lessloss blackbody

I have one Blackbody located on the wall behind my AMR CD77.1. I was very suprised with Bazza's comment about locating them facing north. This happens to be the orienatation of mine and where I found the Blackbody gave positive results. I have no idea why this should be so, and perhaps it is just co-incidence. I would have to concur with the findings of the posters above in general. It is one of the few ' tweaks ' I have found without the presence of a downside, such as skewed frequency response. The soundstage is simply more open and clearer in all directions. Within that soundstage, details are clearer and hence one is drawn more easily into the musical performance. A sort of unforced naturalness is present that makes music sound less digital and more like music. One gets the impression that some sort of electronic grunge is being cleared away. The nayesayers are typically those that have a closed mindset and unwillingness to accept anything that challenges the boundaries of their belief systems, claiming science is on their side when the reality is it is just scientific bias. An open minded individual may correctly voice skepticism, but reserve his judgement until he actually hears something for himself. Whether one is prepared to do this is a personal choice.

For my part, I found that most claims made by high-end dealers and manufacturers are exagerrated or fundamentally flawed. This comes from 10 years of serious investigation and exploration of cables, resonance control, AC power delivery enhancement, stands and components themselves. I treat anything that most paid reviewers write with the greatest skepticism, or for that matter even private reviews. This comes from experiential knowledge that system and system/room interactions have a profound effect on outcomes. Value for money will be a personal judgement, even if the system interaction is positive. I chose to keep the Blackbody because I liked what it did. However, I don't think it is for those that have not already reached a satisfying level of transparency to source in their systems. It won't correct serious system deficiencies and colourations, it simply expands upon what is already there. The more well tuned and transparent the system is, the more clearly the differences will be heard. If you find the sweet spot, it is difficult to be without it.

I sent a response to the curious posts which followed my earlier submission of 03.20.10 but it didn't get past the moderator. It may have been a bit challenging and therefore personal but I thought it was civil enough. Perhaps the moderator suspected some sparks would fly. I will make a further point. This is the same old story you hear over and over again on Audiogon. If someone doesn't understand how something works, it becomes a topic of ridicule. Sarcasm becomes the order of the day. The fact that actual users fairly consistently report some sort of benefit with the Blackbody is of no consequence and ignored. Their credibility and collective experience is discounted by implied superiority, even when the critical person/persons concerned have never physically seen or heard the item on topic. Haven't we all heard this before ? It seems to be the rule rather than exception in audio. It is fine to not believe in something. But leave it at that or offer constructive rather than destructive comment. As Stani explained correctly in his last post, Louis Motek at least offers a detailed explanation for his product on his website, for anyone to critique, if they are capable of it. Anyone can say ' I don't believe it works. ' But that's all it is, one more opinion amongst the millions of opinions out there that really don't count for anything. An opinion backed by homework and some logical argument would at least carry more significance and serve some purpose.

I don't believe that every single person that tries the Blackbody will hear the same level of improvement, or perhaps it could go the other way . This holds for any piece of audio gear. In my gear, I was ready to write it off till I placed it behind the CD and away from my weight-sensitive GPA Monaco shelving. Its not that I didn't hear change in all positions tried, its that the change included a skewed frequency response which could have been explained by the considerable mass of the Blackbody on the GPA shelf. On the wall behind the CD player, this ruled this out as a factor. Tvad makes a valid comment about a ' blackness ' between notes a user observed, that one could consider unmusical. My observation ( and that of an audiophile friend who dropped in for a listen ) was that there was an overall greater musical involvement and not the reverse. Relatively speaking, the presentation was more subliminal or more like real music. One distinctly noted the absence of something, not of ambient detail, but of less smudging of the ambient detail. Like Tvad, I have used products in the past that led to a greater ' blackness ' of the background but were actually robbing micro-detail in the process, leading to a less engaging sound. It's all there with the Blackbody, but everything is clearer. I stand by my comment that the benefit will be most noticeable, the more transparent to source your system is.

I have just trialed a beta pair of interconnects that are about to retail at $5000 a pair, that outperformed and replaced the Indras in a fellow audiophiles 'state of the art' system. In my system which tends to a lean presentation, these cables didn't quite work. The perceived value for money factor simply wasn't there, even at half the retail price. The point I am making is that system and system/room interactions are the ultimate determinants for the success of any piece of audio gear. In the real world, there may be interactions with the Blackbody with other resonance control or AC power devices. Louis claims that it works independently of powerline filtration or enhancement. If you take him on his word, it must at least be the case with the Lessloss line of products. If you judge Louis credibility on the basis of performance of his previous offerings, then you need to take his word seriously, or at least offer it some respect. If you look at the gear that some of the posters here are using, you can see there is some serious stuff. There would be a typical history of rejection of some major pieces of kit on the search for the ultimate in hi-fi. The fact that the Blackbody finds a place in many of these systems must be of some significance to an enquiring mind, unless one claims a superior musical ear based on nothing more than strong opinion.