Shocked removed spikes, used blue tack, what other non spike footer

+2 for the ISOAcoustic GAIAs. Have them on my speakers and subs. Made a noticeable difference in SQ.

FWIW, the first experience I had with "bluetack" was placing that between monitor speakers & their stands in the early 90's. Very nice upgrade in SQ (they sat on spikes prior to this) & I've been a tweeker ever since. 

I had some mdf laying around drilled counter hole, mounted spikes and placed blue tak between mdf platform. Sounds more refined but in a good way and little fuller than just spikes but lost that natural tone even though is a little too heavy, I'm back on blue tak. Raining 4 days, stuck inside. Crossover is outboard I'm going to remove solid copper post and go straight in to crossover with solid core silver speaker wire. Maybe that will remove some of the thick sound and lift the highs, if not I'll try herbies first. Can someone explain what Gaia' do different than spikes, is it really worth the cost. Never knew footers had such an impact, it's pretty drastic in my case.

It's a complicated business, at least for me. Better isolation will let you hear the drivers better with a cleaner sound mainly due to reduced baffle/cabinet/ drive unit chatter and resonance. I think.

But that's not always a good thing because a loudspeaker is the sum of its parts and the way they interact. Sometimes cleaning up the sound gives the impression of a weak bass performance.

Especially for designs that don't sound particularly full in the first place. Those kind of speakers that need turning up loud to sound full may never sound full enough once the sound has been cleaned up by isolation in this manner. 
So you could end up with a result of a cleaner but thinner sound, is losing more than you gain.

On the other hand isolating can work wonders with speakers that might suffer from slight bass heavy / muddy signatures.

I had an interesting  experience  recently. I was moving around my speakers with some pads to dial them in. They formerly used spikes and were in essentially  the same location. I removed the pads but did not reinstall  the spikes. A few days later I fired up my system and everything  from the bass to the treble sounded MUCH better in virtually  every way, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out the pads  had some sticky glue on them that rubbed off on the speaker bottom and "tacky glue" them to the wood floors coupling the largest available surfaces together. Put the spikes back on and performance deteriorated  significantly. this was a great "test" as I had no idea what happened  so not a placebo effect. 

You will have more apparent bass when a very low velocity material is added to the equation. Slower than lead like all the rubber and spongy materials. Like placing your hand over your mouth and speaking. No highs no breath of sound mosly lows. The Shear velocity of the material chosen, geometric shape of the device..shape and speed of the material above and below are also of great importance. Your audio room will sound best with no right angles and corners as will every other area of your component high fi. Only a small portion of what takes place between 2 or more materials and their shapes. Tom