Gaia Isolation anything in this?

[Purité Audio]

This chap shows a reduction in IMD when using these isolation products,

ISO Acoustics Gaia III Isolation Feet Review

Recently a customer requested ISO Acoustics Gaia III isolation feet for their custom speakers. Once they arrived I was curious to see how they performed and so I devised an objective test to compare the feet against rigidly coupling the speaker to the floor. My test consisted of subwoofer...

josephcrowe.com

The manufacturer states,
“The reduction in vibrations can be explained by the way that IsoAcoustics isolation manages the energy of the speaker to reduce internal reflections. The vibrations when spikes are used is greater in comparison because the vibrations are hitting the solid surface and conducted back to create internal reflections.”
I am highly sceptical are these just cup and ball with a sorbathen footer?
Keith

 

[Frgirard]

in gold is better

Gearspace.com - View Single Post - Freestanding speaker decoupling system DIY on a budget question

Post 13898534 -Forum for professional and amateur recording engineers to share techniques and advice.

gearspace.com

 

[sq225917]

I'd put my money on it being that the blocks he used first weren't as secure as he thought. Certainly nothing like three spikes into a slab floor. And the feet either have enough compliance in them to level out a very slight mismatch in height and thus contact pressure or they're just a better impedance match then a couple of large flat surfaces which don't really offer a defined path to sink vibrations through.

I'd like to see it vs three spiked feet.

 

[Matias]

This is what the manufacturer measured: no change in frequency response, but a lot less cabinet vibration, which probably is the reduction in IMD show in the 1st post.

 

[sq225917]

4 spikes? I'd like to see it against 3.

 

[fpitas]

While the feet are pretty, and the vibration absorbers probably are valid, my go-to has been a carpet sample glued to the cabinet bottom.

 

[dorakeg]

I think they might be very useful for those who place their speakers on a table.

No doubt they are fancy feet, but the damping part should work as advertised. Of course someone could diy something similar at much lower cost.

 

[dorakeg]

This chap shows a reduction in IMD when using these isolation products,

ISO Acoustics Gaia III Isolation Feet Review

Recently a customer requested ISO Acoustics Gaia III isolation feet for their custom speakers. Once they arrived I was curious to see how they performed and so I devised an objective test to compare the feet against rigidly coupling the speaker to the floor. My test consisted of subwoofer...

josephcrowe.com

The manufacturer states,
“The reduction in vibrations can be explained by the way that IsoAcoustics isolation manages the energy of the speaker to reduce internal reflections. The vibrations when spikes are used is greater in comparison because the vibrations are hitting the solid surface and conducted back to create internal reflections.”
I am highly sceptical are these just cup and ball with a sorbathen footer?
Keith

I am not sure what's inside these feet. But vibration damping isn't something new. So, I am sure it does work in terms of reducing vibration.

Having said that, we can make something similar at far lower prices, although results might not be as good (but close enough). I use 4 small pieces of foam pads that cost $2.

These feet aren't expensive to make, just that it's quite time consuming to try out various materials and combination.

 

[Chrispy]

I'm a huge sceptic myself but there's also these

IsoAcoustics GAIA Isolators Review: Improving Your Loudspeakers Sound

IsoAcoustics GAIA Isolators proved there is real science behind the sonic benefits of decoupling and isolating your loudspeakers from the floor. I explore the results tested on Revel & RBH Sound speakers.

www.audioholics.com

IsoAcoustics GAIA Isolators Review: Improving Your Loudspeakers Sound

IsoAcoustics GAIA Isolators proved there is real science behind the sonic benefits of decoupling and isolating your loudspeakers from the floor. I explore the results tested on Revel & RBH Sound speakers.

www.audioholics.com

 

[dorakeg]

I'm a huge sceptic myself but there's also these

Why are you skeptical? People have been trying different ways to reduce the cabinet vibration for a long time. While I cant say if there is any audible improvement, I am pretty sure many methods do reduce the vibration to a certain extent.

So what this company did is to package it into a nice looking set of feet and sell for crazy money.

To me, it's not worth the money but it's not snake oil product. It does reduce vibration and it's measurable.

 

[Chrispy]

Why are you skeptical? People have been trying different ways to reduce the cabinet vibration for a long time. While I cant say if there is any audible improvement, I am pretty sure many methods do reduce the vibration to a certain extent.

So what this company did is to package it into a nice looking set of feet and sell for crazy money.

To me, it's not worth the money but it's not snake oil product. It does reduce vibration and it's measurable.

I've used a variety of footings for my diy subs and found little to be concerned with, the gaia stuff may well depend on specific floor construction, hard to know from the info so far at least. There are other ways of isolating your speaker/sub from floor if needed....

 

[Chrispy]

Why are you skeptical? People have been trying different ways to reduce the cabinet vibration for a long time. While I cant say if there is any audible improvement, I am pretty sure many methods do reduce the vibration to a certain extent.

So what this company did is to package it into a nice looking set of feet and sell for crazy money.

To me, it's not worth the money but it's not snake oil product. It does reduce vibration and it's measurable.

Because it's not just cabinet, it seems it's more interaction with floor...which I don't have a particular issue with? I'd like to see more, but so far these vibration things on speakers have at least more than those promoting under solid state electronics or disc players....

 

[Sined]

I had a bass problem from my DIY speakers, even if they measure well, the drivers are 10" (SEAS L26 ROY) which are technically capable of shaking everything in the house! One of the problems is that my listening room is in the basement, where 4 of the 6 surfaces are made of concrete, which we know does not vibrate much. It is normally a good thing, but like we used to say, too much of a good thing...

I asked Iso Acoustics if those feet could help to solve my particular problem: can a damping device be useful on a concrete floor? Like it was mentioned in the Audioholics review, they told me that, yes, it can help in preventing the vibration sent to the floor to get back out of phase to the speaker cabinet. As a DIYer, I don't pretend that I built dead cabinets, I know, they do vibrate a bit, I thought that this back wave cancelling explanation makes sense, so I decided to give it a try: Yep! That help to fix my problem, sorry, I don't have any measurement before and after, only subjective, but convincing! As a bonus, I also noticed the other more subtle improvements described by Audioholics . But don't take my words for granted, the effectiveness of this tweak may depend a lot on your actual speaker/listening room parameters.

 

[MattHooper]

I've mentioned before I have the Isoacoustics pucks which I tried for turntable isolation. I wasn't able to measure (vibrometer app) or feel any difference in vibration transfer for my turntable platform. I tried 4 pucks under one of my speakers, and it changed the sound a bit, but I am not sure if that was merely from raising the speaker a bit relative to the other.

On the other hand the Townshend spring-based isolation footers worked wonders to reduce vibration both for the turntable platform and when placed under my speakers. Easily measurable for the turntable platform. For the speakers it was obvious too: without the springs standing beside speakers on the sprung wood floor, bass vibration was easy to feel coming through my feet. Also I normally feel the bass travelling through the floor vibrating under my ottomon and sofa when listening to bass heavy stuff. With the springs under the speakers the vibration was totally "gone" in terms of what I could feel. I actually ended up prefering the sound without the springs.

 

[Thomas_A]

There are quite a few threads about speaker feet. If you want the speakers to stand still while playing, spikes are not the first choice.

 

[Sokel]

They seem to work and don't care about our skepticism as the measurements tell.
I think is something I would buy to give as a gift to a sub owner neighbor if I was living in an apartment

 

[JeffS7444]

The immediate question which comes to my mind is that this test was performed at just at 30 Hz + 5 kHz. But I wonder how the device performs at other frequencies?

 

[sq225917]

The higher the frequency the stiffer they get, like any compliant mount.

There's no magic in them, sorbothane, squash balls, oil damped springs. They all do something at some frequency

 

[izeek]

pretty sure they work well.
ive got 2 iso2000 substands that i can assure do a great job reducing vibration. even better after sitting the stands on a paver.

 

[DJNX]

These definitely work. But:

-How effective these are depends on how problematic your room is, when it comes exclusively to sympathetic resonances. They don't really help outside that particular issue.
-Bookshelves and towers benefit some (or very little), while a subwoofer is the best case use.
-There are equivalent solutions that don't even exceed a cost of $100.