Hear Here
Well-known member
Thanks Mark. Previously I've changed the angle with the default spikes so that the panels are as vertical (straight up) as possible with those. That helped considerably in the clarity of the mids and highs.
They're elevated a bit, about 2", as I have them standing on 1" slabs of granite that themselves are decoupled by rubber feet. And that helped out to clean up the bass, but never thought about the height effect itself. I was thinking that IF I get the GAIA's I could remove the slabs of granite. But maybe I shouldn't.
I've recently ordered Expression 13As to replace my Avantgarde Uno horns. As with your speakers I have spikes into a stone slab (I chose slate as it has less "ring" than granite, marble or glass) and vibration absorbent material between the stone and the timber-boards-on-concrete floor.
By coincidence I received last week a sales-pitch email from a nearby reputable dealer extolling the virtues of the Iso Gaia feet.
For the 13As I'll have to decide whether to go for the Gaia IIs directly onto the floor (about £700 for 2 sets), or stick with the spikes and stone slab but get a much more effective vibration barrier - Sorbothane or similar.
Appearance wise, the Gaias are undoubtedly more attractive and I would hope that the performance improvement would justify the cost in relation to the 13A price - less than 5%. The description by other posters in this thread of perceived improvements would be very welcome, in particular the seemingly slightly less but much better defined bass. This feature would help in not upsetting my neighbours!
The Gaias would presumably still allow some degree of tilt adjustment too and should leave the speakers marginally lower than spikes + stone + absorbent.
I'd be interested to know why (of the new 4 new Masterpiece speakers) only the 15A is constructed with a vertical panel - the others have a significant backwards tilt. By many accounts here, several owners of tilted-panel MLs prefer to jack up the back to reduce the tilt. Explanations, opinions or theories most welcome. My only experience with ESLs is with the big Quads which are less tall than all these new MLs, but vertical. No one seems to want to tilt Quads either way as far as I'm aware.
Peter
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