Air-dried maple platforms, SAMSON shelves, and speaker stands serve as the optimal sink for receiving and dissipating the vibrational energy transferred out of the electronics or speaker by the footers. Our exhaustive tests of every space age damping material and composite used in high-end platforms today prove solid wood (not plywood or MDF) always sounds better. But each wood species—walnut, cherry, myrtle, mahogany, oak, bubinga, jatoba, etc.—sounds somewhat different and most sound somewhat colored. The same listening test series showed maple to always have, by a sizable margin, the most detailed, transparent and uncolored sound. Because commercial kiln-drying deadens and weakens wood fibers, the maple used for every platform, shelf and stand we sell has be air-dried for 3-6 years. See here for more details on this and the significant superiority of our old growth, air-dried Ambrosian maple over standard young plantation-grown, kiln-dried lumberyard maple.
