Blackbody

LessLoss Blackbody -- an invention by Louis Motek

The LessLoss Blackbody is a high-technology audio system accessory which has no power source, and which completes the LessLoss chain of non-coloring filtering of the mains power via the DFPC and Firewall system. As the filtering of the DFPC and Firewall is effective up into the multi-Gigahertz range, it is in the even higher frequency range, going from long infrared, through T-rays, the rainbow spectrum and on through the ultraviolet bandwidths where the filtering of the Blackbody ensues. This wide-bandwidth coverage is crucial to the completion of the filtering system, although even on a home PC playing through your average Soundblaster, even non-audiophiles hear the obvious difference for the better when the Blackbody is placed near the computer. Pricing yet to be established.

This is the story of how I developed the LessLoss Blackbody.

In early 2004, I was first inspired to wonder if light could influence the sound of audiophile equipment. Seemed far-fetched, but the thought wouldn't let me go.

It all started when I was burning my own CDs and comparing the sound between them. I found, as many audiophiles have before me, that certain CDs sounded better than others, even though the digital data was identical. The Jitter content was noticeably different among the different CDs.

I read as much literature as I could find on this subject, and came to realize that there are many contrast and reflection parameters which are key to the tracking and data retrieval systems used in CD players. Light in the infrared spectrum is split up into different beams and sizes, and the color of the dye used in the different brands of CD-Roms have an effect on the resulting sound after the digital conversion to analogue due to the interplay of that dye on the dispersion of the individual beams' spectrum and focus. There was and is much engineering work done in this field in order to find the perfect dye for audio purposes. Black CDs were developed. Others felt that dark blue CDs were best. I found endless differing opinions.

I tried scanning the CDs using professional error tracking software provided by PLEXTOR. This did help find a quantifiable error count, but the error count did not always correlate to the actual perceived sound quality (due to the very effective error correction algorithms already implemented in the Redbook data retrieval standard, i.e. cross-interleaved Reed Solomon code).

I was stymied. My sound issues clearly had something to do with color, which meant, of course: light. Now, I know some things about light. Light is strange. It is electromagnetic in nature. It can be a wave or a particle. It can be split into its spectrum with a prism. It can be turned into heat. Yet, hot things need not emit any light. Nor do very bright lights need to emit any heat. The speed of light is a constant, yet slowing it down yields the same light in different wavelengths. What's more, we see only a very small fraction of the phenomenon we call light.

The spectrum from the lowest infrared to the highest ultra-violet is a vast concept, with our little rainbow of perception comprising perhaps only a tenth of the entirety emitted. Given that the range actually spans from the lower microwaves to the higher x-rays and gamma rays, our range of visual perception is meagerly small. One may even call it the least active and least interesting portion of the entire light spectrum.

Certainly for audio.

And then it happened. I encountered the blue light effect.

I was feeling desperate, already almost a year into my tinkering with various colors of disks and so forth, when I happened to shine a blue diode in frustration onto the CD during playback.

"Take that!" I said, as if aiming a laser ray gun.

I was shocked by the result: shining the blue diode onto the CD during playback resulted in an instantly perceivable more natural sound. I did some more research only to discover this was a patented procedure by a French CD player manufacturer. Far from discouraging me, this gave my experiments the boost of energy I needed. I discovered that any and all audio equipment benefitted from the blue light treatment, from CD players to DACs to preamps to amps. Ultra violet diodes sounded even better. Shining more diodes resulted in an even more natural sound.

Excited, I took things to the extreme and found to my dismay, that too much of a good thing harms the audio. It was evident that it was not the light per se which was giving the good audible results, but that there was a "correct" amount of this light-and it was up to me to find it. Having made this decision, I was on a mission.

I experimented for the next four years.

I took the blue light phenomenon and applied it to normal blue light bulbs, the kind that you screw into the normal sockets and which typically come in 40 to 200 Watt bulbs. This seemed to "supercharge" the sound in an incredible way, but also generated a lot of heat. Different blues were on the market, so different blues were tested against each other. After much experimentation, it was found that the darker the blue, the better the sound. There was one bulb, marketed as "ultra-violet," which was a deep purple color that seemed to give the best audible results. But I had forgotten my own basic tenets: that the visible spectrum is vastly smaller than the entire array.

What happened next was one of those interesting side-tracks that can cause an inventor to nearly forget his own goals. Some of the bulbs eventually burned out, or were moved about so often that they burst. To my surprise, the sound quality did not suffer as much when a non-functioning light bulb was left in its location next to the gear, as when one was physically removed. Amazed by this, I wrote to Marty de Wulf of Bound for Sound explaining the light bulb phenomenon. This discourse can by found on his website today.

The light bulb phenomenon was a perplexing issue that Mary de Wulf encountered when investigating the effectiveness of different power filtering solutions. In essence, adding a few light bulbs to the sound system's power consumption always improved the sound.

This spoke only of the non-effectiveness of the power filtering solution, because the addition of another power-burning element in the audio chain being fed by the power supply only meant that the sum total of the high frequency noise entering the system was divided by both the system's power consumptive needs and that of light bulbs', meaning that if the light bulbs had been 5000 Watts, the sound would have been that much better. Trying this with a powerful electric oil radiator proved the point easily.

Here is a link to the relevant discussion. Here's another link.

Once the power consumptive and resulting noise burning effect was separated from the light spectrum effect, it was further discovered upon feeding the dark blue and ultra-violet diodes from a couple of independent 12 Volt batteries that turning off the blue light source did not instantly result in a worse sound, but that the quality of sound quasi "faded out," so to speak, during the next 30-40 seconds. It was also found that the audio devices, when playing, could be exposed to the ultra-violet light waves for some time and only then begin to sound very good after some 30-40 seconds of exposure. This is where the theory of ozone control was formed, and was left be for the time being. It is for certain that Louis Motek shall return to this phenomenon some day, and will find an elegant solution to this as well, but for the time being, we return to the Blackbody development.

I later understood that it was not necessarily even the light bulb per se which did the trick. I introduced glass and a certain clarity in sound resulted. I covered an entire system with glass, and the phenomenon intensified. Blue glass proved even more effective than clear glass.

Mind you, none of the materials in question ever contacted the audio gear. We are not dealing with resonance characteristics which alter due to a change in weight or pressure on the audio gear. Control objects were placed very carefully to ensure that this was the only phenomenon affecting the sound. Also, I refrained entirely from positioning objects beneath the gear, to again avoid any confusion with resonance behavior and its resultant change in sound. I concentrated my efforts exclusively on high frequency electromagnetic phenomena.

Another year was devoted to trying to find the color which would promote the best sound. Orange, yellow and green gave an unpleasant sound. Dark blue: phenomenal. Hundreds of shades of each color were tried, and the resulting data analyzed and scrutinized.

The differences were extreme, and have immediate, practical consequences:

If you take a very large collection of CDs and place them around your gear, you are assured a very bad sound quality. If you but remove your collection as far away from the gear as possible, you will realize a much better sound. These differences are obvious to the ear, and are at times more profound than swapping interconnect cables.

So, there I was, three years into my experiments with colors affecting sound. Now, full disclosure here, I own a 525 BMW (black, for what it's worth...) which has a pretty decent sound system on board.

On a road trip to Germany, I continuously played the same CD. The road trip was twelve hours from Lithuania through Poland, with a short stopover in Berlin. Ultimately, I was headed south for Bavaria to visit Kaiser GmbH, makers of the Kawero! loudspeaker. All that time in the car, I'd been listening to the same CD, over and over: the music of George Frideric Handel, the Concerti Grossi, with strings, some winds and a harpsichord. Now in the car, you can't really hear the overtones of the harpsichord strings. Chords are generally just a mishmash of noise, which your inner mind-ear complex has to make up for. And so it was, driving the 18-some hours from Kaunas through Berlin to Regensburg and back up to Berlin.

And then it happened.

A sign alongside the Autobahn, half-noticed, clearly not an important one, since it was not a blue or yellow road sign. It was one of those brown signs, the kind that tell you of the cultural attractions of the region you happen to be driving through. But the music -- ! For the next five minutes or so, it was godly. Not only could I fully appreciate the conductor's phraseology, the musicians' following of it, the harpsichord's pure overtones and chord progressions, I could also clearly discern the two separate hands playing the harpsichord, the size of the church where the recording took place, and the sound of the acoustic atmosphere. In a car, on the Autobahn!

And then it went away. The sound returned to the same horrific mishmash it had been the whole trip. Or did it really? I replayed the track. Yes. Sadly, the sound was bad again. It was the same old muddle. I'd had my first ambient geographical change experience, sensed by my ears using the sensitive tools I know best -- listening to the quality of sound signal playback change. But that sign I'd just passed. What had been on it? And in a flash I saw it in my mind's eye once again. It read: "Kristallglass Gebiet".

Which translates to: "Crystal Glass Region." I was initiated.

This was an area of Germany famous for several crystal manufacturers found there. Obviously, they had to make their stuff out of something. It had to be something local. Something found in the ground. And I'd just driven over it.

I pulled over and did some research. Crystal glass must officially contain at least 24% lead. (It can be up to 33% if you really want it to be bright and shiny, and I also learned that technically, it's possible to achieve 60% lead in glass. It's not very practical, but it lends to the glass a soft nature and an excellent workability. And workability is what crystal was traditionally about.) Faceted crystal looks marvelous. It sparkles. It breaks up light with its many little prisms. It makes wine look more beautiful, and is famous for its high-pitched and specifically clear "ting" when giving a toast.

Upon my return from that extraordinary trip, of course I had to try a new experiment. I gathered as much crystal as possible and surrounded the gear. Excellent results. But different from glass. It significantly altered the sound quality.

So, we add to the forming theory: some materials, like lead, absorb a certain high frequency spectrum, and this affects the sound of an audio system. So does blue, so does yellow, so does everything. The absorption and emission of spectra are what let us see colors, but, I asked myself, what about the vast territories below and above the visible spectrum?

Carbon fiber and graphite are known to absorb high frequencies. I went to a friend's factory where high performance hockey sticks, hockey blades and kayaks were made from carbon fiber. I borrowed as much as I could carry. Placing carbon fiber around the audio gear resulted in phenomenal sound quality, but again, obviously different from that gained by introducing all the other previous materials.

But a theory was solidifying. A rock-solid theory. One that would change the very basic tenets of audio listening: Some sort of fingerprint, a type of signature, was getting into the audio by means of high frequency electromagnetic wave interaction with different substances.

Well, okay. It was time to distill the material that would best absorb the frequencies that were interfering with my perfect sound. It was time to go to the extreme.

I went through paints, pure pigments, inks. I'm bringing home a bucket of intense blue pigment and I can already hear a difference in sound, even here on my car stereo. I examine the label and find that a major ingredient is Cobalt. Perhaps it is the Cobalt and not the color per se? Back to the printing press. Any other colors with Cobalt in them? Yes, red. Another purchase is made. In the car, the sound is very promising. I travel back to the laboratory. Blue is switched out in favor of red. The red sounds fantastic, robust, slamming-hard drum swings, much power and dynamics, but ... different! Where the blue sounded very melodic, smooth, human, the red sounds robust, strong, decisive! Yet both are Cobalt-based. I was elated.

I locked myself into the laboratory and tinkered some more.

Test after test proved that as each different absorption and emission spectrum was introduced to a high-end stereo system, a different sound "fingerprint" was revealed. Countless further tests were made using the largest variety of chemicals, composites, mixtures, and shapes, stereo systems and even locations, always looking for the ultimate combination of spectrum. I found that layering the same constituents produced an audible effect. That certain things needed to be avoided altogether, such as anything resembling the complex surface of a CD, for that would scatter light in an unpredictable way.

In the end, an ultimate solution was found. I call it the Blackbody.

In physics, a blackbody is defined as a hypothetical object capable of absorbing all of the radiation that it encounters. In my quest for perfect sound, I sought to create just such an object, and I have.

I did not wish to select any one emitted frequency. I sought to reveal the most neutral and natural sound possible. We don't want to use make-up. We want to wash the audio completely clean.

The amazing thing is that once all high frequencies are absorbed (higher than radio), the subjective experience is one of a substantially lowered noise floor, even though this is impossible to measure in the audio. It is the clarity of signal and ease of sonic appreciation and cognition which makes the Blackbody so impressive.

The Blackbody's effectiveness is evident even without the Firewall or DFPC's. Even in the car.

For four years, I experimented with different ideas, trying to pinpoint the reason eliminating light seemed important in my quest for good sound. The missing link was to comprehend that the light spectrum we can see with our human eyes is but a very small fraction of the light wave spectrum that exists. Once this initial limiting boundary of perception was bridged, the final and total solution which now bears the name LessLoss Blackbody could finally be understood, perfected, and realized as an audiophile product of integrity and high performance.

When Louis Motek developed the LessLoss Dynamic Filtering Power Cable, he utilized the known electromagnetic property called the Skin Effect to its own detriment, by creating a cable with the least possible conductive skin one can manage, while maintaining a large cross-section of highly conductive area for the clean power to propogate through. This same principle is active in the Firewall power conditioner as well, only taken to the logical extreme of providing some 120 times the effectiveness. Radio waves are hopelessly incapable of penetrating or being propogated by these solutions, resulting in a power supply to the audio gear which is void of radio signals, a condition which is aknowledged widely by the audiophile press and a host of internationally located audiophiles to bring about a silence and clarity to the music which inevitably sounds natural and organic, rather than noisy and electronic.

With this as his working base, he had the perfect conditions to begin working with even higher electromagnetic frequencies. These phenomenon, it is known, tend to go straight through certain materials, even if they are thick, and not through others, even though they are thin. The electromagnetic wave always has a wavelength and a corresponding impedance match with some length of inductor or lattice structure of material which acts as an antenna. More or less, the shape and configuration of the antenna determines what frequencies are absorbed and induced. This is just as valid with radio waves as it is with microwaves. With light waves, we run into the interesting aspect that we have eyes, organs to perceive the absorption and emission spectra of various objects and pigments. But this does not mean that there is no other spectrum, other than the one we see. A perfectly black object (to our eyes) may have a gigantic and beautiful spectrum in some other bandwidth which remains invisible to us. Some butterflies and other insects can see much more beauty in flowers than we can, because of our limited bandwidth of perception, just as some dogs can hear a much higher frequency than we humans. Hence, the famous "silent" dog whistle, which Rex always hears, no matter how far away he happens to be.

Remember, we perceive color just because we have eyes which happen to be sensitive to a certain limited bandwidth. Electronic sound systems are sensitive to other bandwidths. If we saw other bandwidths, we'd experience a profoundly different perception of the world, which would be just as real objectively, but completely different subjectively.

It is possible that much of what the principles of Feng Shui are based upon are indeed the interplay of extremely high frequency electromagnetic phenomena, a participation in which we ourselves are in no way immune. Above radio waves are Microwaves, above that are Infrared waves, then there's the puny fraction of all this we bask in the day to day reality of, which we call light waves, then there are Ultraviolet, X-rays, and Gamma rays. Just because we have numbers tied to these phenomena, does that mean that 7000 years ago, the Chinese did not have access to an accurate feeling for the interplay between them in our lives? Louis Motek dares to believe that they did. And that a little car stereo and his musical background were just two random elements which helped him unlock at least a portion of this vast unseen and yet very real aspect of our lives. It is not mysticism. It is science, and is systematic. In the application of audio gear sound quality, it performs very profoundly. Perhaps there are other applications which have yet to be found.

The Blackbody will be available for purchase soon. Please make sure you are subscribed to our Newsletter for the latest release information.