My Gaia II feet arrived this week and I have spent a happy morning fitting the things and trying them out. I even got all scientific and objective, trying a quick REW sweep before and then after fitting the feet. OK, spoiler alert, I'm not going to post the REW curves, I have done that before to highlight specific issues and then the thread then descends into a debate about peak to null levels, room treatment and room correction. What a can say is that the curves do show a difference with and without the feet. The curves pretty much follow each other, only in the inaudible sub 20Hz range they do diverge significantly. I did two sweeps with the feet using slightly different volume levels, and two without. At the worst bass reinforcement peak, you can see a slight reduction in the peak with both of the 'with the feet' runs, some of the nulls are fractionally reduced as well. I have to be honest, I wasn't really expecting the feet to do anything much, my reasoning being that I have speakers with opposing drivers, so the cabinet is virtually vibration free and the speakers are supported on carpet, thick underlay, and then solid concrete. So with non-vibrating speaker cabinets and a solid floor, what problem exactly are these things supposed to fix?
Well the graphs did indeed indicate a small effect. With some listening the results were far more apparent. To try to upset everything I tried a run through of my tracks with problematic bass, I played these tracks two weeks ago as reported in the 'Is AIR getting better in the Pro era' thread, this proved useful because I had taken notes which I still have. Many of the tracks I had denoted as 'ok' thanks to improvements elsewhere, so I stuck mainly to the tracks where I had noted issues, rumble, flabby or whatever. Arguably the worst of the lot is Tricky's 'Hell is round the corner', mainly due to turntable grunge in the making of the track. (not really audiophile stuff is this??
) OK, the turntable grunge is still there, but the track was definably the most listenable I have ever heard it with the Blades. Unexpectedly, listing to this track I noticed just how sharp the sound staging was, I am loath to type 'the speakers disappeared', but they did and I can't say this is something I have ever noticed before with this track. My jaw literally dropped to the ground. (well, not literally because the ground was a few feet away, but I love that phrase) 
Based on all this, it is fair to say that much to my surprise, the feet do seem to be doing something.
I then proceeded to listen through an old demo playlist that I have. Everything sounded good, a touch cleaner with better soundstage? Perhaps, but it is easy to kid yourself with this stuff, I think this is the kind of tweak you need to invoke, then leave and see have things turn out over very much time and listening. One short term observation is back to the realm of bass, when listening to a couple of tracks I did find myself thinking I wanted a touch more bass. To be honest, I am not sure if this was just the result of being mentally aware that I had changed something that might influence bass, that kind of audiophile paranoia that creeps in when you are listening too hard. So for a bit of fun, I then cranked SAM up to 100%, I normally run 20% to 40%, never above 40% because with some material more SAM was clearly detrimental to bass quality. Interestingly, 100% SAM resulted in a touch more bass, much as you would expect, but everything sounded just fine, another indication that somehow these feet are doing something.
So initial impressions are positive, but as mentioned earlier I think it will take some time to fully understand exactly what these little feet might be doing.
In practical terms, I am quite happy with the appearance of the feet, the dark chrome finish is a great match for a Devialet Expert (for those that care about aesthetics) but I think Hifi_swlon made a good point about levelling in his earlier post. You are supposed to orientate the feet with the IsoAccoustics logo facing forward or backwards. (not sideways) So adjustment is in full half turns only. Each KEF Blade actually has a little multi-directional spirit level in the back of the bass, this of course encourages you to level them precisely, but in trying to do this with exact half turns you could very easily find yourself loading them unevenly. For the record, so far I have installed each of the feet identically and have not bothered levelling the speakers precisely, my logic being that with squashy carpet and underlay I would be better off letting them settle for a week or two, then doing it. I think when I do make the final adjustments, this will take some time and care to get just right and I suspect I will end up with some feet facing logo to the front, and some logo to the back, not that you really notice the logo when installed. In terms of health and safety issues, with this set of feet I did not notice any sharp threads and I managed to install them injury free, unlike Hifi_swlon, I hope his finger is healing scar free.
Well the graphs did indeed indicate a small effect. With some listening the results were far more apparent. To try to upset everything I tried a run through of my tracks with problematic bass, I played these tracks two weeks ago as reported in the 'Is AIR getting better in the Pro era' thread, this proved useful because I had taken notes which I still have. Many of the tracks I had denoted as 'ok' thanks to improvements elsewhere, so I stuck mainly to the tracks where I had noted issues, rumble, flabby or whatever. Arguably the worst of the lot is Tricky's 'Hell is round the corner', mainly due to turntable grunge in the making of the track. (not really audiophile stuff is this??
) OK, the turntable grunge is still there, but the track was definably the most listenable I have ever heard it with the Blades. Unexpectedly, listing to this track I noticed just how sharp the sound staging was, I am loath to type 'the speakers disappeared', but they did and I can't say this is something I have ever noticed before with this track. My jaw literally dropped to the ground. (well, not literally because the ground was a few feet away, but I love that phrase) Based on all this, it is fair to say that much to my surprise, the feet do seem to be doing something.I then proceeded to listen through an old demo playlist that I have. Everything sounded good, a touch cleaner with better soundstage? Perhaps, but it is easy to kid yourself with this stuff, I think this is the kind of tweak you need to invoke, then leave and see have things turn out over very much time and listening. One short term observation is back to the realm of bass, when listening to a couple of tracks I did find myself thinking I wanted a touch more bass. To be honest, I am not sure if this was just the result of being mentally aware that I had changed something that might influence bass, that kind of audiophile paranoia that creeps in when you are listening too hard. So for a bit of fun, I then cranked SAM up to 100%, I normally run 20% to 40%, never above 40% because with some material more SAM was clearly detrimental to bass quality. Interestingly, 100% SAM resulted in a touch more bass, much as you would expect, but everything sounded just fine, another indication that somehow these feet are doing something.
So initial impressions are positive, but as mentioned earlier I think it will take some time to fully understand exactly what these little feet might be doing.
In practical terms, I am quite happy with the appearance of the feet, the dark chrome finish is a great match for a Devialet Expert (for those that care about aesthetics) but I think Hifi_swlon made a good point about levelling in his earlier post. You are supposed to orientate the feet with the IsoAccoustics logo facing forward or backwards. (not sideways) So adjustment is in full half turns only. Each KEF Blade actually has a little multi-directional spirit level in the back of the bass, this of course encourages you to level them precisely, but in trying to do this with exact half turns you could very easily find yourself loading them unevenly. For the record, so far I have installed each of the feet identically and have not bothered levelling the speakers precisely, my logic being that with squashy carpet and underlay I would be better off letting them settle for a week or two, then doing it. I think when I do make the final adjustments, this will take some time and care to get just right and I suspect I will end up with some feet facing logo to the front, and some logo to the back, not that you really notice the logo when installed. In terms of health and safety issues, with this set of feet I did not notice any sharp threads and I managed to install them injury free, unlike Hifi_swlon, I hope his finger is healing scar free.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
