Brand of 2025

Stack attack. In hindsight, if there was one brand this year which kept reiterating that effective engineering, real-world results and happy budgets can coexist yet still involve UK not Sino manufacture for those not keen on Communist Capitalism, it was Stack Audio. Be it a syndicated fairaudio review with award for their turntable mat and stabilizer; my own review with award for their small LAN regenerator; using their Auva footers underneath my Artesanía rack in lieu of its stock footers; Auva 70 under assorted speakers of mine; or Auva SW under three different subwoofers… their no-nonsense stuff did exactly what it said on the tin. That made it mo-sense stuff. Got milk? Moo.

Whilst thinking over which brand new to me had most impressed in 2025, this boutique enterprise by relative youngsters Theo Stack and Josh Stephenson made the most noise in response.

To most peeps and perps in this hobby, resonance control is very far down their to-do list if it factors at all. More likely is that Flat Earther style, that topic sailed right over the edge of the known world to tumble into the great void. And it's true. Performance-engineered racks from Artesanía, Grand Prix Audio, Hifistay, HRS, Silent Running & Bros. are costly. Plus, most size and style for a dim man cave not multi-use family lounge. They're not likely to be embraced. On the other hand, the myth of the one-way mechanical diode aka spike beneath loudspeakers and subwoofers still has legs even though to cognoscenti, those legs are heavily bowed and short by now.

Enter the game of footsies. It has some purveyors propose roller-ball affairs with exotic ultra-hard nano skins applied in a university lab where a single footer can cost more than my pair of 250-watt mono amps. Stack Audio utilize particle damping and/or weight-matched viscoelastics via custom silicone sleeves. It's a simple yet demonstrably effective approach which doesn't ask us to live with just one kidney. As decouplers which dissipate incoming mechanical energies, various Auva models are meant for our components, speakers, racks and subwoofers. 'Floating' our speakers and/or subwoofers above the floor via effective decouplers aka mechanical energy disruptors isolates our grossest disturbers of the peace. We no longer allow our low-frequency generators to act like jackhammers on our floor to infect the rest.

Should ultra-sensitive kit like turntables, CD transports or direct-heated triode gear still require further coddling, isolating either them from their support or the entire support from the floor becomes the next logical step. In this simple way, even regular so cosmetically attractive furniture repurposed as hifi support can be tweaked for purpose by adding isolation footers. No need to transform our living room into a lookalike laboratory. Late-arriving reflections from so-called acoustic room gain aren't linear or on time. Ditto mechanical resonances propagating through our floor into what sits on it, even past the walls into neighbouring rooms or flats. Their influences are always behind the beat just like a boom truck. Eliminating this noise declutters our bassment. We net superior pitch definition, higher bass resolution and less overhang. Sounds stop quicker rather than migrate to stimulate sundry structural elements. We cut that migratory overlay of blurry muddy action onto the higher bands to benefit beyond simply cleaner bass. Whilst I have never owned a single record, my colleagues Jörg & Ralph in Berlin attest to the same principles applied to spinning vinyl. Stack's resonance-absorbing mat and particle-filled stabilizer gained their reviewer enough of an improvement to make both part of his toolbox then grab an award. My systems too are now stacked.

So yes, my Favourite Brand of 2025 are Stack Audio. And whilst I'm still sworn to secrecy, they're already at work on something else just as clever…