The Hutter-Racktime Furniture System
by Jason Hector

Issue 4 - December 1999

It is no longer a question of if Hi Fi racks or tables are necessary everyone now accepts that they are an essential element in exploiting the potential of your system. The question now is which rack to choose? There are as many racks as there are ways to build them, but one thing has remained pretty consistent. They are all ugly Too ugly to win that all important 'partner acceptance'.

Recently a couple of companies have been scoring hits with some much more attractive purpose designed equipment which also sounds good. The Quadraspire system, along with Projekt and the Russ Andrews Torlyte system, uses little or no ferrous materials in its construction, and does away with all that ringing smoked glass. As a generalisation, they seem to allow equipment to produce a much more natural sound.

Hutter have been making real furniture for 50 years, and as a keen audiophile Armin Hutter wanted to make a hi-fi table which achieved four specific aims. The system had to be:
+ good looking
+ easy to set up
+ flexible and, most importantly
+ excellent sounding.
Has he achieved any or all of these aims with his Racktime range?

Racktime is a modular system, so you can make a stand as tall and as wide as you want, with a variety of shelf spacings. Unusually and exploiting their furniture-making expertise, the system incorporates some storage sections. There's a CD drawer and record shelves which allow you to create a whole range of stands from a few basic components; bases, two types of shelf and the storage units.

Yep, they are flexible. The shelves are wooden and are constructed in three parts, a centre section with vertical end cheeks. Each part is constructed from three sheets of spruce (no MDF here). The sheets are crossplied, and each has a different thickness. The sections are then veneered with three layers, again of different thickness and cross-played. All this care results in shelving which has a diffuse resonant behaviour. The shelves are then varnished, and here we see further evidence of the attention to detail.

The varnish itself is identical to that used by the Austrian piano maker Bösendorfer, and for similar acoustic reasons. The quality of the finish is simply superb, and the assembled table is pleasing to the eye in a purposeful way. The shelves are available in a variety of real wood veneers, so everyone should be able to find some-thing to suit. Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder, and whilst the Hutter is decidedly different from most hi-fi furniture, it is definitely more furniture than hi-fi. They've really grown on me, so I guess I can give them a tick in the good looking column, but they are also big, and will become a feature of most rooms.

Shelves are held in place by a two part aluminium spacer consisting of an inner solid rod and an outer sleeve. The rods locate into the top and bottom of the shelf cheeks, and the tubes provide the spacing. These linking pieces are available in a variety of lengths to allow different spacing between the shelves. Using a two part structure again reduces the vibrational interaction between adjacent shelves by eliminating resonance in the supports. Two bases are available, the basic base being a one piece slab with adjustable feet. The 'Hi-Fi Base' - a two part system with isolation spikes between the slabs. The first set of spacers locates in holes in these bases, further shelves can then be simply added in turn. You can also link the bases horizontally. So yep, they are easy to setup. So far so good, but how does it all sound?

My first exposure in a controlled environment (rather than at a noisy show!) was at my dealers shop. Roy had dropped the rack there, so we thought we'd try it out. Assembling a table with the Hi-Fl base, the CD drawer (which holds 75 CD's) and three shelves, a Naim CDX! XPS CD player was placed on the top. The rest of the system, Naim 82/180 and a pair of Shahinian Arcs, completed a familiar line up. The first thing that strikes you about the sound is the scale, it simply becomes bigger' and more naturally powerful, without the sluggish tendencies which often afflict racks which do this. On the contrary the changes with the Hutter where entirely positive. Now to get it home. A word of advice; if you own a small sports car, get somebody to deliver it or you will be making a lot of trips. Boxed, the Racktime table filled the back of my Golf and weighed a ton! Flatpack is a relative term.

The first tests once I got it centred on the LPT2 and its paraphernalia (Armageddon and Prefix). This I thought would be the sternest test of all, what with the Linn being such a fussy record player, and being known for what seems like time immemorial for working best on light rigid stands. The Hutter flies in the face of this tradition. With the number of shelves (5 basic, plus the Hi-Fi base) and the spacers provided the whole stand was tall, approaching 4.5 feet in height. Despite the height, this isn't a rack which sways in the breeze. When assembled the close tolerance manufacture results in a solid piece of furniture.

From the moment music started playing I realised I had nothing to worry about here. The first thing that struck me, as it had in Phonography was the scale of the sound. Everything seemed bigger. Not in an over blown fashion, just a larger scale with correspondingly wider dynamics, the performance becoming life-size rather than the usual smaller rendition from hi-fi. As I transferred further sections of my system, similar gains were heard, each component gaining from the transition between Quadraspire and Hutter. Interestingly the NAP250 power amp seeming to benefit the most of the non-source components.

What else did the Hutter do? Well it certainly helped to increase the resolution, allowing a hear-through, transparent quality with instruments better able to display their distinct voices. Nowhere was this more apparent than with drums. Now drums are some of the most difficult sounds to reproduce, covering a wide frequency spectrum with very strong transients. My system has always done well here, but the Racktime system really outshone my Quadraspire rack in bringing out the best. Playing Greetings From Timbuk3 drums gained the required force, and had increased definition, so that the evolution of the strike was palpable, whereas previously it was slightly amorphous. I put this down to better harmonic retrieval and delivery The Quadraspire tables have always made for an expressive system, but the Hutter allowed new depth and insight into the workings of the band.

The intended timing of music, the way the players stretch or short-en the pacing, is vital to the message being presented. Again the Hutter communicates this more clearly than the Quadraspire, so that interplay and shifts of tempo are present in the room, not lost in transit to the speakers. This was demonstrated with the first Gomez album Bring it On. Gomez have a rare grasp of how to use variations in timing to their musical advantage, and now my system was better able to keep track of this, keeping me listening to records. With the Quadraspire it was easier to keep my reviewer hat on and be objective, with the Racktime I just ended up listening to the music, playing several tracks when one would have done. Is there a bigger recommendation?

Listening to the Fun Lovin' Criminals Come Find Yourself, I was struck again by how funky these guys are, and how obvious it was with the Hutter system. A tidying up at the edges of the sounds and the improved timing led to a new appreciation of their abilities. With more acoustic sounds it became obvious that the Racktime system had increased the dynamic range of the system through a reduction in distortion and the noise floor. Maddy Prior's Ravenchild demonstrated that instrumental phrasing and timbre were improved, and this moved the result another step closer to the ideal, with nuances in her voice easier to hear. Again the overwhelming impression is of improved musicality and a reduction in listener fatigue encouraging further listening.

Towards the end of the review period I managed to get hold of an extra base unit, allowing me to stretch the rack sideways into a two tier unit, incorporating the excellent (and extremely solid) CD storage drawer. This elicited further improvements, extending the already impressive performance. The Hutter Racktime system is a definite step in the right direction for audio furniture, further improving on the natural presentation of the other wood based stands, whilst injecting greater clarity and even better rhythmic integrity I can confidently say that Armin Hutter has met all his design goals. The Racktime has taken up residence chez Hector.

Finishes: Various wood finishes are available including maple, cherry and black ash. The metal supports are also available in watt aluminium, nickel and brass metallic shades.

Size: The rack used for the review has a depth of 475mm and width of 600w. Spacers are available in 50mm, 90mm and 190mm lengths. 90mm is typical for shelves, and 50mm for drawers, although these can be mixed and matched. Shelves are available in a variety of sizes, and custom dimensions can be produced, priced as per the next size up.

Cost: The Hi-Fi base costs £137.45, a shelf as shown is £112.45 and the drawer ranges from £263.95 to £337.35 depending on the insert

Contact details:
Hi-Fi Holz Hutter
Weizerstrasse 9,
8190 Birkfeld,
Austria

Tel: 0043-31 74-4472
Fax: 0043-317-4915
Web: www.hutter.co.at
Email: office@hutter.co.at

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