December 2017

Great Audiophile Gift Ideas For The 2017 Holiday Season
Enjoy the Music.com celebrates our 12th annual gift ideas to give your audiophile!

Soundeck Isofeet

  Soundeck has also revised their Isofeet. The Isofeet, like the IsoPlatMat, are composed of two layers of aluminum, one layer 1.5mm, the other 0.7mm with a 65micron layer of visco-elastic polymer between, forming a constrained layer. They now come with small removable pads to protect your floor or equipment from scratches. Also new is the round shape, 80mm in diameter that comes with three small holes evenly spaced near the perimeter. (A hole is used in the black powder coating process.) The 75mm square shape is still available.

Both shapes come in sets of four at about $60US on their eBay store, making them a very high value. Unlike the Synergistic Research MiG 2.0 balls, the Isofeet do not impart (or reveal) any sense of bloom in the music. It is just a straight, unabashed increase in resolution and reduction of noise. They are particularly useful beneath the spikes of speakers where they do not elevate the speaker and pose no danger of making the speaker less stable. They work very well on both wood and carpeted flooring, but I have no experience with them on a tile or concrete floor. In a moment of inspiration I tried placing them on somewhat larger pieces of hardwood on my carpeted floor to simulate using them on a true hardwood floor. The result was a small increase in resolution and air.

I suspect wood species of different densities would reveal slightly different results, but all would likely be deemed an improvement. The small holes in the Isofeet can be used to screw them down to your pieces of wood, should you like a more finished looking result. Gluing a small “O” ring to the Isofeet would help in centering your speaker spikes and keep them from scratching the paint. I also tried them beneath the spikes of the VPI Scout turntable where they increased the resolution, but did not impart a sense of air and liquidity. Resolution seems to be uniform across the audible spectrum.

In the past I’ve sandwiched the Isofeet between the bottom of components’ chassis and Boston Audio TuneBlocks, but this has been tricky to set up and makes the component vulnerable to sliding when bumped. This combination was very effective, however. Now I prefer to use the Synergistic Research MiG balls that give slightly better results with much greater ease of installation and more stability (but not under loudspeakers or turntables).~Rick Becker

Recommended by Enjoy the Music.com's Rick Becker.