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Laminar Streamer wins Upper Echelon Class Award

January, 2017, author: Matej Isak
"The difference when comparing my computer server/streamer to the LessLoss Laminar Streamer is not small by any means. When I first connected the Laminar Streamer to the MSB Select DAC II, the first thing I wrote down in my listening notes was "analog-like easiness, fuller and more vivid projection of the sound," as well as "prolonged sense of the scale."

"I took a direct hit from the LessLoss Laminar Streamer Direct Drive SD card player, but even after that hit, it continued to grow on me subtly."

"This is where it becomes most obvious that we are concerned here with the topmost echelon of ultra high-end audio reproduction. A convincing recreation of acoustical space and the instruments being played within this space is the most demanding challenge for both analog and digital front ends. In this regard, while analog comes with impressive mileage, the digital competition has now obviously gained headway to such an extent that, today, with the Laminar Streamer, it has little in common with state-of-the-art digital playback of only a few years ago."

"revealed a new reference point overall."

"The LessLoss Laminar Streamer Direct Drive SD card player operates at such a high level that it is difficult or impossible to assemble and balance a system which would reveal any of its own flaws."

"Louis Motek's vision pushes the known horizon of uncompromising digital audio playback to a completely new plane. The Laminar defines this new plane like no other device."

"In a very real way, the Laminar Streamer frees us and our machines from this sort of activity and allows us to fully engage in an emotionally charged state and completely personal process. The sabbatical (vacation) from commercial activity I alluded to before is the establishment of a private space where one can freely dedicate his own private time and senses for the pure enjoyment and experience of music. This reminds me of a concert going experience, or taking time to explore gourmet food. These moments are only ever special because we charge them with that special condition ourselves, often times by disengaging ourselves from our usual state of struggle within a commercial or careerist environment. That special rest we experience through the purposeful establishment of such conditions is exactly what I experienced in music through use of the Laminar Streamer."

"The Laminar Streamer continues to shake my inner core through the huge impact it has had on me, and this feeling remains with me and is not fading away."

"The real luxury is the level of realism, drama and emotional impact that these products bring to our experience. The LessLoss Laminar Streamer Direct Drive SD card player pushes the boundaries of this type of luxury further by no small margin. Once experienced, a whole new world opens up. In absence of iPad's, Wi-Fi, IP based devices, internet streaming devices, etc., you simply melt into the music."

"The Laminar Streamer "beamed" me into a different universe, where my digital audio rites were constitutionally changed not only by the mere ritual, but most importantly with the experience of stressless, direct, pure audio intake. I do not think it will happen any time again soon in the digital realm. That is how far ahead the Laminar is."

"The LessLoss Laminar Streamer Direct Drive SD card player represents an early dawn of a new era and acts like a Time Machine that suspiciously changes the facet of time and space.

"I've travelled far and deep into the digital audio universe, but never as far and as sublime as with the Laminar Streamer."

"For what it accomplishes and embodies, I'm wholeheartedly giving the LessLoss Laminar Streamer Direct Drive SD card player Mono & Stereo's Upper Echelon Award. In addition, it takes a new place in the Uber Audio throne at Mono & Stereo."

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"The new LessLoss DAC should be on your list."

February, 2017, author: Srajan Ebaen
"The Echo's End had the most distinctive easily grasped gestalt ..."

"Whilst it didn't sound like tubes, it felt like them. Whilst I fed it pure PCM, it behaved like deep DSD."

"Not sounding but feeling like tubes meant textural fluidity with plenty of connective tissue but no response liberties or THD seasoning. Behaving like DSD meant sweeter, more elastic and texturally softer than standard CD sound, with more overt ambient recovery."

"Deep DSD indicates that the LessLoss went beyond the Lindemann's actual resampling. It expressed the same flavour but did so at categorically higher potency; in pure PCM no less."

"Longest ever decays from digital?"

"What the listener can tell regardless is that it works; and very plainly so."

"A vital qualifier was how such pervasive gentility–that softer more organic approach–didn't come at the expense of vividness. ... The musical gestalt didn't collapse."

"Muscle tone was that of an upright not supine body. This was key. Its softness was more on the surface. It didn't impact the core of musical tension. Incidentally, that's been a personal complaint with DSD converters of the über-alles or resampling kind. They all bled out some caffeine and put a minor damper on the musical adrenaline. The Echo's End did not. It did all the other DSD things and at a very good clip but not that one."

"Should your own tastes overlap–of wanting the pretty, nubile and spacious aspects of DSD but not its reduced verve– this LessLoss just might have your number. In an ocean of generics, having such a distinctive calling card is a useful advantage."

"I feel privileged to have experienced the Laminar Streamer's sonic achievements."

"Streaming the laminar way, music felt juicier and calmer at the same time. This was particularly keen on overcooked nervous jittery productions with their tense hype and sizzle. Now those had elegance and mellifluousness. They were on song according to the bel canto definition."

"The primary taste is of greater calm; as though time ran slower. This makes the listener more settled and poised."

"Intermixed aspects are a removal of very fine metallic grit in transients and overtones; and wetter ambiance."

"It's only by going back and forth, with/without, that one inspects why the experience differs. That's when the disappearance of faint glittery upper-mid/treble grit gets checked off; when more specific spatial sensations get translated into heightened contrast; and as a result of that and intangibles, why the overriding quality is greater calm. Here team LessLoss are undeniably on to something. DACs seem to be even more susceptible to how their digital data arrive than we suspected. Many of the gestalt-based complaints which audiophiles try to address with sundry hardware changes seem to have their roots here, at the very beginning."

"True, the Laminar Streamer did sit at this peak with the finest resolve of ambiance and focus for spatial mapping."

"The combination of Laminar Streamer and Echo's End spelled o-r-g-a-n-i-c and l-e-g-a-t-o in capital letters. Without losing any substance, music manifested less solid, staid and straight-jacketed. It felt more suspended, afloat and breathing. To visualize, think blooming ink blots on wet watercolour paper, albeit in 3D. That's your counterpoint for edge-limned silhouettes in a shadow play. That and the silky textural 'suede' softness were key. They walked hand in hand with greater calm."

"This calm had a very different living oxygenated quality to it."

"If what I described tracks your taste, the new LessLoss DAC should be on your list."

"Someone in Lithuania burns the midnight oil; at the very extreme high-end, in the middle and below; and not on the same old same old. Innovation rules!"
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