speaker/stand, couple or isolate?

I have tried this a couple different ways when I was working on stands for my speakers.

I started with a high mass MDF with spikes coupled.  Good result, not great.  

Moved to low mass metal (aluminum) with spike.  Bad result.  

At advice from the wholesaler, I put IsoAcoustics Orea pucks between the speakers and stands.    Tighter bass and overall, more coherent sound.  Great result!  

Stand material made no difference.  i use three ores bronze under each speaker on top of the stands based on the weight of the speaker. I also have spikes in the stands but that is strictly aesthetic and has no impact on the sound.  

@boxer12. I had a pretty extensive conversation with distributor on this and I have a spare set of Gaia III feet lying around and just tested it. Distributor advice was to
use the pucks.

Isolating the speaker from the stand makes an obvious difference with the Oreas as I said. Swapping Gaia Feet for spikes had no impact that I could discern. I use “these are days” from 10,000 maniacs as my test song and have listened to it 100s of times. On a side note, my wife really hates that song now

I can’t hear a difference and swapped spikes for gaia’s three times. Maybe with other songs the Gaia’s might have a small impact but I use that song because there is lots of layered detail that stray vibrations really screw up. It also could be that my speakers and stands aren’t heavy enough for the Gaia IIIs. Mine are quite the opposite of yours and are 12lbs and the stands aren’t much heavier.

If the stand is isolated from the speaker, further isolating the stand from the floor shouldn’t have a huge impact though.