@whipsaw I know that Isoacoustics announced a partnership with Wolf Von Langa, although I don’t know if the SON comes with the Gaia. Mine didn’t.
I have used Starsound/LiveVibe products for the past ten years and have had all my equipment on Sistrum stands with good effect. THey were recommended by an Audiogon member who sold me his TRL Dude preamp in 2012. He was so impressed with their stands that he had them build his listening room using their technology. At the time I had a pair of Audiokinesis Jazz Modules in a room that was giving me a lot of problems, with bass in particular. I bought a used pair of Sistrum stands from Starsound and they had a profound effect on SQ when I placed the Jazz modules on them. Bass was solid and sound overall was cleaner and more articulate. Fast forward 10 years and I moved to a different house with a friendlier listening room.
I received my Wolf Von Langa SONs in early January and Colin King of Gestalt came to set them up. Once we settled on a position we put the SONs on the Sistrum stands and immediately there was a substantial improvement in the sound quality versus on the floor. I actually purchased a pair of the Gaias to try during set up, but after hearing the SONs on the Sistrum stands, we didn’t bother trying them out.
Because the Sistrums are kind of sprawling and we needed to be able to walk around the speakers to get to a bathroom behind the speakers, I talked to Robert about the current LiveVibe Rhythm Jr stands, which fit nicely under the speakers and are more substantial including larger Audiopoint and coupling discs. I also traded in the Sistrum stand under my Circle Labs M200 amp for the Rhythm stand. I recently received them and set them up and noticed another step up in sound. The soundstage is remarkably 3-dimensional and extends well behind my walls on many recordings. Bass is clean and musical. Highs such as cymbals are crystal clear and really shimmer. It should be noted that that I have no acoustic treatment in my 11x17 room so I can imagine that tweaking that would result in further improvements
A side note is that Robert offered me about 85% of original purchase price for the products I traded in, which is not bad after 10 years of ownership.
So the benefit of the LiveVibe coupling technology is clear to me. I can’t say whether decoupling would be better but I find that this technology works for me. It would be interesting to do a direct comparison to decoupling devices like the Gaia or Townshend products so maybe I’ll try that when I have some spare time..Of course OCD Mikey, who is a big LiveVibe fan, has done that already as shown in these videos (and a few more. He believes that LiveVibe stands are an improvement over the Townshends. Take YouTube SQ for what it is worth in terms of your own ability to tell a difference..
THE PROFOUND IMPROVEMENT AMPLIFIER STANDS MAKE - YouTube
LIVE VIBE AUDIO STANDS UNDER SPEAKERS ! LISTENING TEST - YouTube