"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

"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

"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."

"Surprise."

"Because the LessLoss FireWall units spent a relatively long time with us and we knew we liked them, we used them for daily music listening - with great satisfaction."

"Perhaps for the first time we heard the maximum capabilities of the HD 600."

"The Firewall's performance here became even more tangible and plastic, and even had a positive impact on the stereo image that we had not expected in our headphone experience."

"We heard details like never before, in a space so much more than expected from headphones. The sound became more open, bolder, but it also kept its dynamics and bass. We achieved a practically perfect, impeccable response, naturally within the given headphone category."

"The LessLoss Firewall 64X caused a huge surprise."

"A common problem with power filters is that they greatly change the sound of the system. This is not an issue with Firewall 64X. It has a very good effect on the sound, since it is capable of filtering out the noise generated by the polluted current without modification."

"In addition, it increases the stereo width - and especially the depth of the sound field - and make the stereo image clearer and more accurate."

"Opacity is removed from the sound and dynamics also benefit from its use."

"All in all, it can actually be said that the LessLoss Firewall 64X increases the sound of the system by one category, which is certainly thought-provoking."



[AV-online's Excellent Product Award]

"...audibly lowered the noise floor within my setup"

"...darker backdrop, easier nuance comprehensibility"

"...more orderly image"

"...sound sources became rounder, more tangible and separated finer."

"...led to easier music intake; less choppiness in favour of greater textural complexity, edge replaced via more lively and softer approach, dryness off and increased tunefulness on, plus organic finishing touches."

"...they led to clearly greater musical good. No tonal balance shifts in any particular direction and no cost to essential performance were the key upshots."

"Once connected to any newcomer product, they simply allow it to speak for itself in unaltered honest fashion and quickly map its core voicing, which in effect spells time savings on my end."

"A pristine canvas and the revelatory power of C-MARC products are very useful in my daily work, hence the 'flavourless' word listed above describes their major pro in this specific context, not a con."

"The sensation was quite comparable to having the alike voiced power cable yet of substantially higher tier, which led me to conclude that noise rejection introduced by this cord was further amplified."

"...what happened next was quite unexpected. The difference between direct versus indirect power feed only to the Pacific was anything but small."

"My DAC directly powered via the C-MARC family sounded fleshier, more organic, a bit rounder and fuller, in a way more musical and civilized. The C-MARC loom was easily as agile as the GigaWatt yet put bigger, more present and tangible sound sources on the pedestal instead."

"The very costly DAC of mine [...] gained extra moisture and spatial presence, which led to a substantial increase in pleasure. But most importantly, is this how this machine should sound in the first place? Was this the very first time its original highly organic yet still exceptionally resolving character emerged past being subjected to GigaWatt's own input?"

"...a job well done."

"But most importantly, as a link between my DAC and power cable connected to a wall outlet directly, the LessLoss C-MARC Firewall 64X was profoundly effective, very much unexpected, all in all superb. Used in that way it surely has what it takes to dethrone many full-sized costly power cleaners..."

"As anticipated, this whodunnit was easily sorted. What I'll call the X amp [with Firewall modules]–internally in parts, sonically in 'more'–distinguished itself on two levels. The first had to do with raw quantity."

"Here [with Firewall modules] the bass was better articulated, front-to-back layering more developed, the treble more suave and vocals were more present."

"Describing why the feel was more organic and fluid leads to lazier lengthier decays and background sounds more connected to the foreground. The plain Jane's [without Firewalls] drier take coincided with sharper separation but lacked the more holistic elasticity of the X [with Firewall modules]. One was pricklier and more staccato, the other rounder, smoother and of a more legato persuasion."

"[With Firewalls:] better visibility at the frequency extremes and of the imaging precision in general."

"The depth layers of X [with Firewall modules] during chorus interludes had superior development. With it the low beats of the Bombay Dub Orchestra had more impact and weight."

"One [without Firewalls] was cooler, sharper, more bare boned and lean. The other [with Firewalls] was richer, mellower, smoother and fuller."

"[With Firewall modules had] this afterglow quality. Here lingered on a stronger flavour of space, ambiance and calm."

"For an alternate take on LessLoss Firewall effects, read Vance Hiner's review of the Echo's End DAC. Between us–and we've not had any exchanges–there's no doubt. These Firewall cards really do the trick."

"What today's experiment showed is that it takes no luxury gear at all to hear differences or create improvements."

"With the filter in circuit the background noise is significantly reduced and the decay of notes on the guitar are much easier to hear. The soundstage (as it is) was enhanced. Oddly enough the tonal colours also seemed enhanced. The drum kit was not some amorphous thudding but stretched skins being hit gently. I did not quite believe what I was hearing."

"With the filter in place, the sound was far more musical."

"The 3D soundstage was much bigger and made it easier to differentiate who was doing what."

"I then blinked. My notes for the music without the filter were hifi comments, with the filter I was commenting on the music."

"Well the filter certainly allowed all the individual elements to be easily heard without any frequency response changes."

"All the advantages of mains filters but no loss of dynamics."

"The sound was more 3D and it was easier to hear the individual instruments. Also, the drums had a stronger tonal colour than without the filter."

"It sounded as though the worse the mix the better the effect."

"On the DAC the noise levels were reduced. The tonal colour was much better. The biggest impact was again on the DAC. Was this a weakness in the Audionote DACs? No. I tried the 5x on my Metrum Octave and I heard a similar effect, less noise, more 3D sound, greater tonal colour. Is it possible it only works with NOS DACs? No. Out came my Esoteric DAC with a very similar finding."

"The biggest difference was with bright mixes where the 'truthfulness' of the Class D could make things a bit fierce. The 5x filter tamed that and all that was left was a bright mix. There are many reports on the web of people recommending mains treatments for Class D amplifiers. I had not tried that as I was concerned about the loss of dynamics. With the Lessloss filters there was no real change to the dynamics but the brightness had gone and the tonal colours had increased."

"So, at the end of all this I had to conclude that these filters do work and they do so particularly well with DACs and a Class D amplifier."

"But are they worth it? Given what most of the serious mains conditioning units cost and the fact that some do impact the dynamics (not all of them) then my answer is yes. Is the 5x worth the extra? In a high-resolution system, the answer is positive. A really interesting product that is easy to use and does the job without a negative impact on dynamics."

"This new version is not only more effective in its operation than its predecessor (which I tested earlier this year), but also has a more established design and most importantly a much improved compatibility with high-end components."

"The present iteration is so efficient that only one module of the new design is many times more effective than even a whole series of the previous models put together!"

"No matter how strange and seemingly simple the building blocks of this product appear, they turn out in practice to work remarkably effectively!"

"[Used with] Naim, Cambridge Audio and Marantz, the performance of all of these components was enhanced considerably when used with the Firewall module. Especially the sense of calm that occurs with cleaner power was immediately obvious. Also, there was less of that almost ever-present sandy type sound with slightly unnatural frayed edges. Instead of this typically brittle sound, soon there emerged a clearly more fluid presentation, where even the timbre palette came across in a more natural and pleasing way."

"Another obvious difference is that this version is much less susceptible to the type of device. Because whether it is a source or amplifier, the benefits of the new Firewall module is in all cases immediately noticeable."

"Especially in this kind of purist recording (Bruel & Kjaer dummy head microphone technique), the added value of the new Firewall offers insight into the most subtle expression. The Firewall also causes other typically mixed albums to sound less technically produced and makes it easier to appreciate the tone of voice and instruments as they would normally sound regardless of all the technical processing."

"One aspect where this new Firewall outperforms the former is more smooth performance in what some would call 'analogue type' sound. Perhaps another wording would be less emphasis on typical hi-fi type, artificial sounds coming from components, and taking their place an even smoother, more natural and organic presentation. This also suggests a subtly richer tonality and a resulting rather more relaxed listening experience."

"That the new Firewall module is affordable, looks much better than before, and performs more efficiently, accompanied by a lack of distinct sonic fingerprint, only makes it all the more attractive. The main thing the user initially perceives upon use in their own audio system is that the sound becomes easier, smoother and flows more naturally."

"I think that by its ingeniously simple and highly effective operation, chances are that many new users will happily embrace this new version of the LessLoss Firewall Current Conditioning Module and it will earn a permanent place in their hi-fi systems."

"Time and again LessLoss products always seem to leave us with the most positive impression."

"Both products [Firewall Module and USB Firewall Key] are [...] very affordable in comparison to High End Class devices."

"The Firewall Module provided a clear, three-dimensional soundstage, and powerful, tight bass. It is impossible not to notice the strong effect of the filter when engaged and, considering its price, it becomes a real must-have for those who want to save on expensive cables and use standard "rip cord". Of course, the full effect of it is disclosed with good power cables (ideally - also from LessLoss), but the noise filtering will work fine even with standard computer type power cords."

"The USB Firewall Key works in a similar way. When used in conjunction with our iMac - Devialet 400 connection, the sound improved, primarily this was noticed in the bass."

"The soundstage became really holographic, and the cymbals were so believable, you could just reach out and touch them."

"Despite their modest size, and overall "lightness," this gear truly performs as advertised. The technology works - it is as simple as that. We look forward to more new and interesting products from LessLoss."

"Without the Key, solo and chorus vocals were a bit hashier around the edges; dirtier."

"Perhaps the best way to explain the Key action is to consider the multiplicity of music. How much of it actually registers at your ears as such? How much do you focus on lead vocals or instruments instead whilst the rest acts as more or less fill or atmosphere?"

"The LessLoss wood blocks made it easier to experience all of it weighted equally. This doesn't give preference to the obvious foreground stuff, then downgrades all else as secondary or less. Put different, the USB Key softened the psychological zoom function on the central stuff."

"On the level of attention, it 'zoomed out' to consider the whole as a simultaneously happening whole."

"To me, then, the real benefit of these LessLoss boxes wasn't so much better sound per se as it was a more wholesome less piecemeal or partial participation in the music. If that makes sense to you, nothing else needs saying. If you only accept hard sonic 'facts' as proper review commentary–the primitive more treble, less bass etc.–I don't have anything except less hash and grain. On pure quantity, that effect was quite marginal. On quality, it was a more relevant matter."

"Falls under more of a gestalt changer. Here the usual audio lingo reaches for words like flow vs. choppiness, organic vs. mechanical."

"The ears of our species don't connect to computers and analytical software code but to minds and hearts which embed in human psychology. That's a different perspective than decibels and THD. It really needs other language to talk about in any meaningful ways. For a harder qualifier in that realm, I'd rate the efficacy of the LessLoss USB Firewall Key as higher than most cable swaps."