I guess I am chatting with folks who have never experimented with some of the different "feet" one can use on their gear.
Maybe it's just me, my ears or my gear, but I can hear the differences when I use the stock feet with the amp,and when I substitute BDR cones,and Roller blocks for the stock feet.
I can also notice the difference in sound when I use a Townsend Seismic sink or a butcher's block, or a glass shelf.
I also notice the improvement in sound when I weigh down my Audio Aero Capitole cd player.
There's two schools of thought in vibration control, you either absorb it or you transfer it away from the source component.
Both work well, and depending on how your system and room sound, you stick with one or the other.Or you mix it up.
For instance, if you have an overly warm sound,you can lighten it up somewhat with using less absorbing types of footers.
Now lets get back to loudspeakers again.
Most of them made in the last decade come with some kind of footers.
Mostly it's cheap spikes, meant to go thru the carpet.
On hardwood floors there are spike protectors, or flat footers which are non spiked.
Yes part of the answer is for stability,but it's also about vibration control.
I haven't seen very many loudspeakers that don't use footers and that are just plopped on the floor.
I once had a Sunfire subwoofer that danced across the room.
That thing needed spikes and something heavy to keep it in one place.Vibration control was not in that components design.
And even though louspeakers vibrate and send the music through the air to our ears, it certainly is a more pleasant experience when just the air and from the speakers is vibrating. Saddly that's not how it is.It gets worse because the speakers are also vibrating the floor. Second story listening rooms with suspended wooden, uncarpeted floors brings new meaning to following the bouncing ball.
And speaking of vibrations coming from the speakers thru the air,most turntables are either sprung or solidly well damped to control these air born vibrations and those from the floor.
So if the vibes are large enough in scale to affect your turntable I am sure they are doing the same thing with all your other components,which includes the wires to the speakers and the wires to the amps and the amps themselves.
Again worst case scenario, is a supended wooden , undamped resonant floor.
One huge vibrating membrane, like an avalanche of vibration sweeping over your system.
The same floor you've laid your speaker wires or interconnects or power cords on.
So they are also vibrating along.
And this shouldn't matter?
Maybe not to some folks it appears.
So with everything vibrating at different frequencies or even worse at the same frequencies, that's a lot of extraneous noise that is interfering with the music.
As I've stated I've used some pretty decent isolation devices and made my own, yet I wasn't prepared for how big an improvemnt my Grand Prix audio rack made.
But you don't have to spend that much to hear what vibration control devices can do.
You can get pretty good results on the cheap if you know what to use and where to use it.
You'll know you are on the right track when there's more clarity to the music.
There's also another way to skin the cat.
Isolate all your electronics in another room or in a soundproof closet,preferably on a floating floor.
I guess I was mistaken to think that in the waning days of 2011 that things like spikes and component footers would still be controversial.
I thought people had moved on to power cords.
