Do loudspeaker footers make a difference? Inexpensive aluminum alloy "isolation" footers.

As you can see through my posts, I'm obviously not averse to trying out "cheap audio guy/gal" products. 😏 I trust that this is completely consistent with my perspective on audio hardware for the most part being mature technologies, refined over decades already. For the high-fidelity audio reproduction pursuit, we can achieve excellent quality at very reasonable prices. Many (not all of course) of the "high-end" stuff that go for very high prices are clearly targeting a luxury crowd without necessarily achieving better fidelity. And some products, like what we'll be talking about in this post, I believe only demand "low-tech" solutions anyway.

China is the de facto consumer manufacturing powerhouse of the world in the 21st Century and we'll often find interesting and inexpensive products by mail order from places like AliExpress or Temu. Possibly worth trying some of this stuff if tariffs or shipping charges aren't too high for your country (eg. the de minimis suspension in the USA could take a big tax bite out of easy access to inexpensive goods). Technologically mature products made of standard materials at reasonable quality do not need huge price tags. For example, in early 2024, I grabbed this Nordost-like cable which worked out quite well and I believe performs equivalently in the ways that matter.

Similarly, for this post, let's look at this set of aluminum "isolation" footers which we can easily source from places like Amazon, AliExpress, and Temu:

Price: only about US$25 for a set of four as shown above - available in matte silver, black and gold. I bought two sets of the silver color for my pair of Paradigm Reference Signature S8 v.3 speakers for less than $50 total from Temu among other trinkets in that shipment. 😆

So let's take a look at these footers:

As you can see, they came in a non-descript cardboard box, well packaged with some foam. In that small plastic bag are short double-sided 2cm long M8 (8mm major thread diameter) screws used to connect the footers to devices with the same M8 threads.

My Paradigm speakers are not M8, but rather use M6 screws. This meant I had to get M8-to-M6 screw converters to get this to mate.

I got a bag of 8 of these stainless steel converters (something like this) for a few bucks. I went with longer 15mm M8 + 15mm M6 ones since I knew my speakers could handle the extra length.

Tip: If you don't know what kind of screw size your speaker takes, Isoacoustic's website might be able to help. Go into the Product Selector and pick your device. It'll give you an overview of which of their products fit your needs including the thread size. I recommend double checking on your device of course to make sure info is accurate.

Each aluminum alloy footer feels quite good in the hand. They're 1.5" (3.8cm) diameter and about 2cm tall. Weight is 70gm each. Note the black rubberized padded top and bottom. The pad isn't thick and I think it would not be hard to remove the bottom pad if you prefer to stick thicker absorbent material in place (like this). I don't see any official number on how much weight each can carry but it's metal and I see no issues with four of these holding up each of my 100lb speakers.

They claim to have a vibration-isolation function due to the construction and rubberized padding. If we separate the top and bottom halves of the footer, we see this:

There's a middle metal protrusion that slides into the lower piece with soft plastic grommet that keeps it in place when inserted. Triple stainless steel ball bearings (make sure they don't fall out when opened) provide support and supposedly help reduce vibrations. The footers look well machined with smooth, clean edges.

Side view: we can see the metal ball bearings and central column lifting the halves slightly apart. There is a little bit of tilt in the system if you put pressure on one side or another, not springy or soft.

Okay, let's go replacing my speaker's footers! The Paradigm Signature S8 speakers come with some simple small screw-on soft rubber-based footers I've been using for the last decade. They also came with small spikes which I've never used; unless installed with discs/pennies under, they would damage wood/laminate flooring. I would only consider spikes if my room was carpeted to secure the speakers down and have never understood the belief that spikes somehow isolate vibrations when used on hard surfaces - not recommended.

Let's remove the small stock rubberized feet and replace:

Here's how it looks with all four replaced:

They screw on securely with the M8-M6 converter, and I think it's an interesting look. The footers don't quite hug the bullet-shaped curves as smoothly but still look good in person. I was tempted by the gold-colored footers but staying with the matte silver I think is a fine complement to the speaker's monochromatic silver and piano-black finish. Due to the height of the new footers, speakers are now a little less than 1.5cm taller which should not change sound quality significantly at typical listening distances >6-feet away.

Compared to the tiny rubberized stock footing with about 1cm diameter contact with the floor, this new piece clearly distributes the weight across a much larger footprint - more than 14x the padded contact surface area.

Obviously, installing these is no big deal, I can sit back, listen and simply talk about subjective sound quality - there are plenty of other articles that do exactly that - but this would not be in the spirit of this blog nor adequate for the curious audiophile! 🤔

Evidence is needed to make sure we're not technically making the sound worse with these new footers. But before we run a few tests, let me show you one more configuration.

Since I move my speakers and the gear around the room not infrequently when testing new components, it's nice to have the speakers on furniture sliders so I can reposition them easily. Would the use of floor protectors worsen or improve vibration isolation? Let's test with this configuration:

 

I picked up some large 3.5" X-Protector furniture sliders (soft felt base with foam cup) and placed them centrally under the aluminum footers. This makes the 100lb speaker easy to reposition without any risk of scratching the floor.

Testing time!

Okay, first, let's test the obvious - is there any change in the frequency response with change in footers? Let's run some sweeps through my right speaker. Other than the slight increase in height by ~1.5cm with the aluminum footers, there is no other change in speaker position.

The MiniDSP UMIK-1 microphone was placed at the listening sweet spot about 8 feet away, measured with calibration applied:

All DSP and room-correction turned off.

I didn't expect there would be change; by and large there's no difference. We therefore cannot say based on this, for example, that changing footers or adding the slider has impact at all on bass amount despite some people claiming they hear differences especially of bass intensity (some say that softer footers somehow reduce deep bass). Also, despite how different the feet are, there's no real "tuning" of the speaker tonality - there's no "EQ" potential here which I've even heard audiophiles implying based on subjective impressions.

However, interestingly, I see what looks like a tendency for the small Paradigm stock rubber footers to show larger deviation with a number of those peaks and valleys in the upper-bass to mid-range, maybe +/-1dB here and there. Nothing exciting, but not something I thought I would find and one of those things to keep in mind in the future if I run further tests to confirm if this is reproducible.

Let's have a peek microscopically in the time domain at the step response down to sub-milliseconds:

Other than slight displacement variation on the Y-axis, there's basically nothing to find out to 30ms. We would need significant change in the loudspeaker crossover design or room-correction DSP optimizing time domain performance (as discussed previously) to see meaningful differences. Some audiophiles might be tempted to claim they hear improved transient response or better soundstage presumably related to phase accuracy after upgrading footers. Regardless of whether such impressions are accurate, there is no evidence here that changing the footers affected time-domain performance.

On a more macroscopic time scale, given the claimed isolation/vibration reduction between speaker and floor, let's see if this might change something like the reverb time - here's Topt between the three test conditions:

As expected, there are small variations between the test runs, but nothing likely significant since reverb time is a function of the room and things inside the room itself (furniture, room treatments). In retrospect, I should have also done a sweep at 1m to compare speaker waterfall decays; perhaps another time.

Despite not finding significant speaker playback change above, the characteristic selling point with better footers is that they might "isolate" the speaker/component from stray, primarily lower frequency vibrations. Vibration transmission is a two-way street as these could be from the speaker projecting its cabinet vibrations into the floor or transmission from the environment to the speaker/component through the base.

Looking around for measurements of vibration isolation with loudspeaker footers, I didn't see many out there. Townshend Audio has an interesting video from almost a decade ago promoting it's soft, pliable Podium footers. Ethan Winer has an article about speaker isolation that must have been written pre-2020. More recently, here's a video comparing a few footers using a contact microphone to measure the vibrations on a moving platform. There's also this video comparing vibrations with water bottles (and this one) on top of his speakers with expensive add-on footers (ie. Critical Mass and Magico M Pods), interestingly showing varied results.

IsoAcoustics published some data on their GAIA II footers (US$290 for 4) which are the recommended models for my speakers by this brand, using a laser vibrometer at the National Research Council (in Ottawa, I believe) comparing the vibration of Focal speakers with spikes or with the GAIA II installed:

As expected, there's no significant change in speaker frequency response in the anechoic chamber (my results above are in my room). The testing procedure isn't clearly described, but we can see a reduction of vibration velocity below 800Hz, and in particular around 300Hz. Presumably what they were doing was exciting the platform upon which the loudspeaker is standing on with spikes vs. GAIA footers and measuring the cabinet movement.

I see a second graph down the page showing similar isolation ability between the IsoAcoustic footers and using bungee cords to suspend the speakers for even more absorption of the vibrational energy.

Alas, I couldn't find my laser vibrometer, but I did have a vibrometer app running on my Google Pixel 8 Pro phone with its 3-axis accelerometer taped securely to the top of my right speaker! 🤓

Let's measure vibrations in "real life" in a multichannel system! Let's see what the accelerometer picks up using the three footer arrangements as I did earlier: Paradigm's small stock rubberized footers, the aluminum alloy footers, and aluminum footers + X-Protector pads.

Here's the procedure: I played INXS' very dynamic TrueHD-Atmos 7.1 track "Guns In The Sky" from Kick (2017, 30th Anniversary BluRay) through the multichannel system (L/C/R/SL/SR + 4 height channels + 2 subwoofers).

Since it's the low frequencies that are most likely transmitted, I chose this track and mix because it uses the subwoofer(s) extensively. The music starts off strong and I played and captured the vibrations on top of the speaker during the first 30 seconds, with volume turned up 10dB higher than I normally listen in my sound room (I typically listen at ~70-75dB SPL average, for the test pushed up to ~85dB SPL average).

Notice the active LFE/Subwoofer channel which is
inherently +10dB above the other channels.
I wanted a bass-heavy track to create & transmit low frequencies.

And here are the screen captures of the vibrations picked up by the smartphone vibrometer app:

The values in the bottom MMI graph refers to the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale estimated by the app correlating with peak acceleration. Within measurement range, the accelerometer should very close to linear.

Going from the small stock Paradigm footers to the much larger aluminum "isolation" footers reduced the maximum peak vibratory acceleration from 1.6 to 0.6 (down to a little over 1/3). And with the X-Protector under the aluminum footer, this further reduced detected vibration with better than 3x reduction in peak acceleration. The mean value over 30 seconds also reflected this reduction.

For completeness, I also did a reading of just that single right speaker playing the track (subwoofers and other channels turned off) with aluminum footers + X-Protector to check cabinet vibration:

Notice that the Paradigm S8 v.3 speaker itself while playing the music at higher than my usual listening volume looks inert to the vibrometer app. Therefore, the vibrations detected are from the combined intensity of all the external speakers (5 bed channels + 4 heights + 2 subs) with vibrations coming from the floor or the sound pressure in the room with door and windows closed.

In the room, as I listened to the INXS track while watching the vibrometer results, it's clear that the vibrations are strongly correlated to bass energy. In fact, if I collapse the track to mono and filter out all the frequencies except those below 40Hz in Adobe Audition, we can see a good correlation between the intensity of low-bass content and the vibrometer pattern captured with the small stock footers attached:

Summary...

So, to answer the question: "Do loudspeaker footers make a difference?" The clear answer is yes, they do objectively make a difference comparing the small stock footers and these larger inexpensive aluminum alloy "isolation" footers.

The makeshift vibrometer readings show that the isolation footers +/- furniture sliders are reducing the impact of environmental low frequencies (ie. intense subwoofer output specifically) affecting the speaker cabinet. Apart from small nuances, the footers themselves do not change frequency response of loudspeaker playback; there is no evidence of tonal change, no specific change in bass energy. I suspect unless something is very wrong with the equipment or set-up before an upgrade, just changing footers and keeping the speakers at around the same position, should not affect complex psychoacoustic phenomena like perceived "imaging" substantially.

The measurable change is clearly not like "snake oil" tweaks where no objective difference can be found during audio playback (such as most cables, fuses, wall power outlets, cable lifters, and more than likely Synergistic HFTs 😕). To be honest, what I found was more than I had expected at least, thinking at first that the small rubberized stock footers were enough and I'd just be installing these aluminum footers for cosmetic reasons with only a small amount of measurable vibration-reduction.

Among audiophiles, loudspeaker and component footers are one of these easy tweaks some could spend quite a bit of time and money on. For example, I think a popular "high end" product is the IsoAcoustics GAIA which for my pair of speakers would cost around US$600 for a set of 8. I think they look great with their tapered-top silver/chrome design and it's good that the company published some data like the laser vibrometry graph reproduced above.

Another even more expensive audiophile footer brand is Critical Mass that makes a whole line of products. Size-wise, their Center Stage 2M (0.8) measuring 38mm diameter x 20.6mm height would be closest to these inexpensive aluminum alloy footers but they're asking US$280 MSRP each! (See reviews here, here and here of different models.) So to get 8 of these for my speakers would cost over $2.2k, or ~45x the price of the aluminum ones I got from China - and the Center Stage 2M are just their basic model!

Considering the price, I don't think the Critical Mass designs esthetically look particularly good with their simple cylindrical shape and black color with brand written in large font on some of these. By the way, is anyone impressed by their "Our Technology" page which seems to just be trying to justify their multiple stacked plates of various "proprietary" alloys approach? As far as I can tell, there's not even a more complex internal triple-ball bearing structure like the inexpensive footers I installed!? 😉 Does "tolerances of 1 to 10 thousandths of an inch" matter for footers? And where are their vibrometry results?!

Beyond esthetics and the measurable vibration reduction, audiophiles of course always talk about "hearing" sound quality "improvements" after the upgrade.

IsoAcoustics claims their GAIA product will achieve "tighter bass", "improved soundstage", "greater sound clarity and openness", "provides a three-dimensional image of natural spatial sound" - all of which great if true. As for Critical Mass, well they used Enjoy The Music's Dr. Michael Bump to express their claims that the Center Stage2 "LS" (least expensive LS 0.8 version MSRP US$650 each!) does this:

"The CS2 "LS" serves as a catalyst within this vibrational energy, changing the prevailing state of equilibrium in this energy reaction and permanently holding it in a reduced or damped state. What remains is intended vibrational energy, a collective of recorded source material, carried through the component chain, to an acoustic sound field, in which the listener is immersed and surrounded wholistically – What Joe (Lavrencik - CEO) describes as a "Total Immersion Effect," or "Knocking down the 4th wall that separates the listener from the musicians at the front plane of the loudspeakers." Within highly refined audio components, this must be electromechanically manifested through an amalgam of engineered constructs working synchronously to place the listener in the middle of the recorded venue, surrounding them in the moment, making them a part of the moment."

We can read this as either just well-meaning artistically written prose, or mindless verbigeration unbecoming of a professor with academic credentials regardless of technical expertise. Is any of this true or just sympathetic advertising BS assisted by the percussion university professor implying credibility? 🤔

I think it would have been better if Dr. Bump dropped his doctorate title for this article since it's basically irrelevant (notice that no music was even referred to in the article). One with a degree in higher learning, acting as a journalist, should have pushed the CEO for some data showing that the product works. BTW, what possible reason is there that metal footers like these need an "acclimation period" that's "generally 7 to 10 days, but it can be longer"? I don't know if I should laugh or cry that a university professor would go along with this more-than-likely nonsense without showing necessary doubt!

Well guys and gals, while I can measure the effects of these aluminum footers as likely beneficial compared to the small stock footers in that bass vibrations are not getting into my front loudspeakers as much, I would not shout from the rooftops about easily audible improvements. My 2-channel and multichannel playback sounded great before the new footers and it still sounds excellent. Whether specific tracks, artists, vocals, percussion parts, etc. now are reproduced with a better soundstage or if the bass became "tighter", I cannot say. That is, without immediate A/B comparisons to detect subtle effects if any, whatever change is within the "circle of confusion" of a complex audio reproduction system.

Obviously, if your current footers are unstable or make funny rattling noises, by all means, upgrade to something functionally (and maybe cosmetically) better! Not only would better footers reduce vibrations going into the speakers, but they should also reduce the vibrations exiting the speakers and into the floor, table, or bookshelf (depending on how inert your loudspeaker cabinet is). This might be important if you have vibration-sensitive devices like a turntable or microphonic tube gear nearby.

For smaller speakers, stabilization platforms like IsoAcoustics' ISO-Stands could be a good solution and won't cost too much money (~US$120-200 for each speaker), especially for pro audio guys who might want more control over height and tilt fine-tuning also.

Beyond these inexpensive aluminum alloy footers I bought, it's good to see that other materials like the foam/felt X-Protector furniture slider also reduced the magnitude of transmitted vibrations. With higher-mass loudspeakers, there should be no concerns about the device slipping/sliding while making it easy for one person to reposition. Interesting to see that the recent IsoAcoustic GAIA Neo includes their own floor sliders.

I believe it's obvious that loudspeaker/component footers and their vibration-reduction abilities aren't high-tech, rocket-science, technologies that one could severely go wrong with. While footers "work" to help isolate devices from mechanical vibrations and are not bizarre snake oil, the price-performance value should be considered. As usual, any type of product in the audiophile world will have highly inflated "Class C: Audio Jewelry" priced variants.

Beyond cheaper DIY washer anti-vibration pads, sorbothane discs, and other inexpensive footers like this, here's an incomplete list of other companies you might want to consider for loudspeaker footers I've seen recommended by audio folks, thus far not mentioned: Herbie's Audio Lab, Tough Nut Audio, Vera-Fi Vibration Black Hole, Stack Audio.

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For those curious about how some audiophiles talk about their footers, here's a video by a Greek "audio geek" who was apparently bewitched by the WellFloat Delta footers - about US$400 each:

What fascinating testimony! 😯 Is any of this objectively true and should one be that excited about such a tweak?

Surely, if the change is so "clearly superior" (8:30), then how can it also be determined by "personal preference" unless there's something very idiosyncratically wrong about his system/room that thankfully he found this solution for? Alternative, one also wonders why changing footers would make such a difference with those Tobian 12FH speakers (~US$37k/pair) - what does the manufacturer think about their stock footers being of such suboptimal quality at this asking price?

Wow, the coveted Golden Olive Oil Award even - "run out and buy them", "you need this", "universally impressive" - he says about these footers! 

You see, the reason we do objective testing is because we can demonstrate that at a physical level, the product can change the sound quality regardless of personal preferences. If something truly is going to be "universally" experienced by others, then there must be objective change given our current level of understanding about what sound is, how it's perceived, and how we can measure it. 

As I expressed in the discussions above, there are times such as these when even if one can measure a difference, the wise audiophile also knows that not everything measurable can be heard. I would argue that this is much more common than some subjective-leaning folks claiming the reverse that "not everything that's heard can be measured". Sadly, the fellow above conveniently brushes aside his lack of technical ability as an excuse (see from 1:20) and declares that broadly, measurements "don't tell you much of anything" - clearly false. This is simply a lie, from one who hasn't done objective testing himself. I suppose he's just a Padawan-"geek", not quite at the Jedi-"nerd" level of audiophile reviewing! 🤓

In any event, if he's right about the universality and magnitude of the improvements, imagine how well the WellFloat Delta Extreme must sound with MSRP >US$1000 each (check out this write-up)! 

It's interesting to watch/listen to videos like this once awhile to be aware of the way some people talk about these kinds of tweaks. It's part of the "audiophile culture" going on for decades with passionate guys (mainly) working hard at building their sound systems; but seemingly without the basic curiosity to assess objectively before saying all kinds of things which I believe charlatans will happily take advantage of. While I guess it's possible that these WellFloat footers are the greatest tweaks since the introduction of Monster Cables and will easily transform the sound of his $30+k speakers, I think it's good to stay skeptical given all the obvious nonsense out there. Young audiophiles - keep this in mind and you'll be much wiser for it than many in previous generations. 😉

Of note, something I didn't hear in the video review was whether he bought these footers at market value and whether he has any kind of relationship with the manufacturer. Potential conflicts of interest are obviously important to declare especially in light of the absence of objective data in the review.

For an even more unusual example of bizarre audiophile talk about footers - see this dramatic Greg Weaver/Audio Analyst take on Critical Mass CenterStage2 footers. Wow, he installed 30 of these in his system!? Did he buy those anywhere near MSRP which he claims amounts to about US$14k? Fascinating discussion about footer "burn in" around 8:30 onwards - claimed audible timbral shifts and whatnot sonically fluctuating daily! Achieving "substantially lowered noise floor", "remarkably improved warmth... realistic body... natural tone and texture", and "vastly improved imaging, more enveloping soundstage". "Ommagawd!" 🙄, "paradigm shift in performance", "quantum leap forward" indeed. 

How foolish does he think audiophiles are? I see the company runs ads on his web site. 🤔 

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Let's go out with some "Big Money" and Jon Batiste playing snake oil salesman for an agricultural product in the video. From his latest 2025 album of the same name (DR7 stereo, DR11 multichannel/Atmos - typical pattern):

"Might as well live for something you can feel, might as well live for something real." That "real" part is important.

With that, I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the music, dear audiophiles, as we enter autumn here in the North. As usual, stay rational, stay real, seek for evidence, and don't believe unsubstantiated hype. 😏