Hi I'm Steve, and I wanted to talk to you
today about IsoAcoustics isolation
footers, specifically the OREA and the
GAIA. And these are vibration control
products. What they do is try to minimize
the negative effects that you can get
from vibration, in either components or
speakers. And when you have effective
vibration control like these products
deliver, you can get some pretty
noticeable improvements in sound, better
detail, a better overall sense of clarity,
tighter bass, expanded soundstage, it can
be pretty surprising, really, especially
compared to other audio tweaks that
we've used in the past. We've really been
impressed by the IsoAcoustics isolators.
The GAIA series is designed for floor
standing loudspeakers, and that's what
these are here, and they're designed for
floor-standing speakers with spiked feet.
What you do is remove those spiked feet
and screw these into those locations, and
the GAIA kits come with several
different threads on the the spikes, so
they'll fit probably about 80% of the
speakers that are out there, and then if
you go to our website you'll find a link
there to a calculator at IsoAcoustics'
website where you can plug in, you know,
your speaker model and figure out
exactly which model you need. And also if
you need any additional adapter, we'll
fix you up. So the GAIAs come in three
different varieties with different
weight limits. The GAIA III can support
up to 70 pounds, GAIA II goes up to 120
pounds, and then a GAIA I goes up to
220 pounds, and also these are primarily
designed for use with hard surface
floors like a hardwood or tile, however
you can use them on carpeting, but what
we recommend is that you get one of the
carpet spike kits that go with them, and
they're very effective. I actually bought
a set of the GAIA IIIs for use with my
SVS subwoofer.
I have a carpeted floor in my home
theater, and so I got one of the carpet
spike kits. I was looking for two things
really with the subwoofer. I was looking
for. you know. tighter sound overall but
also I was getting some rattle, I think
it was some of the light sconces on the
wall. It totally took care of the rattle,
and so I was pretty pleased about that.
So that's the GAIA speaker isolators,
they also make a series of isolators
that are more designed for components,
and those are called their OREA series.
There's four models in that. There's
the Graphite, which can support four
pounds each, stepping up to the OREA
Bronze, those can support up to eight
pounds apiece, the OREA Indigo can
support up to 16 pounds, and the OREA
Bordeaux can support 32 pounds. So I also
got to try out some of these OREA
isolators, I tried out a set of the OREA
Indigos, and I used them on my Oppo
BDP-105 disc player. I've tried isolation
products in the past, and I used some
really heavy brass cones and tried them
under my Oppo player, didn't really
notice any difference at all, and so
those went into the box that I've
accumulated over 35 years of tweaks and
accessories that, you know, for whatever
reason haven't worked in my system. But I
tried the the OREA Indigos, and so what
I found is that with vocals I
consistently could hear lyrics that I
was missing before, which is kind of cool,
and that was consistent disc after disc
I was hearing that. And also on more the
instrumental side of it, it seemed like
there was better isolation between
instruments. I like to be able to hear
the entire sound of the band, you know,
gelling as a band, but also I'd like to
be able to focus in on individual
instruments when I can and it seemed
like I was better able to do that, follow
individual instruments, when I had
OREA feet under the Oppo. So I would
probably recommend especially using them
with components that have motors, like
disc players or turntables, but you can
also use them under electronics
amplifiers and preamplifiers. We've seen
a lot of comments from customers that
have had good success with that.
We even used a set of these here in our
studio with the Naim Uniti Atom
integrated amp. We have just been super
impressed with the IsoAcoustics
products. They are really well
engineered. So if you have any questions
about these or any other audio
accessories, please call, chat or email
with one of our advisors.
