LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers

[bodiebill]

9 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Hard to keep a really open mind sometimes in this hobby when you see this kind of thing. Reading the manufacturer's web site, I see that they claim they use special copper.

 

https://www.lessloss.com/firewall-module-p-216.html

 

"In standard extrusion processes, the copper undergoes many forces until the desired size is achieved. Pictured at the top of the image below, you can see a standard copper wire as extruded using industrial methods. Next to this standard copper wire, you can see our copper that we use in the Firewall for Loudspeakers. It is a completely different beast. This is created in house through proprietary means."

 

Knowing what type of industrial equipment is used to make copper wire, I am really skeptical that they are making anything in house, and even sourcing copper wire to their own specifications for making these little gadgets seems highly unlikely, but who knows... The picture does not really tell anything as they are showing polished copper, ok.

 

 

The rest of the technical descriptions on the webiste screams of snake oil :) 

 

hi Stéphane! We already agreed that our approaches are different. You try to (dis)prove something without listening. I try to listen without (dis)proving anything. Of course you will attribute my experience to some kind of bias, and that is fine. As long as I get goose bumps when listening... :-)

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

1 minute ago, bodiebill said:

 

hi Stéphane! We already agreed that our approaches are different. You try to (dis)prove something without listening. I try to listen without (dis)proving anything. Of course you will attribute my experience to some kind of bias, and that is fine. As long as I get goose bumps when listening... :-)

 

I was expecting this kind of reply :) You have to admit the website is a little over the top - custom made copper wire, the guys working in hazmat suits ... - but maybe the product does something ! As I mentioned, I find the whole thing amusing.

[bodiebill]

4 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

I was expecting this kind of reply :) You have to admit the website is a little over the top - custom made copper wire, the guys working in hazmat suits ... - but maybe the product does something ! As I mentioned, I find the whole thing amusing.

 

I did not read the website. Just listened to the barrels.

Of course you are still very much welcome to have listen when you are in the neighborhood.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

From reading the website, I understand the claim is that it will "filter" the high frequencies that reside towards the surface of the cable - "based on the laws of nature" - so not through some divine intervention :)

 

 

What they refer to as the skin effect is a well know property of cables which lead to higher frequencies traveling towards the surface of the cable. How they would "filter" those high frequencies by specially treating the outside of the cable is a little mysterious (to me) but why not. 

 

But yes, I am open to listening to them, and we must remain humble when it comes to our understanding of audio.

[mfsoa]

At least hey have the scientific proof that this works. Just look at those graphs!!

 

Nice to see some mfgrs showing real, meaningful data on their websites.

 

sheesh

[bodiebill]

6 minutes ago, mfsoa said:

At least hey have the scientific proof that this works. Just look at those graphs!!

 

Nice to see some mfgrs showing real, meaningful data on their websites.

 

sheesh

 

It is probably like often in life. People try something and when it works they pretend to be able to explain why. But in most cases we cannot really. So I do take their 'explanations' with a grain of salt. However giving the end result I think some good ears were involved in developing these magic kegs.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

I do not have sufficient understanding of loudspeakers to have a relevant opinion about all the science behind it, and do not claim to.  I have no idea how "parasitic" high frequency signals - mostly inaudible - could affect speakers.

 

I have worked for quite a few years, however, for a cable manufacturer and have witnessed first hand the type of equipment used in factories to produce copper wire. AFAIK, you don't make small batches of this stuff. Then again, the price of these small cables is quite high.

 

[bodiebill]

4 minutes ago, hopkins said:

I do not have sufficient understanding of loudspeakers to have a relevant opinion about all the science behind it, and do not claim to.  I have no idea how "parasitic" high frequency signals - mostly inaudible - could affect speakers.

 

I have worked for quite a few years, however, for a cable manufacturer and have witnessed first hand the type of equipment used in factories to produce copper wire. AFAIK, you don't make small batches of this stuff. Then again, the price of these small cables is quite high.

 

In my setup they performed really well with the Fidelium cables -- fyi & fwiiw, as you also use these.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, bodiebill said:

 

It is probably like often in life. People try something and when it works they pretend to be able to explain why. But in most cases we cannot really. So I do take their 'explanations' with a grain of salt. However giving the end result I think some good ears were involved in developing these magic kegs.

 

So much in audio is like this. Which is why people who barrack for measuring in conventional  ways are so far from appreciating what is missing in the audio world; solid, engineering based solutions for all these "subtle" effects.

 

Parasitic behaviours are a bastard. They are everywhere in audio systems, and electrical interference, these days, is probably the biggest obstacle to getting optimum SQ; twenty years ago, power supplies were awful, and led to much degradation of the sound.

 

Noise riding on cables is a problem; my current setup has had to be substantially tweaked to prevent and filter out this, to get what I hear to acceptable quality levels. If a commercial solution is available, for those who don't want to go down the DIY route, that's fine; so long as it works and it doesn't sell for silly money - an answer is an answer.

 

There is never magic, anywhere - all this stuff is a workaround for a lack of engineering expertise applied to audio systems. One day, normal systems will work correctly, straight from the shipping boxes - all this added nonsense will be completely unnecessary ...

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

The vendor (Lessloss) claims their product gets rid of high frequency interferences from speaker cables, a bit like ferrite beads I guess (I still don't see how that would even be possible/effective at the level of the speaker cable, and I hope someone could educate me here)

 

The first thing to do would be to put your ear close to your speaker, with your gear turned on and no music playing, and check if the speaker is perfectly silent. If not, you have a problem, which could be interferences.

 

If your speakers are perfectly silent, I do not see why you would need that product (but I could be missing something).

 

If you do have noise, then repeat the test with the Lessloss Firewall in place. If there is no difference, return them! If there is a difference, you may still want to try and find the source of the interference. Many things can cause interferences: ground loops, lack of proper cable shielding, unsheilded equipment emitting RF close to others, the position of the cables, etc... Perhaps a simple problem can be fixed without spending 1500€+ on a fancy ferrite bead.

[Vincent des Champs]

31 minutes ago, hopkins said:

The first thing to do would be to put your ear close to your speaker, with your gear turned on and no music playing, and check if the speaker is perfectly silent. If not, you have a problem, which could be interferences.

My speakers have always been ‘perfectly silent’ when putting my ears against the speaker cones. And still, improvements in noise cleaning have a major effect on audiophile characteristics. So, I must disagree with your way to assess whether noise is a ‘problem’ or not. As said, there are a lot of things going on in the electrical circuits that we cannot define nor explain. Take it as it is, and trust your ears.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

26 minutes ago, Vincent des Champs said:

My speakers have always been ‘perfectly silent’ when putting my ears against the speaker cones. And still, improvements in noise cleaning have a major effect on audiophile characteristics. So, I must disagree with your way to assess whether noise is a ‘problem’ or not. As said, there are a lot of things going on in the electrical circuits that we cannot define nor explain. Take it as it is, and trust your ears.

 

I am just looking at the manufacturer's claims and trying to make sense of them. "Filtering" out noise that would be "embedded" in the audio signal at the output of the amplifier using something at the end of the speaker cable seems to me to defy reason: by definition, you cannot seperate noise from the audio signal once it is within the audible range and in the speaker signal.

 

So if anything is happening here, assuming something is, it is that your system is not as "neutral and uncolored" as you think, and you may as well just use some equalization to lower the high frequencies (indiscriminantly), and compare. Have you tried that ?

 

Filtering out high frequency noise that would be picked up directly by the speaker cable would seem to me unnecessary unless perhaps you had powered speakers. 

[Vincent des Champs]

4 minutes ago, hopkins said:

if anything is happening here, assuming something is, it is that your system is not as "neutral and uncolored" as you think

Bold statements here since you don’t have an idea of my setup in my listening room. But let’s ignore that.

6 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Have you tried that

I don’t feel to. My system is on the highest level of enjoyment in years 🎶 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Just now, Vincent des Champs said:

Bold statements here since you don’t have an idea of my setup in my listening room. But let’s ignore that.

I don’t feel to. My system is on the highest level of enjoyment in years 🎶 

 

LOL, I am just throwing some ideas on the table, not claiming anything about your system - don't take this the wrong way.

 

If you have ruled out "noise" such as ground loops/RF, then as others have mentioned above, it could be that this product simply attenuates high frequencies. I think it would be worthwhile to test that hypothesis by simply applying EQ on the source signal.

 

When we give our opinion about products it is good to compare them, and here the logical comparison would be to compare it with EQ to better understand what it is doing.

[bodiebill]

At the highest level of audio manufacturing, components are tuned by ear. Even the best designs by teams of top-notch audio engineers cannot guarantee that the sounding result is what people with good ears were looking for. By trial and error they achieve the desired results. Just to show that at this level we just do not fully understand the workings of the signal path that make the audible difference. So why not just accept that, be modest about our rational understanding of these matters, and tune by ear in our homes too?

[fas42]

1 hour ago, hopkins said:

 

I am just looking at the manufacturer's claims and trying to make sense of them. "Filtering" out noise that would be "embedded" in the audio signal at the output of the amplifier using something at the end of the speaker cable seems to me to defy reason: by definition, you cannot seperate noise from the audio signal once it is within the audible range and in the speaker signal.

 

 

One simple mechanism: the speaker cables act as an antenna, and pick up RF energy; this appears at the output stage of the amplifier, and if it has a conventional class AB design, which uses feedback from the output to compare with the input, to reduce any errors, it will attempt to cancel out the errors from the RF noise. The circuits of normal amps perform very badly at these frequencies. and hence SQ suffers. A solution which attenuates that RF noise in the first place can help - note that noise picked up on a cable affects both the receiving end, and the sending end.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

54 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

One simple mechanism: the speaker cables act as an antenna, and pick up RF energy; this appears at the output stage of the amplifier, and if it has a conventional class AB design, which uses feedback from the output to compare with the input, to reduce any errors, it will attempt to cancel out the errors from the RF noise. The circuits of normal amps perform very badly at these frequencies. and hence SQ suffers. A solution which attenuates that RF noise in the first place can help - note that noise picked up on a cable affects both the receiving end, and the sending end.

 

Thanks - I would be very curious to know whether this is in fact demonstrated (for all these high frequencies in the Mhz, way above our listening range). I have never heard of this. Do you have any references for this ? 

[One and a half]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

One simple mechanism: the speaker cables act as an antenna, and pick up RF energy; this appears at the output stage of the amplifier, and if it has a conventional class AB design, which uses feedback from the output to compare with the input, to reduce any errors, it will attempt to cancel out the errors from the RF noise. The circuits of normal amps perform very badly at these frequencies. and hence SQ suffers. A solution which attenuates that RF noise in the first place can help - note that noise picked up on a cable affects both the receiving end, and the sending end.

Rubbish.

Conducted emissions are limited to 30MHz. The output impedance of an amplifier to drive speakers is so low, there's no chance for any antenna effect. 

Source signals, yes, but not speaker cable transmissions.

[yamamoto2002]

On 3/22/2022 at 9:37 PM, hopkins said:

From reading the website, I understand the claim is that it will "filter" the high frequencies that reside towards the surface of the cable - "based on the laws of nature" - so not through some divine intervention :)

 

 

What they refer to as the skin effect is a well know property of cables which lead to higher frequencies traveling towards the surface of the cable. How they would "filter" those high frequencies by specially treating the outside of the cable is a little mysterious (to me) but why not. 

 

But yes, I am open to listening to them, and we must remain humble when it comes to our understanding of audio.

 

Interesting. Is it actually works as advertised? I imagined when the skin of the solid conductor is treated and becomes CuO or Cu2O and its resistance is increased, the current starts to flow through lower resistance path of pure Cu?

[Vincent des Champs]

1 hour ago, yamamoto2002 said:

Is it actually works as advertised

From first hand experience I can say it does work flawlessly: most notable improvement is the sense of depth. This improvement creates huge air around every layer in the music which is mesmerizing.

[yamamoto2002]

Oh, I now understand what "LessLoss Skin-filtering" graph means. From the left to the right, noise frequency gradually increases, with constant frequency 60Hz sine wave(green), and higher frequency noise (red) is more attenuated than lower frequency noise (yellow)  and no attenuation of 60Hz power signal (green). Therefore horizontal axis means noise frequency and time simultaneously. Pretty complex graph.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

If the Firewall does not convince then one could always take it one step further and try this other product of theirs: https://www.lessloss.com/blackbody-p-200.html

 

Only 836$..

 

It deals with electromagnetic interference between your gear and all surrounding objects:

 

'we’ll go on to postulate that indeed any object in the vicinity of your gear’s circuitry influences the resulting sound quality to some degree, even without making physical contact with it' 

 

I am pretty open minded, but not desperate.

🙂

 

[Norton]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

One simple mechanism: the speaker cables act as an antenna, and pick up RF energy; this appears at the output stage of the amplifier, and if it has a conventional class AB design, which uses feedback from the output to compare with the input, to reduce any errors, it will attempt to cancel out the errors from the RF noise. The circuits of normal amps perform very badly at these frequencies. and hence SQ suffers. A solution which attenuates that RF noise in the first place can help - note that noise picked up on a cable affects both the receiving end, and the sending end.

Interesting, what you mention above seems in line with this product from  DNM:

http://www.dnm.co.uk/acatalog/HFTNs.html
 

perhaps trying to achieve the same thing as the Lessloss items?

 

I don’t use HFTNs but knowing the company well and based on nearly 20 years experience with DNM Amps and cables, I’d certainly keep an open mind on such products.

 

[Vincent des Champs]

1 hour ago, hopkins said:

 

If the Firewall does not convince then one could always take it one step further and try this other product of theirs: https://www.lessloss.com/blackbody-p-200.html

 

 

I already ordered 4 of them together with the LessLoss merchandise including t-shirts and caps :-) 

 

OK, this is also one bridge too far for me.. but you never know… if offered for a trial period, I would be interested, no doubt. If it works it aint stupid 😁

[fas42]

10 hours ago, One and a half said:

Rubbish.

Conducted emissions are limited to 30MHz. The output impedance of an amplifier to drive speakers is so low, there's no chance for any antenna effect. 

Source signals, yes, but not speaker cable transmissions.

 

Ah, so the output impedance of an amplifier is very low, at all frequencies, going up to MHz ... yes?