On a trip to the West German Ruhr region, I stopped off in Meschede, where Finite Elemente is located. Luis Fernandes and Werner Moehring presented the new Pagode Signature MKII entry-level series, Carbofibre° shelves for optimizing the sound of USM Haller furniture, and an ultimate component platform called Statement.

The acoustic characteristics of my listening room were discussed here not too long ago, but without very much going into detail about the tiled floor, which proved to be quite problematic when setting up the Goebel Epoque Aeon Fine and the Kaiser Kawero! Classic. Another indication that the coupling to the floor, which is quite uneven due to the built-in underfloor heating, was the insight that the Andante Largo Silent Mounts which replaced the supplied spike plates under the Stenheim Alumine FIVE LX, recently presented with the Statement in High Fidelity award, resulted in a significant improvement.

Of course, Einstein's The Poweramp isn't just resting on the tiles. Some time ago, I kept swapping SSC's Big Magic Base for the Finite Elemente Carbofibre° HD to fine-tune the sound of the system when changing components. At the moment, I'm leaving the power amp on the Finite Elemente base and using the two SSC bases when I switch to mono power amps in the system. When introducing the HD version of his bases, Luis Fernandes explained that the polymer plastic honeycomb core material used for the component shelves in the pagode° MKII racks had brought such a significant sonic advantage that he decided to develop isolation bases from it as well. In these, the honeycomb core material is encased on all sides by carbon fibre plates, resulting in extreme torsional rigidity. Together with the ultra-light honeycomb layers, this ensures controlled resonance damping and dissipation.