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

@millercarbon My bad Credo :)

@whipsaw I will have those measurements when I get home, still waiting for Acoustic Signature to send me the replacement turntable as mine was not working properly.

My home in Spain is made out bricks, stone and have a lot of plants in my listening rooms. I will be happy with anything in the 100ms-160ms as I have been told that our ears can't distinguish on anything below 100-120ms. But I would love some confirmation on this so please not quote me on it😏. I will be doing some research on this.

I believe that the main thing with these measurements is that bellow 448Hz there was a lot of stored energy not only affecting decay, clarity and impulse but distortion, with the Podiums and Credo is all but gone, even in my room mode. I can't wait for my second sub to arrive, because if the simulation in REW is correct it will solve the rest of the 160Hz-200Hz and down decay and distortion. 

The original distortion from the fundamental all the way to the 8th harmonic get reduced from:

4.72% average with spikes.

4.64% average with Orea.

4.28% average with Gaia.

3.86% average with Nobsound 2-3mm space.

2.42% average with the Podiums.

2.11% with the Credo.

I do not want to get into describing how much better or worse the music gets because we all hear different. 

 

@astolfor excellent work and post, hope to meet up with you in the future. Max is a measure and listen guy. There are of course a wider spectrum of isolation than your sample. Maybe Crest is indeed the pinnacle?

Enjoy the music. Best to you - Jim

@tomic601 Hello Jim, we will figure it out on how to meet. I love to listen to music and usually I do not mess around with measuring much, but this time I wanted to understand what I was listening because for a long while I had the Gaia and Orea products and a lot of people were saying how drastic of improvement they made but I noticed almost nothing. @millercarbon made the suggestion about the Nobsound and podiums, so I stated with the Nobsound and I was able to listen a big difference, so I bought some podiums and wow, then I found a video of Credo so I bought another pair and wow again! As an engineer I thought that there must be a way to measure this and there was! with REW.

I must be very slow because no matter what sharing site I use the pictures do not show up in my posts so I can’t show the actual measurements so there is no room for misinterpretation. I have no doubt that there are a lot of people in this forum with way more knowledge on sonic measurements than me and would have been nice to get their comments.

I posted some pictures of the actual measurements in the Facebook Pathos group is you want to check them out.

I hope the new Solid-tech reference racks will help to improve the resonance and distortion.

@whipsaw I have no doubt that the impact on different floors and houses can be measured. The gains might not be as big but measurable.  The thing is that I wander how one goes about differentiating between the inherited/base values from the speakers (i.e. what one can not do anything without modifying them) and the rest because without them we do not know how far from the best achievable values we are. 

But then I do not want to lose focus on what I like to do and that is to listening to music. I think that with the new racks, pods for my components and additional sub I will be right there. Maybe after having everything dialed in I will look into some acoustic room treatment.

@ryder  I ordered the Nobsound springs, arriving tomorrow. I have a few questions …

1. Which component stands to benefit the most? Dac, amp, or streamer? Eventually I might get more sets but want to start small. 
 

2. My amp is the Audio Hungary a50i. It’s about 55 lbs and like many tube amps, it’s much heavier in the back due to the transformers. Is there any specific configuration I should start with?

3. Do I place the springs under the existing footers on my component or underneath the chassis itself? If in case it’s the latter, do I need to remove the factory installed footers?

Thanks in advance.