Isoacoustics Orea vs Townshend Seismic Pod on Components

@ryder I have been in the USA for a few weeks with not much work to do so I have spent a lot of time measuring different platforms.

The Isoacoustic product i.e. Orea and Gaia provide almost unmeasurable improvement, the $34 for 4 Nobsound are about 3.8 times better, than either of the Isoacoustic products,  the Podiums/Pods are about 18 times better than the Nobsound and the Crest Audio are about 1.8 times better than the podiums.

The big thing with the Crest audio from Switzerland, is that they are not available for all speakers and weights as the Podiums and Pods.

I made sonic measurements using calibrated microphones, REW and laser traces.

When I say better I mean the Isoacoustics products do not do anything of significance to sonically diminish decay, coherency, RT60, RT60 decay, clarity, distortion or impulse in my room with my Kensington speakers and tube amps.

For some reason, this forum software is not liking my links so I can't post pictures of my measurements so you will have to trust me or you can join the Pathos group in Facebook and see a couple of them there.

Some could question the room setup, etc. etc. but this is a black box type of experiment. you input the same sound frequency sweep to the same room, same everything but the isolation mechanisms and measure the difference. 

My house is made of wood and plaster, with hardwood flooring sitting on car-decking (I have no clue what type of wood this is but it is thick and bendy), I believe this is how most homes are built in the US. I would imagine that my home is not much different than most homes in the US.

To say that these type of homes are far from ideal for sound is the biggest understatement I have made in the last few years :) so in theory a great environment to test.

For example. I will average decays because I do not have time to go and type each frequency decay number. 

Spikes for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 603ms. 

Isoacoustic Orea for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 561ms

 Isoacoustic Gaia for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 542ms.

NobSound for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 389ms.

Podiums for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 139ms

Without pictures is hard to visualize the decay effects, but imagine a piano note that is supposed to linger for 20ms but lingers for 400ms+ and so on, then the silence disappears and with it the music.   

I am not saying that every room/speaker/isolation mechanism will react the same as mine room, I am just saying that in my environment in the USA with this gear these are the measurable effects of each platform.  

For example my decay in one of the rooms in my home in Spain with spikes is 227ms still a LOT for $100K speakers, but I cant wait until I put some podiums or pods, with the Kensington $20K the decay on spikes is 338ms on the same room as where I have my good speakers. 

I have no affiliation, I get nothing from any of them except the products I pay for as everyone else does. My intent is solely to share my measurements.

I love math!

Ryder, Vibration control of all kinds whether ordinary plain springs, Nobsound, Townshend or whatever, generally is more effective resting directly under the component chassis than under the foot that comes on the component. Works better, looks better. The loading per spring is what makes the difference in sound, not so much where they are under the component. So you can use 3 or 4, and they can be moved around to balance the load. I use for example 4 Pods under my amp but almost all the weight is transformers in the back. So I have one each back corner, one sort of in the middle, and a 4th center front. 

Ordinary springs like Nobsound are more sensitive to loading. They tend to sound full and warm when compressed a lot, thin and extended when not loaded enough. I think the reason Nobsound vary so much is partly they are short, and this gives them a smaller optimal range, and partly they are not damped, and this gives resonance free reign.

Townshend Pods and Podiums solve both of these shortcomings with a single larger and higher quality (piano wire) spring and bellows air shock damping. Works great, as so many have found.

astralfor, Crest? I think you got the name wrong. There is a Swiss company Credo that imported Townshend Podiums 20 years ago and then copied that old version. If they are 1.8X better than current production Podiums that would be quite the trick seeing as they are knockoffs of an older version of the same thing. Either that or you really like their toothpaste.

@astolfor , getting very technical there but rather useful to know the Gaias are more effective than the Oreas with lower figures in the decay. I have the Gaia and Nobsound but do not have experience with the Oreas. The Gaias work well under speakers, ditto Nobsound under components.

As for the Townshend products, I wished I could try them but at their current prices, a bit too rich for me at the moment.

Ordinary springs like Nobsound are more sensitive to loading. They tend to sound full and warm when compressed a lot, thin and extended when not loaded enough.

Very good description, I couldn't agree more.

@astolfor Thanks for your interesting data. I wonder how much different such measurements would be on hard tile or concrete floors, as opposed to suspended wood? In other words, in theory to benefits of isolation should be smaller on a hard floor, but I wonder if that would be reflected in measurements such as yours.