Isoacoustics Orea vs Townshend Seismic Pod on Components


I installed a set of Isoacoustics Gaia 2s on my speakers about a month ago and was extremely pleased with them. I'm now curious about the Oreas.

My components are currently placed on a good rack with Finite Elemente Cerabase footers at the bottom of the rack. I was wondering if individual isolators such as the Orea or Seismic Pod placed under components can further improve sound quality. I've read contradictory comments about the Orea. Some say they brought an appreciable difference when placed under components such as DAC or amplifiers. Some say they bring nothing to the sound, zero difference.

I would appreciate experiences on the Isoacoustics Orea or the Townshend Seismic Pod, or the comparison between the two products. The Oreas look better than the Pods to me although the latter may be costlier.
ryder
No idea how they work Ozzy but the ad copy on their website is some of the silliest most impermeable word salad I've seen this side of Machina Dynamica. To wit:

Gain, relative permittivity and the efficiency of electrical devices can be expressed as dimensionless numbers. 

Dimensionless numbers. Check.

For a moment, think of electricity as dimensionless energy moving through 3 dimensional pathways

Dimensionless energy. Check. But- wait a minute! It is moving through dimensions?!?! Nevermind. We got ad copy to fill!

When vibration is introduced into the atmosphere at the front baffle of the loudspeakers, vibration becomes a 3-dimensional form of energy that can only dissipate by permeating into 3-dimensional objects causing an unnaturally high state of mechanical excitation to occur within them; 

Uh, what?

the objects vibrate. 

Oh. Why not just say so then?

They will continue to vibrate when music is playing and eventually establish a relatively constant state of unnaturally high equilibrium that is well known to degrade the performance of audio components.

How can equilibrium be unnaturally high? If it's high wouldn't that be disequilibrium? Nevermind!

It might be more appropriate to view Center Stage2 as a catalyst in a complex energy reaction that occurs between your equipment and its environment. 

Um, doesn't a catalyst catalyze? That is, make things go faster? So it accelerates energy interactions then? Nevermind. Ad copy!

While this amount of kinetic and vibration energy is relatively small, the sonic consequences can be very large if these energies are unregulated and undamped. 

So is it a catalyst? Or a damper? Because these are opposite and mutually exclusive, ya know?

Center Stage2 is a catalyst 

So not a damper then.

designed to change the prevailing state of equilibrium in that energy reaction and to permanently hold it in a reduced or damped state. 

Oh wait now it is a damper! And also creates disequilibrium!

Center Stage2 is different and better because it uses novel applications in material science to achieve its isolation and damping benefits. 

And catalyzing? What happened to catalyst?

Your components will now immerse you in a sonic environment that has been described as a unified acoustic field. That’s why we think our product is aptly named when we describe the listener experience as being “Center Stage”.

So now it does speaker placement too? I give up. Granted there is always the chance it works and they just prefer a deliberately nonsensical marketing narrative. Let's hope so!


millercarbon,
I don’t know about the silly descriptions that you pointed out, but these things really work. They allow the supported component to shine into such a relaxed sound.

They also have one of the weirdest break in effects that I have encountered. It takes about 1+ week to stabilize. During this time the sound will go from out of phase sounding, to bright, then dark. A footer needs to break in? Yes, it does, I think it is because it adjusts to the weight imposed on it.
And, I am told that just moving them will cause a disruption in sound quality for a while. Set them up and forget it.

I would be interested in knowing what they are made of...

ozzy
As for the Nobsound, there's this negative take on this product,


Interesting, the reviewer noted some of the negatives I noticed with those footers too. (E.g. a bit too recessed in the lower mids, lost richness).