Hang loose. Though it sounds like a worn-out SoCal bumper sticker from the '60s, the sentiment remains relevant. Particularly on the suspended upstairs floor, the delta of performance between my Kepler footers from Divine Acoustics and Boenicke's swingers was an easy tell. The Swiss canceled out more structural gain to invite compensation on the Dynaudio's level control. On depth-mining fare in the electronica, ambient and soundtrack portions of my library, hanging loose from wire suspenders killed remnants of ringy blur from bass notes which still passed through the synthetic sapphires of the Polish footers. Sven's job execution of vibrational transfer disruptor was more effective so superior.

Downstairs the difference delta vis-à-vis the big shiny Carbide footers was smaller but still sufficient to declare favorites. As had the Japanese Wellfloat before, wire suspension again proved more potent than Carbide's original execution of roller balls and industrial viscoelastic. I'm told more effective Carbide versions are coming. Applying a process of musical-chairs elimination, my quad of Kepler footers exited stage right, the Carbide moved in to mollycoddle the upstairs Dynaudio sub as shown above. The Boenicke shall remain in the main system.

True, this was mostly foregone conclusion. Still, having prior experience confirmed was a happy occasion. When I sent Sven the length measurement for his struts, I'd not accounted for the extra depth of their wire-receiver inserts. I could have stipulated 2 centimeters less for an even tighter fit. But who's counting when the ears are happy?

With Carbide footers.

Before/after differences in this game obviously depend on how 'talkative' our floor is. It seems fair to generalize that anything but a ground floor will be prime hunting grounds for effective vibe killers. But ground floors like ours—wooden joists over concrete, thick solid-wood parquet—remain more responsive that you'd think. Even a massive concrete slab like we had fashionably exposed in our first Swiss rental was an excellent vibrational passer-on which had my bare feet tickled by bass pulses. Granted, that slab wasn't inherently resonant so wouldn't be as primary a target as wood floors.

Extra strut length shifted to the rear out of sight.

Regardless of severity, I view speaker and particularly subwoofer isolation absolutely essential for peak performance. I feel validated in that assessment by the plethora of speaker brands which have abandoned spikes in favor of more purpose-engineered decouplers. From Magico to Wilson, Børresen to Raidho, evidence abounds. Why only Boenicke resort to wire suspension remains a mystery. It's so demonstrably effective. If global sales follow the old pie concept whereby mounting competition narrows how big of a slice (or how many crumbs) each player can hope for, the scarcity of 'hang loose' should mean many happy sales for Swiss SwingBases; if sufficient people pay proper attention. That's of course a big fat 'if' of Greek wedding proportions. But until someone else enters this micro sector, my part in it is now done.

Swing low sweet chariot.

Sven Boenicke responds: "Good work on the review as usual. By the way, as you stated it's also most effective under the main speakers since it reduces relative movement in the critical midrange. It really clears up the sounds and adds a lot of depth-based dimensionality. This graph shows Joachim Gerhard's measurements with the help of accelerometers. The red line shows a standard spike, the green the SwingBase."