And a set of springs cost about 10 percent as much as a set of pods, for those who don’t want to spend $1K on 8 pods.
First impressions of the Isoacoustic Gaia 1’s
On my KEF Reference 5’s.
While I normally hear little to no change with “Tweaks”, I installed them Saturday evening and found immediate spatial differences. Just about every album sounded more open. I told my wife, who helped me install the Gaia’s, that if I wasn’t wowed, I’d send them back.
The room has wall to wall carpet and pad on the floor and when I first received the Reference 5’s, they sounded flat. I put small hardwood flooring samples under them and it helped a little. I then put a small slab of granite under each of them and they became much nicer to listen to. I was quite surprised at the change.
The Gaia 1’s are sitting on the granite as well and so far, I’m very happy.
It’s only been a few days, but I’m pretty sure they are “hear” to stay.
Anyone else have similar experience’s with speaker. Isolation?
JD
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@bdp24 Thanks for the Pods recommendation. I’ll probably look there first once I have endgame speakers to keep costs down. It would be nice if this forum had more features like emojis and threads. It would go a long way to help the conversation. |
@jafant: I actually don't have any IsoAcoustics GAIA's. I learned of them from VPI's Harry Weisfeld, who raved about the improvement they wrought when installed under his KEF Blades. So I investigated them, as well as the Townshend Seismic Pod. I have for years owned and used a number of Townshend's earlier Seismic Sinks, and decided to go with the Pods rather than the IsoAcoustic products. If you look into the design of the GAIA (and the other IA models), you will see that the isolation they provide is that afforded mostly by the rubber material inside the GAIA housing, the housing itself serving only a structural/supportive role (as well as cosmetic). That rubber material may be proprietary, or just Sorbothane or Navcom (or similar). Those rubber products provide isolation down to at best 10Hz, then drop of rapidly. 10Hz is, imo, not good enough. Vibration isolation: the final frontier ;-) . I installed a set of Pods under the CD/DVD player, which sat on the top shelf of one of my Solid Steel racks. When I added another turntable to my system---which required that top space---I moved the player to the second shelf. The height of that shelf isn't sufficient for the height added by the Pods, so I use instead a set of Geoff Kait's (missed by many here ;-) small springs, which themselves are imo superior to rubber isolation products. By the way, after getting the Pods I sold all but one set of my Sims Navcom Isolation Pucks, which I preferred to Sorbothane. |
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