@audiopoint Thanks for weighing in. I am not sure I followed everything there. If you were to make your main point in a single clear paragraph, I'd be interested to read it. It might help me understand what you wrote, at length. I blame my own lack of knowledge for not following your points.
Under my tower speakers -- Isoacoustics Gaia, other options?
I have Ascend towers (45lbs each) on a concrete floor covered in thin wall to wall with an area rug on top of that. I am looking into different footers for my speakers and am curious what people with towers on concrete have tried and liked.
To my mind, something as expensive as Townshend platforms do not seem worth it, as they'd cost about a third of the price of the speakers themselves.
If you've tried Gaia III isolators or other kinds of feet for your speakers, especially on concrete floors, I'm curious to hear your observations. Thanks.
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I have been using Starsound Sistrum SP-101 stands on wooden floors for the past 10 years. These use the technology that @audiopoint describes above. I originally had them beneath my Audiokinesis Jazz Modules in three different rooms with great success and just put them under my recently purchased Wolf Von Langa SONs.Colin King from Gestalt Audio Designs came to set them up for me. We first positioned them on the floor and carpet to start figuring out placement. Colin started zeroing in on a good placement and they sound very good. Then we started to try putting something under the speakers. I also had decided to purchase some Gaia II footers so we could have them on hand to try. First we tried some rubber pucks that Colin brought. They offered little to no improvement over the SONs on wood floor or carpet. Then we put the SONs on the Sistrums. Right away there was a remarkable improvement in sound. Bass was tighter and more accurate without any of the slight boom we had been hearing. Highs were crystal clear and precise. Soundstage was wider and deeper. On some well recorded acoustic tracks that we had been using to test the set up, singers sounded very much like the were in the room. We didn’t even bother with the Gaia footers. One possible criticism was that the sound was now slightly on the analytical and lean side. This concerned dissipated over the next day as the stands and began to settle in. Since then I have been fine-tuning the placement of the SONs in the room and they sound wonderful on the Sistrum stands. @dmk_hifi Regarding your question about recommendations for speakers on carpet, I previously had used the Sistrums with one or two of the downward facing spikes through the carpet and sitting on a coupling disc on the floor beneath the carpet.This worked great. However, after Colin positioned the SONs in their final spot in the room we decided to pull the rug back partially under the speakers so that the front spike on the Sistrum was under the carpet. This rug was fairly thick and had a pad, which we couldn’t get the front spike through to make contact with the floor. This killed some of the magic we heard before. So we pulled the rug back in front of the Sistrums and the magic was back. I talked to Robert, who I purchased the Sistrums from,and he said the the latest version of LiveVibe stands are available with much more substantial coupling discs and the platforms sound incredible on carpet on these discs.I will be trading in the Sistrums for the new generation stands and will soon see how good they sound. Although I can’t quite follow Robert’s (Audiopoint) description of their technology, it really seems to work incredibly well. I was tempted by the positive comments about the Townshend products and perhaps will try them sometime but for now I am sticking with a product that has worked incredibly well for me. |
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