LessLoss BlackBody: improve your sound for just $959 and your sense of reason
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 25th 2009 3:06PM
posted November 25th 2009 3:06PM
posted November 25th 2009 3:06PM
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So you pay $959 for LessLoss? How much for NoLoss?
@UnsilentMajority
NoLoss?! Easy, you just alter the particles' pentium physics and bounce it off the theory of relativity using a cross dimensional time-machine from the future. Squared.
$1 Million please...
Lessloss = $959
companion cube = priceless
@UnsilentMajority Uh oh, you've just divided by 0.
Does this run on snake oil?
@Mushrooshi
Unicorn blood and the tears of little children.
unicorns and magic weeeeeeeee
This is for the dumbass rich people who can't think of anything better to do with their not so hard-earned money. Actually all LessLoss is doing is taking money from all of the dumb millionaires pockets. Smart.
@Kyle Krcmaric
If you're dumb enough to buy this product, your thick head probably serves as much of an acoustic barrier as this hunk of plastic.
@Kyle Krcmaric
Some "rich" people work hard for their money...
@Woz
I know that, I was referring specifically to the ones who don't, not all rich people in general.
I suppose I *might* see this working if it actually does what it says and you put it between your speaker and any other electronic equipment(to make it completely shadow the speaker). Speakers generally work via electromagnets which would be ever so slightly affected by other electromagnetic waves, so turning those into blackbody radiation could prevent that. But unless you have some crazy powerful electromagnetic waves running though the house(in which case you have much bigger problems) you probably wouldn't hear much of a difference.
@MarcusMaximus : I don't know why you got downranked.... That was sarcasm right?
@MarcusMaximus
I think people just don't like your avatar
@MarcusMaximus
I see your fugly avatar followed you to the new engadget.
But it says something about mapping the UNCHARTED TERRITORY, so it must be included in the PS3.
@(Unverified)
The PS3 does not run on gimmicks.
@Kyle Krcmaric
Playstation Eye and Bluray beg to differ.
@(Unverified)
Oh, and Home. Don't forget Playstation Home.
Oh, and tilt-control Sixaxis.
Oh, and their upcoming 'dildo' motion controllers.
i'll wait for the Bang and Olufsen branded version for 3x the cost.
@(Unverified) no no no thats Bose's territory.
@(Unverified)
Have you even heard B&O speakers? Their speaker and amp line is far different from the flatpanel TV's they "make".
Hey audiophiles. I have this magic rock that I found in my backyard. If I hit you in the head with it hard enough you'll actually hear sounds that aren't even there! Now the rock itself costs $10,000, but I'll hit you in the head with it for free.
isnt this that thing that Snake used to find the president in Escape from New York?
This is how it works:
1. Buy this for $959.
2. Have "Self-Denial" kick in after wondering if you should have spent that money on this.
3. Say to self: I paid so much for this, it must be working!
4. Say to self: Yeah, I hear the difference. (even though there may not be)
5. Grab confirmation from others.
@honogram
6: ???
7: Profit!
LOL
The guys at HydrogenAudio would be laughing at this thing...
"The "beam of light from a flashlight" analogy is easy to grasp, but the truth is that the opposite is happening. The Blackbody is more akin to an "anti-matter projector""
This would go great with the $500 Denon premium digital cables:
http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3429.asp
(Also known as Ethernet or RJ-45)
@ThreeDee912
Didn't you know, digital signals can be deformed by cruddy cables...especially over such great distances as 1.5 metres!
ha!
@ThreeDee912: Don't miss their sale on power cables...
http://www.lessloss.com/high-performance-power-cables-c-65.html
@cherryboom To be completely fair, as I noted above, speakers work via electromagnets which could be ever so slightly affected by electromagnetic waves but wouldn't be by infrared light. So you could make the claim that it reduces interference, but the signal to noise ratio is already so massive that you wouldn't be able to hear the difference.
"The high-end audio market has always been more about marketing than about music,"
What the? Those that think this kind of stuff is high-end, don't understand high-end audio. It is better to call this segment "Pricey Audio." Those that know names like Naim, REL, Linn, and Proac come from over the pond, and names like Audio Research, Avalon, LAMM, and McIntosh come from the USA, truely know high-end audio. As such, true high-end is all about the music and not about the marketing. If you think Bose is high-end audio, then you really don't understand much about the subject. Just because a component costs over $750, does not make it high-end in terms of what audiophiles understand.
Please spend some time in a true high-end audio store. A store that carries at least a few of the brands named above, and then read The Absolute Sound for a year or so before making comments about high-end audio please. Otherwise you run the risk of having a segment of your audience that will view your reviews as silly.
@MidwestTechGuy
Agreed. I've always thought Engadget's reviews of audio equipment were rather lame, imho.
@MidwestTechGuy
Seems like the marketing is working!
But I agree with the sentiment.
@MidwestTechGuy
True, to a degree. BUT anyone who has hung out in the "high-end" audio world knows that there is no shortage of snake oil there also. Monster Cables comes immediately to mind. Throw in some specially "tuned" wooden blocks for under you CD player, cones for vibration damping you amp and Teflon sleeves for power cords, all at breathtaking prices and you have high-end nirvana.
@Giraffe
There are laws of diminishing returns for sure. I purchased a pair of the Proac D15 speakers for about $2,000 several years ago, then three years later upgraded to the Proac D28 speakers for about $4,000. This is not even really high-end territory yet either. But I can say that for double the money the speakers were not twice as good. They were better, and worth it to me, but I can see how some will call that snake oil. Some high-end equipment companies like Rega Research don't recommend spending a ton of money on speaker wires. However Rega does make a $9,000 CD Player too. More snake oil?
My point is there are a lot of very fine people like Bob Carver, Gordon Gow, Roy Gandy, and many more who are solid engineers and music lovers. They don't sell snake oil but believe deeply in making music as lifelike as possible in your own living room. They care nothing at all about marketing. Their equipment is the antithesis of marketing to the masses. To have an opening sentence in this story that uses absolute words like "always" in referring to high-end and it being about marketing short changes these people's fine work and sells even shorter those readers who may now have a badly skewed view of what high-end really means, it had nothing to do with the mass market which LessLoss, Bose, and B&O are about. Mass market is fine for some, but it should never be confused with high-end.
@MidwestTechGuy For 20 years I thought like you do and found pleasure and a sense of belonging to a special group of somehow elite people. I climbed up the Naim upgrade ladder, tweaked my Rega Planars, pimped my cables and connectors and bowed before my Totems. All the while believing it was worth the money, yet never being satisfied for more than a month.
Then one of the highly regarded small manufacturers fessed up and made a U-turn, dropping their conventional products and now producing an integrated fully active system for small change in high-end standards. It made my lovely system sound woolly and dull but luckily, looking at forums, 95 % of audiophiles live in denial and I sold it for good money and bought loads of good music for the change. For 2 years now, I've enjoyed music, without giving a thought to the sound of the system as there is none.
@finbred "All the while believing it was worth the money, yet never being satisfied for more than a month."
There is no point buying hi-fi/hi-end audio if you can't hear the difference.
And in general: there is no point in buying something what makes little to nothing difference to you.
I new in past some rich folks who were buying hi-fi/hi-end solely because having something cheap at home was out of question. It is quite stupid hearing $25K system playing some silly pop, which fails even at plain stereo.
P.S. Btw, $2000-4000 loudspeakers are still in hi-fi territory. It's not a high-end. High-end is generally a something made to reach some design higher end: proper/rare materials, proper (hand) assembly, properly tuned and tested. Most of the crap like B&O or Bose isn't even close to high-end... First time I heard B&O I couldn't even believe that it costs that much: my home hi-fi costing a fraction of its price was delivering better sound. If only Mark Levinson and Revel Ultima were more affordable...
@finbred
I hope you'd at least agree with the premiss that true high end is not about marketing. Some of the high-end manufacturers never even take out an ad. They sell their products by word of mouth only.
We are not quite alike. I have a Rega Planar 2. It is a turntable for those of you who don't know. I've bought it over 25 years ago. I upgraded it to a RB300 arm, changed to an upgraded motor, and it now holds an Exact cartridge. All told it is still a turntable with upgrades for about a grand. I'm so glad vinyl records are making a comeback. They are so much better than a CD when played with the right equipment. While I tweak a little, when I have something that I'm happy with I stick with it. Most of my equipment has been with me for many years. I bi-amped my speakers using one amp to feed the tweeters and the other to feed the woofers. That improvement in sound cost of an extra $400 amp (used), and was the best improvement in sound for the money I ever did. I haven't change it since. In the past 25 years I've tweaked the basic system about six times. I am now very pleased.
I'd call my self more a very fortunate music lover rather than being part of a special group of elitist. It is not the impression that works for me. Although I'll agree that at some point near the higher end of high end the cost does make it a rich man's hobby.
To repeat the quote that got this thread going:
"The high-end audio market has always been more about marketing than about music,"
My only point to begin with is that nothing could be further from the truth.
@MidwestTechGuy Having worked in advertising for the past decade I'll have to disagree. But perhaps we define the word marketing differently. Word of mouth can and often is the best marketing strategy for small manufacturers. NOT advertising can be a sound and effective way to reach specific consumer groups. Marketing is ALL about pulling the right strings, giving the target group just the right state of mind and satisfaction. (At this point I need to apologize that I can't express myself thoroughly in my 3rd language). You personally may very well still be on the narrow path of seeking the true sound, but in my experience high-end in general hasn't been about that for ages. It can and mostly does still sound fantastic, I'll give you that. But it is very much about marketing. Not for the masses, but for those with the means and the soft spots. I was one and who knows may still be one, but I don't think I can be fooled anymore. Oh, and I do have a 1k turntable, but no way can it compete with my digital setup. Warm and cuddly, sure, and the kids can look at it go in awe, but that's it.
I love engadget's new feature. It's on every single page load:
Warning: Unresponsive Script -> Stop Script
@Fry Guy I suspect that: 1. Your computer is becoming outdated. or 2. You have too many programs running or you have malware/viruses that are using too many resources.
I've had the same experience as you have under all the above conditions.
someone's a little trigger happy with the down-ranking today
April Fools! ... er.
this calls for a revamped qoute: stupid is who stupid buys
@poet
"stupid is as stupid does" I believe
"stupid is as stupid buys" would've made more sense
stupid.
shakti stone, anyone?
I can't wait for someone to open that thing up and find a big empty space with a lead weight duct-taped to the bottom.
Contrary to what some people here think, EMI is a problem with audio equipment. This product is of course a ripoff though. Most of the electromagnetic waves are reflected inside of the metal cases off of the metal case to the product, so this won't do much for stereo equipment. The claim about improving a sound card's quality is probably true if placed in the computer case, but people achieve the same effect by wrapping their sound card in special paper that blocks EMI for like $1.