Thiel Owners

For those Thiel owners who are contemplating using Isoacoustics GAIA footers beneath their speakers, I am eagerly awaiting your reviews of how it impacted the sound quality. I am a CS3.6 owner and my speakers sit atop of Sound Anchors stand that I have configured with 2 front and one rear spike that then sets in a stainless carpet disc with a little depression in it for the spike. 
 

My listening room is in my 2nd story living room (suspended floor). There is a good amount of bass energy that sort of “escapes” into the floor and can be powerfully felt downstairs. I never utilized the blue rubber discs that Sound Anchors provided to go between the speaker bottoms and the top of the stands. I am currently on a mission to “voice” my system better so I may start by placing 4 of these blue discs under each speaker corner then do some analytic listening. I will likely also try without the carpet discs and just push the spikes firmly into the carpet then listen. Lastly, I plan to try 1 front and 2 rear spikes or 4 spikes in each corner of the Sound Anchor stands which are pre-drilled for both configurations. 

But actually I was curious about the unthreaded 1/4” pin sockets that originally are spec’d on the CS3.6 speaker bottoms and accept 4 unthreaded 1/4” diameter spikes. I bought my speakers used so I don’t have the spikes but I may try to obtain 8 of these spiked pins from Coherent Source Audio in Lexington, KY. With these spikes I might experiment with the CS3.6’S spiked on dimpled discs on top of the Sound Anchor stands. 

My objective with all this is to tighten up the bass and hopefully further quiet or eliminate smearing across the audio band. My new Bryston 4B3 amp is more detailed for sure than the previous iteration (4B2) but bass punch and clarity have been underwhelming so far. The 4B2 may have even been better with bass than the new version per my recollection. 

After I complete some of the above listening tests, I may go ahead and purchase Isoacoustics GAIA feet to mound beneath the Sound Anchors stands. Due to the total weight of my CS3.6 @107# + the weight of the Sound Anchor stands, I am at the maximum recommended weight for the GAIA 2’s. I messaged Isoacoustics and they thought that getting the bigger GAIA 1’s which have a weight max of 220# that a good option for me would be to set my Sound Anchor stands up with 3 of the GAIA 1’s. I believe I would use the 1/4-20” screws that come in the package. Since I would only need 6 of the GAIA 1’s I would purchase one 4 pack and 2 additional ones that are sold singly. 

From what I have read about the Isoacoustics GAIA feet, these might be a moderate price tweak to decouple the CS3.6 speakers with the payoff being increased clarity of the bass. Hopefully the de-coupling would not rob my speakers of bass, this is my biggest concern about trying this implementation out. I suppose if the performance of the GAIA feet changes the SQ in a way that I don’t like, they could be resold on Audiogon or eBay. The total cost of the 6 GAIA 1’s looks like it would be right around $900 USD which isn’t bad if the results do what I’m hoping they can do. 
 

Feel free to give feedback on my idea and I can provide future updates as I try out the different configurations.
 

One other remark I would make about the Isoacoustics GAIA feet: there was some discussion on a YouTube comparison video with the Townshend Audio ones that involved ported vs non-ported enclosure designs and they seemed to say that the ported designs bass performance improved considerably with decoupling but sealed designs suffered a bit with arguably too “dry” or washed out bass. 
 

I’m just curious how the CS3.6 would perform with bass response since it has that passive radiator. I’m actually eager to try it out for myself but perhaps some other Thiel forum members already can speak to whether there is a synergy here (best case) or worst case - perhaps all of this might conspire to cancel out some of the low end that we all know must be present and not attenuated in comparison to the midrange & treble response.

masi61 - Greetings. There’s been no response most likely because there’s no safe answer. Everything depends on everything, and your room dimensions, absorption, damping and losses interact with the floor coupling. I, too, await with interest any observations from those experimenting with GAIA feet.

I can tell you how we approached the matter at Thiel (early days / first 20 years), which may have changed, but not too likely to diverge radically from the following.

Speaker development occurred both in the lab and under multiple test conditions. In other words, we did not tweak for or against any particular coupling conditions, since those are so complex (as stated above) and unknown, to be counter-productive to project or assume. Bass target was .707. Baffle step (progression from omni-directional to directional propagation behavior) was first calculated and then verified multiple ways: speaker hanging in free air, speaker on pins on a solid, non resonant surface, on a solid elevated platform, buried in a sandbox, and in at least two listening situations - all under measurement and critical listening.

Over time we learned to correlate these conditions to shape toward our target .707 x -2dB bass shelf in anechoic free-space. Our surfaces were these: Outdoors was A) flat roof with rubber membrane roof over hard foam insulation on deck = highly damped and non-resonant. B) parking lot with asphalt over packed clay (heavy truck surface) which is also non-resonant. Mic positions were overhead, ear-height (floor bounce) or ground-plane (no floor bounce). Note none of these has any reflective / reactive coupling component. The sandbox puts the speaker on its back, firing up with baffle edges flush with the ground plane (no diffraction). Alternately the speaker is in the lab wall in a quasi infinite baffle. Comparison of sandbox to wall-mount lets us see cabinet vibrational effects and leakage losses as well as edge diffraction effects.

Indoors had two major environments: A) the farmhouse had stiff hardwood on joist construction with very little bounce, but significant bleed which differed with and without spikes. (Oak floor on hard southern yellow pine subfloor over SYP joists) 1903 Victorian Farmhouse. We treated spiking as a way to effectively eliminate enclosure recoil / sway, but ignored tonal additions / subtractions as arbitrary. After 1980 the lab was moved from the farmhouse (which had incorporated a cross section of the previous elements, to industrial space in a second floor, wooden-floor space, then two subsequent concrete-floor spaces. The concrete floor was industrial freight warehouse spec. The factory purpose-built music room had that same slab floor topped with glued-down industrial hair underpad and tight wool / jute-backed carpet for a very quiet noise profile. (A 10# iron ball drop did not ring).

We also took every speaker in development back to the original farmhouse living room which produced a warmer, fuller room sound than any of the lab or factory listening environments.

Of course there were show environments, which we took as they came. And we received criticism for rarely tweaking the room or floor coupling for ’best’ performance. We used shows more for dealer and reviewer engagement rather than showing off the highest performance of the product.

All this is by way of describing that there are many, many interacting variables with little to no way of predicting how your variables will stack up against neutrality or your tastes. A particularly tricky business is separating room modes / placement issues from floor coupling / leakage issues. Have you used any of the dimension calculators to assess your room issues? You are welcome to post your dimensions here if you wish and I’ll respond with first-pass performance comments.

I have no experience with any of the commercial isolation / coupling products. I have learned a little from show setups and local installations. With the stock Thiel pins you can effect their floor interface by using blu-tac or mortite in the sockets and/or under the round end at the floor termination. On a carpet you can tune the interface by how hard you force the points into the carpet or whether or not you put anything under the point (rivet, washer, penny, checker, matchbook, etc.) Historical note, the later, wider stock points with 60° included angle do not readily pierce the carpet,but they do concentrate the load well enough to minimize cabinet recoil. Using these simple, free approaches, you can get a pretty wide range of isolation / coupling with various floors.

I realize there’s very little practical guidance in all these words, but practical advice lies beyond my ability to comment. Hearing some GAIA comments might shed some light.

@masi61 

I'm pretty sure I detailed my impressions of the Isoacoustics Gaia under my Thiel 2.7s somewhere not long ago in this thread.  But just in case I'll copy/paste my comments from another thread:

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So..finally...I got around to trying some Isoacoustic Gaia 2 isolators. I’m really late to the party with those. One reason is that I actually had some isoacoustic pucks left over from building an isolation base for my turntable. I’d tried the four of them under one speaker, didn’t think I heard anything I cared for. So I followed through with the Townshend stuff which seemed to be rated even higher than the isoacoustics for decoupling. (Plus...I’d done my own experiments measuring the vibration isolation properties of the Townshend springs vs the Isoacoustic pucks I had, and the Townshends provided far superior decoupling).

What I was looking for, ideally, was to get enough isolation beneath the speakers such that the bass would tighten up, they’d disappear some more, but not SO much that I lose any sense of room feel and palpability to the sound that happens when I fully decoupled with spring footers. I figured perhaps the Isouacoustic Gaia just might be that that 1/2 way point.

And...that is pretty much what I seem to be getting!

With the Gaia’s installed, the bass tightened up pretty nicely, the speakers did vanish a bit more from top to bottom, a bit more space around instruments/voices, but the speakers still have some density and punch as well.

I’m still getting used to it, evaluating if I’m going to keep the Gaias under the speakers or not. It did slightly change the tone of the speakers and I’m not sure how I’ll get along with that. I need more listening. But so far I’m quite impressed with the product.

prof - sorry if I missed that.