The purpose of a footer is to allow vibrations in a piece of equipment to disperse rather than remain, causing microphonics or possibly other kinds of distortion. Footers, both metal or sorbothane -type will do some good but still leave the equipment abuzz with vibrations before they can be damped by sorb or drained out by metal footers. The most effective techniques I have found are sorbothane pieces, glued inside the unit, or if you don’t like opening it up, outside, near the transformer, which is the only source of vibration. I personally prefer dacs with external power supplies to get around electronic and mechanical issues. As regards sorb, I have been working on this for a few years now
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/damping-mechanical-energy-distortion-of-stax-and-other-phones-with-s... mostly on damping headphones and speakers. So far, what I have found works best is small pieces (less than an inch in any dimension) of dense (70 duro) sorb, glued with 3M self stick or Lord’s expensive adhesive. Use the thickest sorb you can get, self-stick is only available up to 1/4 inch. Cover the open side with electrical tape, I currently use 4, layers. This creates "constrained damping," which makes the sorb much more effective. CD players and turntables need this treatment far more than dacs. Cost? Multiples of $10.00 and far more effective than expensive footers, tables, etc. Far out? Not really, there is a significant move to this type of technology. Sennheiser has been doing it for years with their HD800, a fact many users are unaware of because of Senn’s cryptic description (they put damping material in the headband btw) I would imagine they are also doing this in their TOL electrostatics. Grado has a similar approach using some proprietary polycarbonate in their construction, see B&W, and Audioquest... I recently Googled "constrained damping" and came across several speaker companies and SME adding this to their megabuck turntable. I think this field is ready to blow wide open and in a good way since the technology is cheap.