Isoacoustics Orea vs Townshend Seismic Pod on Components

lets see if this works

PS: forget about it.. I clicked the picture icon, entered the google link and nothing shows up...

@ryder I have been in the USA for a few weeks with not much work to do so I have spent a lot of time measuring different platforms.

The Isoacoustic product i.e. Orea and Gaia provide almost unmeasurable improvement, the $34 for 4 Nobsound are about 3.8 times better, than either of the Isoacoustic products,  the Podiums/Pods are about 18 times better than the Nobsound and the Crest Audio are about 1.8 times better than the podiums.

The big thing with the Crest audio from Switzerland, is that they are not available for all speakers and weights as the Podiums and Pods.

I made sonic measurements using calibrated microphones, REW and laser traces.

When I say better I mean the Isoacoustics products do not do anything of significance to sonically diminish decay, coherency, RT60, RT60 decay, clarity, distortion or impulse in my room with my Kensington speakers and tube amps.

For some reason, this forum software is not liking my links so I can't post pictures of my measurements so you will have to trust me or you can join the Pathos group in Facebook and see a couple of them there.

Some could question the room setup, etc. etc. but this is a black box type of experiment. you input the same sound frequency sweep to the same room, same everything but the isolation mechanisms and measure the difference. 

My house is made of wood and plaster, with hardwood flooring sitting on car-decking (I have no clue what type of wood this is but it is thick and bendy), I believe this is how most homes are built in the US. I would imagine that my home is not much different than most homes in the US.

To say that these type of homes are far from ideal for sound is the biggest understatement I have made in the last few years :) so in theory a great environment to test.

For example. I will average decays because I do not have time to go and type each frequency decay number. 

Spikes for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 603ms. 

Isoacoustic Orea for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 561ms

 Isoacoustic Gaia for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 542ms.

NobSound for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 389ms.

Podiums for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 139ms

Without pictures is hard to visualize the decay effects, but imagine a piano note that is supposed to linger for 20ms but lingers for 400ms+ and so on, then the silence disappears and with it the music.   

I am not saying that every room/speaker/isolation mechanism will react the same as mine room, I am just saying that in my environment in the USA with this gear these are the measurable effects of each platform.  

For example my decay in one of the rooms in my home in Spain with spikes is 227ms still a LOT for $100K speakers, but I cant wait until I put some podiums or pods, with the Kensington $20K the decay on spikes is 338ms on the same room as where I have my good speakers. 

I have no affiliation, I get nothing from any of them except the products I pay for as everyone else does. My intent is solely to share my measurements.

I love math!

Ryder, Vibration control of all kinds whether ordinary plain springs, Nobsound, Townshend or whatever, generally is more effective resting directly under the component chassis than under the foot that comes on the component. Works better, looks better. The loading per spring is what makes the difference in sound, not so much where they are under the component. So you can use 3 or 4, and they can be moved around to balance the load. I use for example 4 Pods under my amp but almost all the weight is transformers in the back. So I have one each back corner, one sort of in the middle, and a 4th center front. 

Ordinary springs like Nobsound are more sensitive to loading. They tend to sound full and warm when compressed a lot, thin and extended when not loaded enough. I think the reason Nobsound vary so much is partly they are short, and this gives them a smaller optimal range, and partly they are not damped, and this gives resonance free reign.

Townshend Pods and Podiums solve both of these shortcomings with a single larger and higher quality (piano wire) spring and bellows air shock damping. Works great, as so many have found.

astralfor, Crest? I think you got the name wrong. There is a Swiss company Credo that imported Townshend Podiums 20 years ago and then copied that old version. If they are 1.8X better than current production Podiums that would be quite the trick seeing as they are knockoffs of an older version of the same thing. Either that or you really like their toothpaste.

@astolfor , getting very technical there but rather useful to know the Gaias are more effective than the Oreas with lower figures in the decay. I have the Gaia and Nobsound but do not have experience with the Oreas. The Gaias work well under speakers, ditto Nobsound under components.

As for the Townshend products, I wished I could try them but at their current prices, a bit too rich for me at the moment.

Ordinary springs like Nobsound are more sensitive to loading. They tend to sound full and warm when compressed a lot, thin and extended when not loaded enough.

Very good description, I couldn't agree more.

@astolfor Thanks for your interesting data. I wonder how much different such measurements would be on hard tile or concrete floors, as opposed to suspended wood? In other words, in theory to benefits of isolation should be smaller on a hard floor, but I wonder if that would be reflected in measurements such as yours.

@millercarbon My bad Credo :)

@whipsaw I will have those measurements when I get home, still waiting for Acoustic Signature to send me the replacement turntable as mine was not working properly.

My home in Spain is made out bricks, stone and have a lot of plants in my listening rooms. I will be happy with anything in the 100ms-160ms as I have been told that our ears can't distinguish on anything below 100-120ms. But I would love some confirmation on this so please not quote me on it😏. I will be doing some research on this.

I believe that the main thing with these measurements is that bellow 448Hz there was a lot of stored energy not only affecting decay, clarity and impulse but distortion, with the Podiums and Credo is all but gone, even in my room mode. I can't wait for my second sub to arrive, because if the simulation in REW is correct it will solve the rest of the 160Hz-200Hz and down decay and distortion. 

The original distortion from the fundamental all the way to the 8th harmonic get reduced from:

4.72% average with spikes.

4.64% average with Orea.

4.28% average with Gaia.

3.86% average with Nobsound 2-3mm space.

2.42% average with the Podiums.

2.11% with the Credo.

I do not want to get into describing how much better or worse the music gets because we all hear different. 

Interesting – thanks!

@astolfor excellent work and post, hope to meet up with you in the future. Max is a measure and listen guy. There are of course a wider spectrum of isolation than your sample. Maybe Crest is indeed the pinnacle?

Enjoy the music. Best to you - Jim

@tomic601 Hello Jim, we will figure it out on how to meet. I love to listen to music and usually I do not mess around with measuring much, but this time I wanted to understand what I was listening because for a long while I had the Gaia and Orea products and a lot of people were saying how drastic of improvement they made but I noticed almost nothing. @millercarbon made the suggestion about the Nobsound and podiums, so I stated with the Nobsound and I was able to listen a big difference, so I bought some podiums and wow, then I found a video of Credo so I bought another pair and wow again! As an engineer I thought that there must be a way to measure this and there was! with REW.

I must be very slow because no matter what sharing site I use the pictures do not show up in my posts so I can’t show the actual measurements so there is no room for misinterpretation. I have no doubt that there are a lot of people in this forum with way more knowledge on sonic measurements than me and would have been nice to get their comments.

I posted some pictures of the actual measurements in the Facebook Pathos group is you want to check them out.

I hope the new Solid-tech reference racks will help to improve the resonance and distortion.

@whipsaw I have no doubt that the impact on different floors and houses can be measured. The gains might not be as big but measurable.  The thing is that I wander how one goes about differentiating between the inherited/base values from the speakers (i.e. what one can not do anything without modifying them) and the rest because without them we do not know how far from the best achievable values we are. 

But then I do not want to lose focus on what I like to do and that is to listening to music. I think that with the new racks, pods for my components and additional sub I will be right there. Maybe after having everything dialed in I will look into some acoustic room treatment.

@ryder  I ordered the Nobsound springs, arriving tomorrow. I have a few questions …

1. Which component stands to benefit the most? Dac, amp, or streamer? Eventually I might get more sets but want to start small. 
 

2. My amp is the Audio Hungary a50i. It’s about 55 lbs and like many tube amps, it’s much heavier in the back due to the transformers. Is there any specific configuration I should start with?

3. Do I place the springs under the existing footers on my component or underneath the chassis itself? If in case it’s the latter, do I need to remove the factory installed footers?

Thanks in advance. 

IMHO I would do the amp first among other things because it is tubed

Thanks @astolfor . I received the spring this morning. So far, I’m not really liking what I’m hearing. There is a slight bit of ringing which is causing fatigue. I placed the springs directly underneath the chassis. Three springs each in the front footers, four each in the back. Maybe I need to remove one spring from each footer?

@arafiq, there is fine tuning to be done. The space between the plates should 1-3mm, sometimes 4. I would start with the least amount of springs and go from there. If you have REW do some measurements before and after along with the different setting changes so you can keep track of what you did. Try to make the gap even regardless the amount of springs in each of the plate pairs.

@arafiq I have 4 and 4 with my X200 and sounds great. Yes slightly more compressed in the rear but it works.

@tsushima1 you are what we call a putz here in Chicago. Really you should head back to ASR or did they boot you too?

I am a Quantum Fuse Bot.

@tsushima1 I will take that as a compliment.

You are, you're.

Happy Christmas you cranky old sod. :)

And the sameto you good Sir 😄

@astolfor ​​​​@jerryg123 -- thanks for your feedback. I'm going to reduce the number of springs per footer and see if it makes a difference.

@astolfor What do you mean by the least amount of springs? Does that mean I should start with a single spring?

@arafiq I would start by using the least amount of springs possible to keep at least 2.5-3mm in each individual set.

For example. lets say that you will end up using 4, and that your tube amp has 2 transformers on the back left and not much on the front.

Then for your amp lets say you need 6 springs in the back-left to get the gap to 3mm, then your back-right might need 4 to keep the 3mm gap, then the front-right might need just 2 and the front-left 3 for example. 

If your amp is really heavy in the back, you might need lest say 4 sets. with, starting from the left-back all strings, then one less on the back-middle-left, 3 less for the back-middle right, and 4 less for the back right.

In other words use the least amount of springs to keep the gap as consistent as you can. This should be your base line, and experiment from there either moving the sets around, changing the spring load or both. 

For my RELs I spent a lot of afternoons, trying different configurations, listening and measuring. REW is a great tool to visualize how your sound is changing and guide you in the right direction. By no means I am a sound engineer, sound expert or anything remotely similar. I used to do the tuning by ear but it would take me for ever, and not always end up with the sound I used to like, but the sound was not an accurate reproduction so it took me a while to get used and fully appreciate the changes. Give your ear time to adjust to the new sound, then move in the way you think is best. I have found that going back and forth without getting used to the new sound it led me many times in the wrong direction.

For example one the records I was using that used to sound warm now started too too bright, but others records sounded much better, lots of definition and dimensionality. It turned up to be that the record was recorded too bright, and given the decay I had, before the changes, was very big so it kind of cancelled the brightness. 

Other records that felt had no bass, now they started to have very defined bass, I would assume that it could also be attributed to decay and distortion.

I am an engineer so I make one change at the time, listen, make notes then measure and see how it correlates, and so on until I got now where I can be confident that I am listening to the records as recorded and not as an artifact of distortion, decay, timing etc. 

I would say that I am 75-80% where I would say that I am happy, I still have some excess energy around 28.5Hz and  321Hz that I need to fix but I have a very flat response. All this was achieved using Nobsound, Townshend pod and podiums, REW and moving things around in my room.

The mechanical isolation was of huge help to position my speakers and subs.  

I am sorry if my English is not good that you can not understand. I just started to use English when referring to audio.

I just noticed that instead of unscrewing a Pod to show how it is made the Troll cut it up, destroying the Pod and giving a false impression of how it is made. So destructive not only of ideas and concepts but physical property too. Hard to be sure if deliberately deceptive or just incredibly inept. No reason can't be both I guess.

@ryder I ordered the Nobsound springs, arriving tomorrow. I have a few questions …

1. Which component stands to benefit the most? Dac, amp, or streamer? Eventually I might get more sets but want to start small.

2. My amp is the Audio Hungary a50i. It’s about 55 lbs and like many tube amps, it’s much heavier in the back due to the transformers. Is there any specific configuration I should start with?

3. Do I place the springs under the existing footers on my component or underneath the chassis itself? If in case it’s the latter, do I need to remove the factory installed footers?

@arafiq sorry for the late response.

1. I have only tried the Nobsounds under the amp and DAC. The Nobsound will have an effect to everything that’s being supported. However, it is crucial to experiment with the number of springs to find the best configuration. This is the only disadvantage of the Nobsounds. I removed the Nobsounds from the DAC as the optimal compression of the springs could not be achieved due to the light weight of the DAC. The Nobsounds currently remain on the amps in my main and second systems.

2. The key is to get an almost similar compression for all footers ie. same gap between the top and bottom pieces. You may start with 2 springs at the front, 3 springs at the rear then slowly increase to 3 springs front, 4 springs rear. If it is a lot heavier at the back, you may try 2 springs front, 4 springs rear etc. Personally I prefer a larger gap which is about 50% compression of the springs. There is no other way than to try and listen for yourself as everyone hears differently and has their own preferences.

3. Below chassis is the recommendation, 3 or 4 footers for each component. Having said that, I placed the footers directly under the feet of the Luxman as I’m afraid the chassis could not support the weight of the unit. (> 60 lbs).

Looks like a nice build.  Thanks for the pics! 

Again, looks like a great design and well executed.  Thanks for the pics! 

@grannyring I jus don’t understand what it is the point of cutting these open. They do what they claim to do and need to do.

Are they expensive, yes but they work.

Are overpriced? I do not think so, if they were there would be many other options as good as these for less. The fact is that there aren’t, probably because any of the potential competitors had made their own business analysis and concluded that it was too much of a pain to compete.

If you think different then, do the R&D, productize your device, build a supply and distribution chain and then sell them at whatever amount you think is fair to you.

This is free market and anyone not making as much as they can on their product are not good business men/women. Nothing last forever.

Next time, before you butcher a perfectly functioning product, please let me know before hand! If I am interested I pay you a fair price to get it out of your hands.

How many did you buy and how many did you butcher? If you have some that you don’t want let me know the load rating and get them from you

I am not the guy that did this butchery. You misunderstand my post it seems. I am a happy Townshend customer. I was simply telling the actual poster I think they look well made. Quite the opposite of his intention.  

He probably didn’t cut anything open, the guy doesn’t even have a stereo, speakers, or anything. Just a keyboard he uses to type "hate" a thousand different ways.

Takes lousy pictures too. The key to the whole thing is a tiny little vent hole drilled in the top. Can’t see it in his lousy photo, that shows the underside when it is the top that matters.

The key to the design is the black rubber bellows captures air, and there is a very small vent hole in the top. So bouncing the spring forces air through the hole. The whole thing is designed to work like shock absorbers on a car, that allow the wheels to move a small amount for a smooth ride over bumps but damp out larger amplitude so the car doesn’t roll around curves as much.

In practice then the Pod is a spring for micro-vibrations and damped for larger moves, resulting in it filtering by something like 16dB per octave above 4Hz.

In other words a precision engineered product, as borne out in practice by everyone who tries them.

Thanks for the added detail. Great design and just helps my system sound terrific. 

@grannyring I am sorry, my mistake.

@tsushima1 First let me apologize for my English.

At the end it does not matter what manufacturer claims and I do not care, because the measurable improvement cant be denied, at least by reasonable people.

There are 2 objectionable factors

1. the experiments and measurements were done in one of my rooms and although the room is temperature controlled, RH and pressure are not, so these factors allow for some unknown variables. However the tests were done in multiple days and since the variability is well within the margin of error ( 1/10%) I am not concerned.
2. I should have not reported the 1/100% because in this case given that I have done only 400-500 tests reporting 1/100% is not very relevant.

Although I am not a sound engineer I hold 2 PhDs on 2 different mathematical subjects, and I have had my experiments and tests assessed by 2 different colleagues/friends that hold PhDs in sound physics, and one with a PhD on mechanical engineer more specifically on isolation. Both of them also like audio systems.

I have done hundreds of tests, more than 400, the measurements are consistent and reproducible.

I am fortunate that I can afford to buy and test almost whatever I want, I have only alliance to my family and friends, and none of the companies I buy products from give me discounts, beyond what they would give to any good customer.

Maybe my impartiality and close relationships with numbers, tests and analysis might not mean anything to you, but who knows maybe you are open to accept that I have absolutely nothing to gain, beyond getting my systems sound as best as they can and hopefully help others to make their own decisions based on numbers, and not based on some unmeasurable description of the improvements.

In my environment and system, the facts and results are very clear, the Podium cut decay in one of my room/system got cut by 3x, distortion reduced by more than half.

After Xmas everything will be resting on Pods.

If you want to pick a manufacturer go an pick on IsoAcoustics Gaia and Orea because when it comes to isolation and measurable sound improvement they are worse than the $35 NobSound.

Here are my some basic test results

The original distortion from the fundamental all the way to the 8th harmonic get reduced:

4.72% average with spikes. (baseline)

4.64% average with Orea.

4.28% average with Gaia.

3.86% average with Nobsound 2-3mm space.

2.42% average with the Podiums.

2.11% with the Credo

I will average decays because I do not have time to go and type each frequency decay number.

Spikes for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 603ms. (baseline)

Isoacoustic Orea for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 561ms

Isoacoustic Gaia for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 542ms.

NobSound for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 389ms.

Podiums for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 139ms

Credo for frequencies between 25Hz to 10K the decay average is about 122ms

Please notice that I make no sound claim, because it is subjective.

I use REW, and Earthworks TC20mp calibrated microphones.

Maybe next time you take the time and use REW (free and sound industry accepted) and a calibrated microphone (anywhere form $100 to $100s of K) to test and measure your next isolation/decoupling solution before dissecting the product.

If you have facebook, go and join Pathos, there I posted some pictures of before and after measurements in case you need to see the results in your own eyes. Which I would find it flattering so you could give your opinion.

Please post a picture of the spike or nail you used in your testing and data mining. Tom

Keeps posting the same crap. Why the mods allow this guy on the site, he only drags things down. Facts all wrong too. $425 per set of four right now, and that includes shipping.

Here is what a Pod looks like inside, if instead of ripping one apart destroying it in the process of trying to make it look bad you simply screw the top off.

The top piece turns to provide height adjustment for leveling. The cap inside is where the real technology comes in. Notice they are marked for load. That is because they are all the same size but with different spring rates for different component loads.

Now the most interesting part is the tiny little hole at the bottom. The black bellows material that encases the spring traps the air inside creating a bellows effect. Spring bouncing up and down forces air through the small hole. This is precision engineered to provide just the right amount of damping. This is what makes the Townshend Pods so much better than other products like Nobsound.

This tiny little hole is like putting Koni performance shocks on your car. Good shocks allow free travel to absorb small bumps in the road, but at the same time provide responsive handling by damping larger body roll type movement.

In the same way Pods isolate micro-vibrations, particularly in the audio band, while controlling resonant behavior. This absence of resonance is what reveals so much natural instrumental timbre and tone.

All from that one tiny little precision engineered hole in the top.

Keep reporting away miller , you obviously want to suppress the truth ?

These images are not mine or of anything I have personally purchased.

Oh , lest we forget… YOU are the one who was suspended from this forum and are on probation here NOT me

I’m with Miller on this one. tsushi’s repeated attempts to disparage the product are ridiculous, and the photos ostensibly used to support his position reflect poorly on him, not the manufacturer.

Right. And thanks.

Another image showing how they are made. Felt on top and bottom.

@whipsaw

Quite the contrary ! , My point being that I consider the Pods to be expensive

for what are,  most likely $30 worth of parts to the manufacturer at cost.

The images that are so desperately reported accurately show the internal construction of,  and an indication of,  the materials utilised in their manufacture .

@tsushima1

That isn’t a serious method of critiquing a product. There is a member on this very thread who has impressively demonstrated the measurable differences between a variety of such devices, and the Townshend are among the best.

Now, if you want to argue that the Nobsound represent better value, you would have a leg to stand on. But there is nothing about the build quality of the Townasend that suggests anything other than good design, and quality.

Anyone could tear down most expensive speakers and say "Look! These parts, by themselves, are not very expensive, therefore the product is very overpriced."

@whipsaw 

The only and singular question that I posed for members by posting the images being to make their own mind up about the relative value of theproduct in question.

I don’t consider it necessary to list a X Vs X Vs X list of other products

Like we need you to tell us we can make up our own minds. Where do you get this sense of self-appointed superior being from anyway?

I don’t know how many different ways that I need to say this, but simply cutting open such a product and posing that question is a waste of everyone’s time.

The product works well, and better than those of most of its competitors. Trying to disparage them by arguing that the aggregate value of the individual parts is much lower than the retail price is dumb, as that largely meaningless game could be played with virtually all audio components.

Coming from YOU … Oh MY… The Irony Is Breathtakingly EPIC …

” Like we need you to tell us we can make up our own minds. Where do you get this sense of self-appointed superior being from anyway? “ 

@whipsaw

Were you to apply that criteria to posting regulations on this forum it would be a 10th of the size … Are you saying that any images of say an amplifier , a DAC etc etc showing the internal build quality should be made verboten as irrelevant?