For those Thiel owners who are contemplating using Isoacoustics GAIA footers beneath their speakers, I am eagerly awaiting your reviews of how it impacted the sound quality. I am a CS3.6 owner and my speakers sit atop of Sound Anchors stand that I have configured with 2 front and one rear spike that then sets in a stainless carpet disc with a little depression in it for the spike.
My listening room is in my 2nd story living room (suspended floor). There is a good amount of bass energy that sort of “escapes” into the floor and can be powerfully felt downstairs. I never utilized the blue rubber discs that Sound Anchors provided to go between the speaker bottoms and the top of the stands. I am currently on a mission to “voice” my system better so I may start by placing 4 of these blue discs under each speaker corner then do some analytic listening. I will likely also try without the carpet discs and just push the spikes firmly into the carpet then listen. Lastly, I plan to try 1 front and 2 rear spikes or 4 spikes in each corner of the Sound Anchor stands which are pre-drilled for both configurations.
But actually I was curious about the unthreaded 1/4” pin sockets that originally are spec’d on the CS3.6 speaker bottoms and accept 4 unthreaded 1/4” diameter spikes. I bought my speakers used so I don’t have the spikes but I may try to obtain 8 of these spiked pins from Coherent Source Audio in Lexington, KY. With these spikes I might experiment with the CS3.6’S spiked on dimpled discs on top of the Sound Anchor stands.
My objective with all this is to tighten up the bass and hopefully further quiet or eliminate smearing across the audio band. My new Bryston 4B3 amp is more detailed for sure than the previous iteration (4B2) but bass punch and clarity have been underwhelming so far. The 4B2 may have even been better with bass than the new version per my recollection.
After I complete some of the above listening tests, I may go ahead and purchase Isoacoustics GAIA feet to mound beneath the Sound Anchors stands. Due to the total weight of my CS3.6 @107# + the weight of the Sound Anchor stands, I am at the maximum recommended weight for the GAIA 2’s. I messaged Isoacoustics and they thought that getting the bigger GAIA 1’s which have a weight max of 220# that a good option for me would be to set my Sound Anchor stands up with 3 of the GAIA 1’s. I believe I would use the 1/4-20” screws that come in the package. Since I would only need 6 of the GAIA 1’s I would purchase one 4 pack and 2 additional ones that are sold singly.
From what I have read about the Isoacoustics GAIA feet, these might be a moderate price tweak to decouple the CS3.6 speakers with the payoff being increased clarity of the bass. Hopefully the de-coupling would not rob my speakers of bass, this is my biggest concern about trying this implementation out. I suppose if the performance of the GAIA feet changes the SQ in a way that I don’t like, they could be resold on Audiogon or eBay. The total cost of the 6 GAIA 1’s looks like it would be right around $900 USD which isn’t bad if the results do what I’m hoping they can do.
Feel free to give feedback on my idea and I can provide future updates as I try out the different configurations.
