This made for very easy on/off comparisons. Applying the same earlier arrow for consistency's sake, we don't tend to think of cables as radiators especially with full-coverage shielding. Just so, small radiated fields seem common. If mine had those, direct contact of cable to GS should interact. Plus, the weak magnetic field would penetrate the cable itself. With four Furutech risers per each channel's 3m lead, I could max out at eight GS total to cover all my bases. Yet one on the Furutech closest to the speakers was sufficient. The gain was in suchness as tied to contrast ratio and presence. I heard it particularly during microdynamic crests on a Hector Zazou album with excellent production values. If I had €15K/pr speaker cables, adding two GS at 5.5% of my existing investment to literally bolt on that effect could be interesting. Perhaps even more interesting was that this unconventional placement did something?

Let's wrap. The entire setup of this 2nd opinion piece was Louis Motek's good humour to indulge my curiosity. He markets his Giant Steps as vibration isolators. My Warsaw contributor Dawid Grzyb thus properly evaluated them as load-bearing footers. It's their magnetized centre—and the counter-charged layers thereof—which to my mind invited more adventurous apps than just playing footsies. As someone sensitive to WiFi (rare) and the bluish flicker radiation coming off computer monitors (common), these footers appear to have benefits. I'm simply at an UtterLoss not just less loss as to any concrete even charitable explanations. Some people enjoy the presence of crystals and geodes. I do. If we leave it at enjoyment, the entire New Age static remains on mute. I use powerline devices from Akiko and Verictum filled with crystalline and semi-precious powders as UHF noise traps. I enjoy their effect. Would someone else? It's impossible to predict other than say that the makers of my devices remain in business so have a healthy clientele. What the measurement crowd overlooks is that listening for pleasure involves people. That means multi-dimensional beings whose experiences happen on many levels. The physical is the lowest and grossest. Once we include psychology, mood, the mental, emotional and subtler strata meditators reach for, the richness of experience compounds. With it compounds what will influence and shape our experience. As we sensitize ourselves to our own deeper layers, we become more conscious of what affects them. Over time, listening to music playback can develop into such a sensitizing journey. We pay more attention. We notice and care more because more of us is triggered to participate beyond just the ears. In this subjective s(t)imulation, whatever improves our experience is good. Whatever diminishes it isn't useful. As far as our experience goes, naught else matters. I can easily live with the fact that my subjectivity enjoyed the Giant Steps' 'non-footer' influence whilst my objectivity had no rational explanations. But is it more important to feel good or to understand why? Should the latter be a prerequisite before we allow ourselves to feel good? Unless they're masochists, surely even diehard objectivists should say 'no' to making that a prior condition.

That virtual certainty seems like the ideal place to exit stage right and let the curtains fall. A small step for me, some Giant Steps for audiophilia? Wrong moon landing. Over and out.

Manufacturer's reply: Thank you for this review supplement, building upon Dawid Grzyb's review material which features the standard practical use case, and expanding upon it from some different approaches. My hunch about why the blue-tacked trial behind the speakers was not so nice to the ear is that all rubber solutions on all feet will tend to lend that muddiness of sound. If there had been a way to integrate these gadgets directly into the build of the enclosure, with no rubbery play, they would have given you results more in line with what you heard on and under the DAC and under the speaker cable.

In the spirit of expanding upon your hunch that perhaps something is to be gained merely by placing the Giant Steps in the vicinity of gear and/or monitors, I can completely support this as I have a lot of even wilder experience to back it up. I'd like to take this opportunity here to share a little bit of a story behind some of the interesting sensations you started to experience already with only a small number of these gadgets in situ. At first we only ever used these as feet under gear as per traditional practice and honed the solution to perfection exactly in and for that use case. During our trials we also quickly learned that putting any rubber or springy material layer between gear and foot resulted in worse overall results. But that's not the most intriguing part. We also noticed that because of how the multi-layered inner metallic core is set up within the feet, we can place one foot directly on top of another and thus almost directly extend and enhance the diamagnetic/ferromagnetic functionality, albeit with a ~4mm gap between the top spiral on the lower foot and the bottom spiral on the upper foot.

Placing them like this under gear and liking what we heard and even hearing the potential of such a placement simply approximate to gear, instead of one next to another on the same level approximate to gear, this got me thinking. At one point during initial batch assembly, I saw something like this at right on the production desk. I realized that we could build an arbitrary height by using only one closed resin/Kraft paper base with any number of thru-holed resin/Kraft paper ring parts above that to close the aforementioned 4mm gap between individual feet. This would allow us to maximize the effectiveness all the way through the entire height. So one day we actually tried it. This resulted in a sort of Giant Steps tower which was seven physical units high. But because we had closed all the 4mm internal gaps, we had a full eight units of innards all built up in a single solution. The result was this solid hefty monolith.

Since you already experienced that each individual Giant Steps foot was surprisingly heavy and dense, you can imaging the weight and density of this one at 8 x the punching power. Because of this density from closing those 4mm gaps, now we had something really heavy that we could particularly put on top of gear, its weight alone providing direct contact with lids while exhibiting zero springiness. So the trials in a system like this were a huge success! We're talking borderline paranormal performance when we had four feet under the gear as well as this extended monolith on top with its large weight providing stability. Those eye and 'inner demeanour' calming effects you mentioned were now on steroids.

Ever since the advance of LED lights and screens popping up in all manner of public places, I had been feeling a kind of unease from it. One word I kept using to try to explain this strange sensation was that of cheapness. It seemed to somehow insult my soul if that even makes sense. I always wanted to exit such places on a sort of instinct. Yes, it would 'burn a hole in my brain.' There is a particular local place with an absolute overkill of LED lighting and screens. It is the entrance to a large movie theatre [next page – Ed] where they installed not only full-wall LED screens constantly flickering with moving animations but additional screens throughout plus a ceiling-wide installation of very bright LED lights set up as hanging signs shining a bluish kind of cold white. I always hated this place.

To my surprise, when I now walked in carrying the cylinder, all offensiveness was  gone. I could much more calmly appreciate the entire space, the colours and geometric beauty of the ceiling lights which previously would 'burn a hole in my brain'. It was more than striking. Frankly, it was impossible. Here is a snapshot using a wide angle of that space. I was very impressed by how pleasant and soft the lights seemed to have become. It was more like experiencing the natural 'golden hour' of sunlight outside during a nice sunset than the cold, ruthless burning of cheap cold-blue LEDs. Something in me just took it all in and said "wow, this is actually beautiful" and I just had to take the snapshot.