Accessorize Your Way to a New You!
It’s a toss-up: The house where my family and I lived for 15 years was bigger than the one we have now, and had a much nicer view. On the other hand, we now live in a less economically depressed region, as suggested by the relative scarcity of inflatable lawn decorations. During the last year I saw in my neighborhood far fewer leprechauns, reindeer, Easter Bunnies, purple-and-green Draculas, and turkeys wearing pilgrim hats (which makes about as much sense as Russian soldiers wearing lederhosen). I find those things unspeakably sad, because they’re horrible, cheap, gaudy wastes of money.
I’m beyond saddened by waste—a more apt descriptive is overcome by a paralyzing depression. (If ever I fail to answer your phone call or reply to your e-mail, it’s likely I’ve just come in from seeing an especially tatty Santa Claus dressed in camo.)
That’s one reason I have little enthusiasm for audio accessories of the tweaky sort: I can usually tell by looking which accessories will travel the shortest, fastest route to the landfill. (Hint: They’re usually the ones with the most expensive packaging.) I mean, really: When was the last time you put that special mat under a CD—or that weight on your amp, or those wiggle-blocks under your preamp, or that jacket on your cables, or that wrap around your tone-arm, or any number of other doodads once hailed as essential? I’m not saying those things don’t produce audible effects: Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But if you’re like me, around the third or fourth time you’ve had to remove those accessories in order to dust your components and their surroundings, they don’t get reinstalled. In my house, they go first to my Basket of Deplorable Accessories, then to the closet in the TV room, and then to the landfill.
Thus I’ve surprised myself with my love for IsoAcoustics’ Gaia III isolation feet, which
