous material, carbon fiber and natural beech. All of them with different characteristics and properties in the fight against the now non-existent Armageddon wave. In addition, in my case, there is the Krion shelf to satisfy my specific needs.

I hope you liked this little story to dramatize the multiple barriers that exist in this rack, and that perhaps, at first glance, you may overlook.

And now my initial acronym is clearer, LHC, converter of intense and pernicious waves, such as bass (L) into (H) imperceptible and not harmful to sound, applied in this case to short or high frequencies, weak by nature.

Eliminating vibrations is fundamental for valves and highly sensitive electronics or electrical components, such as capacitors. These vibrations could be added to the audible signal.

Equipment used in the tests

Sound source:
» EMT 948
» Nuprime DAC 9X
» Roon Server
» Qobuz Studio
Power amplification:
» Bow Technologies WAZOO XL
Speakers:
» Diapason Karis III
Cables:
» Wires4Music in cabling:
    » Horus Hybrid RCA interconnection
    » Evolution in speakers and mains power supply
HiFi Rack:
» Artesanía Audio Exoteryc Rack PRO

One of the two best music systems I have ever heard did not have any kind of rack; and it didn't need one. One of the most respected people in audio in Spain, Ramón Ribó, did not have any kind of rack in his huge music installation. Now come the details that I have ignored until now. A double foundation was built in his mansion, one for the entire house (including a 130 m² room, without any columns and about 4.5 meters high), and another, within the main one, for his custom-built rack. Literally, there was a foundation of about 3 m² inside the main one and without any contact between the two. The architect went crazy, the builders didn't understand anything, and there were constant disputes before they achieved their goal.

Honestly, a high-end rack like the Exoteryc Rack PRO is much cheaper and I don't think the aforementioned one performs better; although it must also be said that we cannot make the mistake of judging the decisions of the 80s/90s with today's perspective, since such technologies simply did not exist.

Musical components can have a significant drop in quality with respect to their theoretical maximum if they work far from their "perfect habitat". If our system "loses" 5 percent of quality due to a bad base and this system has a cost of €1,000, we lose €50 in quality.

At certain levels there may be no need for certain components, but they become absolutely essential for those who really want to get the most out of the possibilities of the musical devices they acquire with such love throughout their lives.

With the premise of what has been expressed in the previous paragraphs, I am going to summarize the behavior of a musical system installed in it. I would like to point out beforehand that the best results will always be obtained with the best equipment. And that's it.

Let's imagine an amplifier with three controls, Loudness, Treble and Speakers. A top-level rack like this one reduces the Loudness sensation, increases the Treble and separates the speakers. That is to say, it increases the clarity of the sound; the bass is cleaner and does not mix with the mids, avoiding that annoying "soup of frequencies". The treble improves slightly; and the speakers are separated to surprising limits, widening the soundstage. This has the direct consequence of decongesting the sound image and making its reception much more satisfactory.

In the same way that I always tell you that any element of the musical system incorporates some characteristic to the final sound obtained, today we are writing about the only one, there is no other, whose function is to contribute nothing, apparently; to add nothing, obviously

The racks have three main objectives, and each one can put them in the order they want: beauty, order and neutrality of sound. Here they are more than fulfilled.

With a quick look at the main events and fairs worldwide, the big names trust this product with their eyes closed. Year after year. It has never been so easy for me to give such a positive assessment of a product, as the great experts in this field display their jewels and new products on this rack.

And I will finish with a simple question: if you have an important music system and it is not located in a high-end rack, what...?