 Unscrew the spikes of your floor-standing loudspeakers, screw in the guy are isolators and they supply what was always promised spikes would do. Two weeks ago I reviewed the Tansun podium isolators and was very pleased with what they offered, sound wise. But in my situation the aesthetics were prohibitive. For others the price might have been a problem, although I consider them to be worth the money. Shortly after the review went online, I got several tips to try the Isoacoustics Gaia isolators. I milled the Dutch distributor and within two days I received two sets of Gaia 2, the right types for my audio-physics corp here loudspeakers. There are three versions, called Gaia 3, 2 and 1, for respectively loudspeakers waiting 32, 54 and 100 kilos or 70, 120 and 220 pounds. I reviewed the middle one, the Gaia 2. These are small metal pots which measure 51 by 43 mm. The metalwork is finished in dark chrome with a logo that identifies the front side, which is important for their directional. They come in sets of four with three sizes threads, M6, M8 and quarter inch 20 on one side to fit the speaker and on the other side M8 to fit the Gaia. On the thread you screw a locking nut to fix the thread to the loudspeakers, a locking thumb nut to fix the position of the Gaia and the Gaia itself. Optionally special solutions are available for speakers that need a different size thread or mounting place. I've been wondering about the idea behind spikes for a long time. I can see that when loudspeakers have to be placed at a long pile carpet, spikes are the best way to place them stable. But the stories about spikes earthing the speakers or flowing vibrations down to earth I never understood. Agreed the weight of the loudspeakers vest on three or four tiny spots, so the pressure per square centimeter is very high and thus the contact with the floor must be firm. This means that cabinet resonances will travel down to the bottom of the loudspeaker and via the spikes to the floor, where they will be reflected back into the speaker. But might you say, I can hear improvement when I put spikes under my speakers? Of course you do hear a difference. The floor might absorb some of the resonances, depending on the properties of the floor they will differ though, as will the spectrum of the energy that is reflected back into the speakers again. Don't think concrete floors are too stiff to be excited by audio. My house has concrete side halls, floors and ceilings. The front and the rear are brick and mortar. It is the third house of the block and when I play my music really loud, the neighbor at the end of the block can clearly hear me playing. Luckily he is an old colleague from when I worked in a high-fiveshop 45 years ago. I can't complain about the other neighbors either, they never complained to me, so I am the lucky one. Back to the spikes. It depends on the spectral balance of the reflected energy what happens with the sound quality. It all depends on the speaker design and the floor construction. What you want is to absorb the vibrations over the entire audio spectrum by converting the energy into heat. This is what devices like the Gaia do. Not that the Gaias become warm, the amount of energy is limited in the heat terms. But as we have seen in the review of the Townshend platforms, speaker movements at normal listening levels are only one or two microns in the mid-range. If you then realize that a human hair is on average 70 microns and even a red blood cell already is 8 microns, you understand that a one or two micron movement is minute. A cabinet resonance can easily cause coloration to the sound, especially in the time domain for resonances are slow by nature. How exactly the Gaia works is not described by Isoacoustics. There is a cut-through drawing, but that doesn't give away much. They do have published measurements, they did at the National Research Council of Canada using what looks like a focal Cora A26 loudspeaker. They first compared the frequency response using both spikes and the three Gaia models. As you can see the four measurements are as good as identical. The paper concludes that there is no coloration, which is a slightly confusing way of describing that in the amplitude domain there are almost no differences. They then use a laser vibrometer that scans the speaker's surface to measure vibration levels at various points. This produces a second graph in which again frequency and amplitude measurements can be found at the top of the graph. Below that the blue trace is the velocity or vibrations of the speaker on spikes, while the green line shows the same when placed on the Gaia IIs. The heaviest peak show a large difference on movement of 7.5 microns per second for spikes and 3 microseconds for the Gaia IIs. In other areas the difference is less but still significant. I have no equipment to reproduce this but it correlates with what I hear. ISO Acoustics has published clear instructions on mounting the Gaias on their website and on YouTube. But in short you have to select the threads that fit your loudspeakers, screw them in and secure them using a locking nut and the supplied wrench. You then screw on a locking thumb nut followed by the Gaias. You have to lock the Gaias so that the ISO Acoustics logos are pointing to either the front or to the rear of the loudspeaker. Apparently they have different damping, sideways and front to back. You best put the loudspeakers on his side or back on material that doesn't damage the loudspeaker finish. Since my loudspeakers are deeper than white, I put them on one side on the couch. When you place them back at their feet, you will notice the rubber like feet will suck themselves to the floor, unless you place them on a carpet, in which case you better place them using the carpet disc. ISO Acoustics advises you to place the speakers on towels if you want to show them around to find the optimum placement. To keep the same reference as used with the Townsend podiums I use my setup 1A again. The Air Acoustic AX520 amp drives the audio of his Scorpio loudspeakers. Connected to the amp is the Chord Dave DAC that receives its signal from the Chord Jugo M-scaler. The Aurelic Aries, used as Roon Endpoint, is connected to the M-scaler and talks to the network over the Network Acoustics Eno system and the SOtM SNH 10G switch. The Intel NUC runs Roon ROG on a M.2 SSD and has music stored on an 8TB Samsung SSD. Added to that are subscriptions to both Tidal and Kobuse. Roon is controlled on an Apple iPad Pro. It was immediately clear why so many viewers advised me the Gaians. The effect they have on the sound quality is liberating. The sound cleans up, basses are tighter and deeper, mid-range has more resolution, the spatial projection is roomier, the stereo image more precise, the background deeper black, micro-dynamics are more convincing, overall it makes the sound more real and very convincing. A set of Gaians will set you back € 339. Since you need a set per speaker, the cost will be € 678, € 188 more if you need the Gaiac Carpentis as well. There is about half the price of the cheapest Townsend podium. I must say that the podiums performed a tad better but the difference, at least in my case, was limited. And the Gaians easily get approval from both the aesthetics and the finance committees. The best way to buy them is to order them under the condition that you can return them when you are not satisfied. But don't order them if you can't spare the money, for you will become very unhappy. And with this warning we have come to the end of this program. There will be a new video next Friday at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video on the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.