@boxer12. I had a pretty extensive conversation with distributor on this and I have a spare set of Gaia III feet lying around and just tested it. Distributor advice was to
use the pucks.
Isolating the speaker from the stand makes an obvious difference with the Oreas as I said. Swapping Gaia Feet for spikes had no impact that I could discern. I use “these are days” from 10,000 maniacs as my test song and have listened to it 100s of times. On a side note, my wife really hates that song now
I can’t hear a difference and swapped spikes for gaia’s three times. Maybe with other songs the Gaia’s might have a small impact but I use that song because there is lots of layered detail that stray vibrations really screw up. It also could be that my speakers and stands aren’t heavy enough for the Gaia IIIs. Mine are quite the opposite of yours and are 12lbs and the stands aren’t much heavier.
If the stand is isolated from the speaker, further isolating the stand from the floor shouldn’t have a huge impact though.