Boy, Oh Boy! Towshend!

If you like what you're hearing now Townshend will be a revelation. Everything you are hearing now, only due to the damping you will get back some of the slam impact feel, probably a bit more extension, and find an amazing improvement in being able to differentiate the characteristic tone and timbre of each instrument. Sax in particular is wonderful, the full body of the horn combined with the reedy zing of the mouthpiece is rendered so much more correct it is hard to believe. Clarinet, violins, horns, ditto.   

I have a fair amount of that kind of music and find myself far more drawn to it now than ever before, something I am sure is due to everything sounding so much more like what it really is. Satchmo Plays King Oliver now, holy smokes!  

Podiums are the best, probably because the platform is so well engineered. This is evident even during unpacking, when you will notice the constrained layer damped material is dense and extremely dead. But they are all based on fundamentally the same technology and components- the air damped bellows spring pod - and so a lot has to do with the specific application. The 8 hours time diff is a hassle but it might be worth a call to Townshend to talk with John Hannant. He knows this stuff inside out and has been a huge help to me, and others here as well.

That's very encouraging millercarbon.
The thing is I had recently tweaked my speaker/listening position and had arrived at a new level of awe-inspiring imaging and solidity to the sound.   As I said, any steps backwards are hard to swallow.   But I can imaging giving up a bit to get some of that delicious transparency and detail I'm hearing.

@millercarbon Glad you mentioned Satchmo. I've been listening to a lot of music by him lately. I was listening to an interview by one of the guys at Mosaic Records while streaming WWOZ, and learned a little tidbit of information. It seems that you knew you were in with the musicians once they began insulting you. A common insult was to call someone Bucket-mouth or Satchel Mouth, with Louis it just stuck... Satchmo. Now we know!

True about Satchmo. I haven't listened to it since I bought it from Classic Records way back when. I am absolutely overloaded with vinyl I haven't played.

Patience Grasshopper.

prof, Your imaging will be at least as good. The only thing is Podiums add another level to positioning. Each corner has to be free to move side to side as well as up and down. This makes them a little more bother to get everything just right. Once done though getting them perfectly level is a breeze, and they do stay put. 

Also I think the solidity to the sound you are missing, you will probably realize wasn't so much sound as vibrations transmitting through the floor up into your legs and butt. The feeling with springs is different, you feel the bass more in the chest and body. There's also a hardness that goes away, and this too diminishes the sense of solidity.

I think you will probably find however that there is so much greater sense of real instrumental textures that it is easy to adapt. Also it seems to me at any rate that some of the slam that went away with plain springs comes back with Podiums. Not all, it will never be the same, but for me anyway it sure was easy to adapt and prefer. The whole presentation with Podiums just feels so much more right and real.