Sorta. He said, “A lower cost option popular on the Tekton owners group is the quite inexpensive (around $40 on Amazon) Nobsound Spring Feet though I have not had the opportunity to try them yet.” Not sure that’s a recommendation, but I appreciate the mention as they are cheap (actually $30 per set of 4 on Amazon). I really wish he would have tried something from IsoAcoustics. Surely several of their products are more in line with the price of the speakers.
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These are also similar, a bit less too
I have purchased these based on a recommendation. Different application, but same brand and they seem to help
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Agree, but at least they call the inner tube an inner tube, and don’t tell you that it won’t work unless the pressure is set to optimum within a micropascal.
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Inner tubes have long been a DIY isolation solution. I commend Bottlehead for being honest about what’s inside the box, and keeping the price fairly reasonable.
Barry Diament, a legendary recording engineer (there are threads on the Steve Hoffman forums listing all the CDs that he’s mastered), wrote an interesting article on trying to isolate gear from vibrations in the vertical, horizontal and rotational planes and he suggested a cheap DIY solution, using an inner tube for the vertical plane and ball bearings for horizontal and rotational planes.
A combination of the two types of feet that @robson mentioned would accomplish the same thing, with the spring feet tackling vibration in the vertical plane and the ball bearing feet tackling the others.
Reading about how Bottlehead tackled this project, they seemed to be very measurement-oriented, so I’m assuming they figured out how much air is “too much”
On the other hand, Diament’s article is not very precise, saying “Inflate it only enough to hold the component up off the shelf. Too much air and you won’t get the benefits.”
@Lou_Ford From what you wrote, it sounds like there isn’t much margin for error. In your experience, what would you suggest?
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I’m not sure what I wrote that suggested this, but these sorts of devices are simple to use. I think Diament had it exactly right – all you need is enough air to noticeably lift the load-bearing platform. I would just do trial and error, adding a little air at a time until the platform raises a bit, like millimeters.
Adding air beyond that doesn’t help, and at some point (when the tube has enough pressure to start to feel solid) a significant portion of the vibrational energy will pass through the walls of the tube and it will be much less effective.
Put another way, there is some weight at which the isolation performance of the device becomes limited. Bottlehead probably have some ideas about what that weight is. Or, depending on the dimensions, one might be able to add some of those isolation balls to enable the platform to handle greater weights and still be effective.
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I apologize Lou, you got me all excited when you mentioned micropascals. Without actually knowing what a micropascal is 
, I mistakenly thought you were suggesting that even setting up an inner tube needed some precision.
But thanks for the additional explanation. I found that helpful.
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Oh yes. I respect Bottlehead for not trying to push ultra-fluff-freeze-dried-hydrogen-pooch-pouch-bingle-pads. The cost here comes down to the quality of the furniture / wooden box. Way back in the 1990s when people published “magazines,” I read a story about economy sound damping with inner tubes. They had photos of a guy who built furniture very much like the Bottlehead product – but it was double wide and had larger innertubes.
In my experience simple padded mailing envelopes and bubble wrap work well too (I’ve used them under speakers temporarily). I bet that the foil-backed sound deadening Butyl rubber sheets used to cover noisy things and the inside of cars would be good too. Just tap the object – if it doesn’t ring or move then the damping function has been achieved.
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Sean Jacobs uses that type of sheet in his Reference DC4 supplies, along with IsoAcoustic GAIA feet
A few sheets of this stuff, and this is now replicated in my DC3 based supply for the Analogue side of my Naim NDS, with a 555DR on the Digital side, and its 24v rails unused.
I have also used the Stainless Steel Finite Element Ceraball feet (the cheaper EBay versions are in Aluminium, so be careful)
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