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Firewall for Loudspeakers: free from downsides — nothing else like them on the market — mandatory.

August, 2020, author: Dawid Grzyb
"To say that the firewalled Boenicke W11 SE+ caught me off guard would be a major understatement. Although the newcomer resembled the W11 SE version I reviewed here, it sounded much better than I remembered."

"Was I delusional? Was one extra component capable of sonic shifts this severe?"

"This stuff is the result of two decades of extensive proprietary work unlike anything else in the industry."

"Think extra moisture and gravity on vocals, rounder edges, tighter bass response, sound sources isolated more distinctly and an even darker backdrop behind them."

"The Firewall effect did stack indeed, and efficiently enough to consider external LessLoss modules in addition to those inside my speakers not as an excessive expense."

"exceptionally effective"

"LessLoss signal conditioners improved performance by a lot via extra muscle tissue and substance."

"Yet again vocals became rounder and fleshier, the natural color palette expanded, upstairs gained extra points on decay length and weight, air around virtual outlines became clearer, darker and more real, and any residual edginess was no more."

"The extra firmness the LessLoss set introduced was indeed a highly desirable step. This sort of efficacious work spelled noise reduction at its finest. But in case of speakers inherently lean, ethereal, edgy, texturally pale and geared towards hi-res performance, this report's Firewall set emerged as profoundly effective and as free from any trade-offs as ever."

"Although the Lithuanian barrels by design remove excess noise, their audibly additive action seems to contradict what filters tend to do. Srajan already pointed this out in his own LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers review, and that's exactly how I understand this product's job as well. It doesn't add anything that's not within a setup in the first place, but rather unlocks its untapped performance reserve normally held hostage by residual noise. It breaks shackles, drops veils, rescues, extracts and delivers safely home, that sort of liberating service."

"If after connecting a Firewall set one still doesn't much feel like a freed prisoner, "ouch!" is the only word that comes to mind once the product is disengaged. That's when our ears start to fully acknowledge what was just lost, and this sensation alone tells a lot how audible these latest Firewalls truly are. Their action in most cases will be severe."

"This report's effective noise-killers don't tinker with tonal balance or truncate sound in any particular way, thus to my ears are universal enough to recommend them to anyone."

"They flesh out internal moisture, inject heft and reveal color previously buried under a layer of excess noise."

"Bass stripped from noise usually gets fuller alright, but also tighter and more powerful, so the opposite of what its chunkier earlier life would suggest. Blacker canvas behind instruments might imply darker images, but more pronounced, weightier and longer lingering highs say otherwise."

"More solid yet less thin, glassy and chiseled vocal lines. The entire musical image gets bigger and tauter, but edginess that causes listening fatigue vanishes."

"These transparent plugs still elevated the former's performance by several notches."

"Tonal palette gained complexity and sophistication, which was mapped as the primary upshot, followed by its disposition to become more agile, composed and tighter than before. All these changes were enough to easily mark the latest Firewall as an upgrade perfectly compliant and worth pursuing."

"Firewalls provide bite, tightness, openness, and effectively land a spot on overall balance."

"swiftly pushed the sonics one tier up"

"more explicit"

"more refined and fuller on vocals and string instruments."

"Think substantial horsepower boost to effectively land faster 0-60 times, the same ride comfort, and a noticeably more luxurious interior."

"The Firewall for Loudspeakers decreased wobble, injected moisture into landscapes in-between them, brought key sound sources closer, made them more fluid and gutsier, and provided more powerful slam."

"I could go higher with SPL without any hints of fatigue."

"Thus far nothing else like them was available on the market."

"It's robust, enjoyably easy to use with all passive speakers with no exceptions, and provides substantial sonic upgrades above all else. You could easily spend more and get less in return."

"Free from downsides"

"Any passive loudspeaker set I can think of would get the Firewall treatment pronto."

"In my roster it ranked high enough to become mandatory."

Hifi Knights
6moons
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Blackbody v.2: "An unusual sensory experience"

July, 2020, author: Srajan Ebaen
"The concept isn't as outré as it might first read."

"Subtle stuff? If the Firewall for Loudspeakers was anything to go by, far from it."

"Hearing differences isn't that hard. Explaining it when it's so unfamiliar is."

"Imagine air getting more humid. Decays linger longer. All tones seem bathed in a subtly golden glow. The overall sound gets softer, creamier, heavier and a bit slower. Strangest of all, the air-as much as we're usually entirely oblivious to it by virtue of its being invisible and tasteless-feels more involved in the business of conducting sound waves. As bizarre as it reads to certainly not be taken literal, it's a considered attempt at translating an unusual sensory experience into words. In general, the sonic gestalt expressed the now familiar LessLoss house sound. In particular, it added an unfamiliar viscosity which had me more aware of the airy medium as the transmitter of sound all around me. I'd not come across anything else that did this, exactly."

"Again tone/texture grew more honeyed. Pace mellowed, timing gained elasticity. Again contrast made me conscious of a peculiar action whereby sounds didn't just passively rise between and behind the speakers but rushed toward me. Physically I sensed the BBs' radiating effect in my belly as a slight warmth. Once they'd become the new normal, I expected that sensation and the 'more active air' perception to recede from awareness. Right after the switch, their otherness still registered."

"Are you sensitive to energies which prayers over many centuries even millennia install in cathedrals, mosques, temples and other places of mass worship? Then such perception is a bridge. It relates to the Blackbody effect in your understanding without yet having had its experience."

"Or, you must be familiar with silence so deep that it has its own sound. It's simply not heard with the ears, just felt elsewhere in the body. Once music commences, the LessLoss parts are very much heard by the ears. The feedback mechanism of critical listening clocks their effect in that arena. Might they affect other areas as well? It'd be strange if they didn't."

"It'll shift emphasis from leading to trailing edge. It's as though a pianist's use of the sustain pedal increased; or your room enlarged for lengthier reverb. Tone richness fluffs up like shaking out a feathery pillow. It changes compactness to plumptuousness. Its textural give creates the sensation of slightly lazier timing. Quantitatively it's a subtle thing. Qualitatively it shifts gestalt. Having a suspicion, I deliberately drained the Soundaware D300Ref's ultracaps overnight. Next morning I recharged them under full BB-imprinted power. The next listening session did suggest that the effect had increased again. This connected to why the very first upstairs session had been most potent. There I'd used a reclocker and DAC both on pure battery power; plus an autoformer volume control on ultracaps. Apparently such DC reservoirs magnify the BB effect."

"Either way syndicates the Firewall for Loudspeakers flavor; that of the Firewall'd Echo's End DAC; of Louis Motek's C-MARC cables. It's why I earlier called the Blackbody another example of the LessLoss house sound. If you've come across it already, you'll recognize it."

"That shows design consistency at a high level and by very different means: with cables, electronics and tweaks."

"The colors on the TV seemed more saturated; fine detail of a fleeting landscape shot from inside a fast-moving train clearer and less blurred. The main draw of course was the omnipolar sound. That bloomed in the now familiar ways."

"I'll be curious to see how other listeners relate to then describe their effect."

"... LessLoss Blackbody v2. For the audiophile who already has everything else?"
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Echo's End: will take you beyond the audiophile aspect of music.

June, 2020, author: Pierre Fontaine
"The LessLoss Echo's End converter turns out to be a superb musical companion."

"The final positive impression comes from the naturalness of a liquid restitution combined with great precision."

"The top of the spectrum, silky and modulated, gives a lot of presence to voice thanks to its nice clarity of the high-medium range."

"We are delighted with a very pleasant open sound and the presence of a lot of air around the interpreters."

"The perfectly homogeneous medium-low register also reveals a lot to hear, especially with bass that goes down very low, without exaggeration, even on the first octaves."

"The dynamics are surprising not because they are expressed dramatically, but because of their fine revelation of the ringing and vigorousness of percussion and plucked string instruments."

"Here is a device that has a sense of rhythm and that will take you beyond the audiophile aspect of music."

"The sound image overflows the speakers to make them disappear, with an ease worthy of what you'd expect from a high end product range."

"Width, depth and even height, everything is there, and the very precise focus confirms a sound aesthetic with character."

"You really feel like you're in the middle of the orchestra, without the need to resort to intellectualization."

"But above all, and this is perhaps the highest quality of this converter, we remain very pleasantly impressed by the naturalness that emerges from this device like no other. It has proved surprisingly tolerant of all the files or discs that we have given it to transcribe."

"The LessLoss Echo's End is undoubtedly one of the most musical devices, offering nuances and expressiveness that will charm the music lover looking for an opportunity to listen for a long time without suffering ear fatigue."

"Furiously attractive, as much by its aesthetics as by its singing and musical character, the LessLoss is a well-designed device that deserves to be listened to without preconceptions of its origins, thus demonstrating that we are dealing with some of today's most creative designers."

"This converter's sound reproduction is particularly pleasant and relatively addictive."

"This softness, this fluidity, and this ability to immerse yourself very deeply into the heart of recorded music creates its own category."

"This will obviously not be the choice of the general populous, but rather of the already seasoned music lover who is looking for a product capable of transcribing the heart of digital files as faithfully as possible, revealing the substantial marrow."

   (French language)

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C-MARC Entropic Process power cords: higher resolution and a bleeding out of stress: relaxed natural quality.

May, 2020, author: Srajan Ebaen
"...plainly arrived at a higher octave of clarity"

"This before/after difference was unexpectedly profound now. Already my rig's performance had moved ahead of its usual status."

"Resolution clearly reached deep into the noise floor."

"Yet nothing shifted, compressed or even minimally distorted."

"...depth went deeper. Whilst the plucked string timbres lost none of their innate glassy energy, they gained in fullness and fluidity."

"I knew right away that the LessLoss loom played it quieter, more articulate and quicker."

"...majored on very fine detail, adroit articulation, very high separation, silence and unadulterated tone. If each of these aspects is the end of a wheel's spoke, tracing them all back to their center leads to... clarity."

"If you threw "extreme clarity" at me for an instant reaction, I might reflexively respond with "hyper contrast" or "very crisp edges". That's not what the LessLoss flavor was. Its clarity wasn't built on crispness but mellifluence."

"LessLoss' was about smoothness from relaxed litheness. This manifested as ease, as an absence of effort and showiness. It felt quick, calm, natural and less massive. Faux Vivaldi's pizzicati were more intelligible."

"...unembellished naturalness and strangely tacit ease didn't equate lack of drive..."

"...the LessLoss power treatment showed off plenty of pop, slap and bite..."

"Whilst I considered the LessLoss loom a nice resolution gain over our Allnic brood, even greater gains were had upstairs against our Crystal/Puritan pack."

"Having reviewed some C-MARC signal cables, the C-MARC based Firewall for Loudspeakers, a DAC with C-MARC wiring and now the latest Entropic Process C-MARC power cords, there's been a near eerie family resemblance. Call it a design-based leitmotif or DNA which connected them all like pearls on a necklace string. A reduction of noise meant higher resolution, a parallel bleeding out of stress a very peculiar sense of mellifluousness. It's this latter relaxed natural quality which stands out as the USP, the unique selling proposition of this cable tech."

"After about two days, not only did it stabilize and blossom but in that period covered a lot more ground than usual break-in seems to. Never mind the definition of entropy which calls it a gradual decline into disorder. Louis Motek's entropic process was the opposite: a rapid ascent to perfect order. Very well played!"
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Firewall for Loudspeakers integrated into Boenicke Audio W11 SE+ Floorstanding Loudspeakers

April 2020, author: Dawid Grzyb
"The Swiss [Sven Boenicke] labeled the latest Firewalls' impact on his loudspeakers as spooky."

"[This] left me quite smitten and caught off guard. I truly didn't see most of the W11 SE+'s latest action coming."

"That unmistakable Swiss aroma was still in the air alright, but now heavily augmented to be more complex, fragrant and substantially more enjoyable than initially expected."

"The major twist came in form of the SE+'s greatly elevated moisture, organic textural substance and background blackness. Not only did it have a far upper hand on sheer musical tissue, but it was also no less high-res and muscular in comparison to the SE version I remembered so well."

"The height of this leap was the opposite of subtle."

"Team LessLoss made it scalable, additive and free from any audible tonal makeovers, thus universally beneficial, whereas the Firewall for Loudspeakers is their latest and the most advanced such development to date."

"Picture a hauntingly black musical backdrop free from any hints of grain. All virtual sound sources finely outlined, pleasantly round, internally loaded with pigment and very much alive. Upstairs with A+ notes on decay, differentiation and weight. Even the tiniest nuances visible. Bass slams as tight, wild and sensible as your music allows, plus expanded immediacy, wider dynamic contrasts and upped clarity as cherries on top. Now remove one of these potent noise killers from your setup and its performance instantly plunges to become more matte, tense, edgy, chiseled, coarser, grainier, artificial and considerably less pleasant. Put the thing back in and music blossoms, ditch it and the sensation's gone again, poof, just like so. That's exactly what one tiny accessory capable of profound silencing acts does, and it's spooky indeed."

"Figuratively speaking, an effective silencing therapy in audio is quite comparable to a specialist restoration job on a valuable vintage collector car. Preservation, detailing, polishing and a fresh coat of paint as found on the original are allowed, any alterations aren't. Such a costly ride has to remain exactly the same, otherwise its value plummets. But squeaky clean, fresh and kept in pristine overall shape, it'll be worth much more. In today's context this type of service translates to upgrades at no sonic penalty and also labels LessLoss as the go-to workshop with lots of street cred. Sven knew just the address. If he wanted his four wheels pimped up, i.e. coloured and tonally wobbly, he'd have to avoid the Lithuanian garage and go elsewhere, but now you know why he didn't."

"Sven's [Boenicke Audio] self-explanatory take on Firewalls in his boxes, Srajan's [6moons.com] recent LessLoss review and the omnipresent silent footprint recognized in today's speaker's voice by yours truly, are neither a coincidence nor a conspiracy."

"As loaded with torque and spatially mighty as it is, my recent purchase simply wasn't expected to present gentle female lips nearly touching a mic in fashion fully exposed, explicit and borderline pornographic. I didn't think its voice could be this well-moisturized, finely outlined, dense, fetching, charming, sensual and personal, but it is. If, say, two years ago I was asked about the reason of changes this severe, I'd point my finger at a costly key component, but one inconspicuous Lithuanian accessory managed to turn things quite upside down today and that's brilliant."

"Although the W11 SE+'s extra vividness might seem as something I shouldn't gush over this much, it struck me as pronounced enough to change the product's performance and the way I experienced it. If this newfound quality arrived with any strings attached as it usually does, I wouldn't be this enthusiastic. Then I'd say that I gained something but at a cost of losing something in return. Audio is a game of compromises after all. But again, that wasn't the case this time around, not at all. The clearly organically boosted W11 SE+ neither had its propulsion, energy, directness, openness, astuteness or open-throatedness truncated, nor did it become more diluted, slow, foggy, warm or withdrawn. Nothing of the sort happened. If there was any catch somewhere, I haven't found it yet."

"This discovery was as thrilling as the path which led me to it, which is why, now, I sincerely encourage all Boenicke owners to have their boxes Firewalled pronto. If integrated internally, the final tab would include two-way shipping costs to Sven's workshop plus €1'800 on top of that, whereas a bit lower coin spent directly at LessLoss.com is the external plug-and-play route. But most importantly, all evidence collected labels this specific step in my book as exceptionally effective, irreplaceable by anything else I'm aware of, and quite frankly critical."

Hifi Knights
6moons
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6moons: Firewall for Loudspeakers on par with or eclipse good power conditioning. Blue Moon Award.

March, 2020, author: Srajan Ebaen
"These will be here to stay."

"More density, color, spatial connectivity, fullness, suavity."

"And these gains require no golden ears to hear or flash gear to bring to life. They're instant and easily repeatable even on simpler hardware."

"These 'tweaks' were a surefire very predictable thing. Doing without meant shrinkage of space, dimming of colors, shedding of weight. It was an obviously smaller flatter less developed sound. It was more mechanical, edgy, rigid and pale."

"The vast majority of hifi systems will benefit loudly and clearly."

"Most any loudspeaker ever made needs a set of these."

"[They are] mind benders and voodoo ballistics."

"Its benefits are on part with or eclipse good power conditioning."

"Thinking on a suitable award caption, it struck me. The ideal go-faster car modification would be a genuine bolt-on. It'd require no visit to a garage or automotive tweak shop. Car owners could do it for themselves. The before/after improvements would sell themselves. Any car would benefit. That's exactly what today's invention is for loudspeakers."

"Guaranteeing that you've never heard anything like it is easy. There hasn't been anything like it. Until now."

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Bindbreaker feet made sonics "speedier and more open", with "extra speed and clarity"

March 2020, author: Dawid Grzyb
"The Bakoon with Bindbreakers underneath was snappier; rapid transients it further shortened and injected extra power to make the effect more palpable, involving, energetic and somewhat spicier."

"I took this particular shift as extended dynamic range, thus a clear upgrade, then followed by clearer lowest octaves and more firm and precisely sketched instrumental outlines."

"Both the EX-M1 and 925 scored extra points on clarity; virtual outlines were yet again penciled stronger and thus separated a notch better to become more visible in effect. The Brit in particular was a bit speedier but without any loss or gain on its downstairs fullness. The already very smooth Kinki became a touch more buttery on this count as well. Although subtle, all listed changes didn't involve any specific tonal balance adjustments, hence were mapped as rather universal."

"Extra speed and energy happened without any heft or temperature makeovers. It's safe to say that Bindbreakers underneath all three amps opened them up in a way and extended their inherent flavours in the dynamic and snappy direction at no real cost."

"It was repetitive from one device to another."

"The standard anti-vibration scheme in my DAC netted the result a bit speedier but slightly itchier and slimmer versus today's pucks, which reversed this order by shifting the focal point to the more mellow, relaxed and less grainy, yet as equally opened up, direction."

"The last exercise included the LessLoss Echo's End Original DAC, which purposely doesn't incorporate any stock feet. Three Bindbreakers in-between this machine and my rack's shelf not only resulted in more potency points versus the Pacific case, but also showed how much more performance the Lithuanian DAC still held. The improvement today's decouplers introduced in this particular case still wasn't of night and day variety, but my ears mapped it as the biggest yet. As I wrote in my Echo's End review published here, this machine's core voice includes pristine backdrop, moisture, overall elegance and top notch expressiveness well-trained ears oftentimes associate with the R-2R architecture. Mellowness and earthiness also are a part of this sophisticated package. Three Bindbreakers underneath the Lithuanian DAC yet again acted in the already well-known way, which resulted in sonics speedier and more open. Thinner and stronger pressed pencil swirls applied to all virtual outlines, which upped the ante on overall clarity. Bass became tighter and snappier but had its density intact. Background got a bit darker to reveal even more tiny bits suspended in-between instruments."

"At this point I knew which product benefited the most from Bindbreakers' presence, the LessLoss Echo's End emerged as the DAC of choice."

"In short, the result was better with Bindbreakers than without them, it arrived at no sonic penalty and scored high enough to justify the expense given my platform's total value. In this context today's pucks introduced the subtle yet audible improvement for mere pennies."

"Price-to-performance ratio was generous. Save select hardware swaps, I'd have a hard time spending the same coin elsewhere and netting a similar result."
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