Does hifi feet work or is it just hot air

I have 4 different hifi feet,old classic Audioquest sorbothan feet, mitly,delflex feet (also sorbothan) cheap cork and sd (sonic design) feet.

Sort of a neutral experince where i feel they doesn't do any harm although i cant really say the do work or don't work.

Is it just hot air,snake oil since i can't say for sure that they work, they do how ever depending on what i use raise the unit and give some placebo effect that all sort of tuning,optimizing of the sound by using hifi feet and what ever i can think of using, makes a positive effect on the sound at the end of the day

 

Good to have equipment level, and on a vibration free surface. If that means putting "feet" under the base of the equipment, it is a good thing.
As far as "feet" making an improvement in performance, I guess that is empirical.

 

You mention that you have four types of feet, I am interested in learning what your thoughts are about their effectiveness? Sort of trust your own ears and tell us what you think...
Would you recommend that others spend money on these?
I don't have an opinion on this, I am curious what your ears tell you.

 

Feet can make a difference, before I had my TT on a simple rack, which would resonate a bit. The element on the tt would pick up a hum from time to time and before I made myself a serious rack, I put some Tonar No Rumble pads under the tt which resulted in no more hum being audible.

 

Different feets does affects the sound in different ways. It's not snakeoil if you ask me. You have to try them out yourself.

 

Isolation footers using compliant material designed to convert movement to heat and then dissipate it, absolutely do work to isolate things placed on them from transmission of vibrations from below. The materials and method have been used for decades not only in audio but in machinery and tech labs, etc. They only work if you use them properly -- don't over load them with too much weight, for example. All materials don't all work equally well or equally at all frequencies. And decoupling with isolating feet may or may not make a sonic difference in all applications -- a turntable is very, very sensitive to vibration, since it works by converting movement into sound. Other types of equipment may or may not so obviously show the impact of isolation from support structure-born vibration. And components which themselves are sources of vibration -- like speakers -- may (or may not) work better with coupling instead of decoupling. And of course, decoupling footers can only reduce vibration up from the structure the footers are sitting on. If there are air borne or other sources of movement reaching the gear, the footers won't work. Some footers also work better in the horizontal plane vs. the vertical plane or whatever, so the direction of the movement can matter. But Sorbothane and other compliant materials of this sort which convert motion into heat and dissipate it, absolutely do what they say they do. Impact on sound will depend, but they're not snake oil.

 

I use hockey pucks. Works for me (and cheap)!

 

I've been using different footers for years with mostly good results. Many years ago it was shocking what Black Diamond cones would do under a cheap CD player.

Now a days, after years of equipment sliding around or off different types of feet I've resolved to IRS platforms under the integrated amp and CD player. Even better results than good footers but stupidly expensive.

 

Hockey pucks are hard disks of vulcanized rubber, not terribly compliant and not designed to be compliant in two planes at certain frequencies at a specific load. They're not going to do the same thing as visco-elastic material specially designed to convert movement into heat under load.

 

I would presume that components with moving parts (turntable, CD player) and components with tubes would benefit most from isolation.

Solid state amps/preamps/DACs, etc? Probably not so much.

 

It is snake oil. But some snake oil sounds better than others.

 

Without a doubt, but even with SS amps you will notice an improvement at higher volume levels.

 

I am also of the opinion that they are
effective, have tried a few variations, but I did not have a noticeable problem to start with, so it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness for me.
I have used felt under some lighter components, cork under heavy mono-block amps and tried isolating large bookshelf type speakers by placing them on top of a platform using a sandbox for separation from the floor.

 

Yes for TTs and CD players. For other components, I don't see the need.

 

Sure!

 

Even for turntables??

 

Yes, because he says so. If only the manufacturers were as smart. They could make more money.

 

I have about fifty pucks in my system.

 

Drilled a hole down the center of one puck. Nice tt/LP weight.

 

You guys using pucks are onto something. A guy I know owns an auto repair shop. He's got several pieces of equipment that vibrate, hum or shimmy. Which we'd all expect to find in a shop with machinery. He has put pucks under some of the machinery, and swears they make a big difference. Now, we'd probably all agree that machinery in general is going to vibrate and/or need isolation more than most stereo gear.

But in our audio world, look at how many different products and types are available for vibration control and isolation:
Vibration Control | Accessories - Music Direct

Some of those things look like dressed up hockey pucks, ready for a night on the town (but for that money, the consumer would hope they're more than that).

And I understand that pucks may not be as ideal for dissipating vibrations, but they certainly can't hurt, right? Take your average tower speakers -- their center of gravity is high enough that I wouldn't want them to just sit on mushy carpet (didn't want to use the included carpet spikes).

I don't consider them snake oil at all.

Edit: the pucks sitting quietly under my speakers are probably enjoying their life a lot more than getting zinged around at the receiving end of a Zdeno Chara or Kevin Shattenkirk slap shot.

 

Me too and they made a great deal of difference on my father in law s turntable which was having a great deal of hum/ rumble.

 

If nothing else, if you have to stack components, the pucks under the feet give more ventilation. At $1 per puck it’s pretty cost effective.

 

Before upgrading my feed I wanna try different ears.

 

I'd not make any specific assumption because a damping device looks like a hockey puck.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-sound-and-vibration

It's science.

 

In all honesty, I don't hear a difference with the pucks. But I like the visual of raising my CB player up an inch!