On-ear. To my surprise, these differences parlayed instantly over the ultra-resolved floating ribbons. Call it the cabriolet effect when you drive with the top down. Unbounded sunlight floods in from above. That stands in for the increase of top-down illumination. Here it was strongest in the treble and presence region but continued lower. Wind plays with your hair, reddens your skin and refreshes the air.  The wind is the microdynamically more charged atmosphere. The constantly new air represents twitchier liveliness like negative ions coming off water molecules at an active shore. It's the opposite of stale canned air when the car roof and windows are up again.

Cueing up a .flac of Ulotne by Anna Maria Jopek and Branford Marsalis, the opener's bells rose decidedly steeper into their upper harmonics, then trailed longer to kick off the cabrio action. When past the moody intro Branford's shiny soprano sax goes into quicksilvery runs and wailing peaks whilst the Polish songstress ascends into her head voice for the leitmotif, both rode more strongly on the wind of their breaths. This released more energy to communicate stronger. Once more the sense of recorded venue established right at the beginning of the cut was more tacit than over the Puritan.

A good word for the result is more electrifying. It's at the core of liveliness to oppose the staler aspects of canned. The more virtual sparks fly, the better our transportation into the playback illusion. In my book, much of it revolves around superior timing. It's why I prefer DC-coupled wide-bandwidth amps and 2-way speakers with simpler filters. Now I must add passive power distribution to the list of enablers.

With two spare sockets to show, I used two Clear Lines to pile on the lead for Furutech's Nano Crystal² Formula. Neither the Soundaware A1 Pro of balanced SD transport/DAC nor Schiit's dedicated amp for just these headphones are high-ticket items though the ribbons themselves are. The point is, these modest electronics really pricked up their ears when fronted by the Furutech. Its lead over my usual box has me suspect that a rethink of our main system's power delivery with up to ten outlets across two locations could now be in order. Ouch. Such wake-up calls are simply one professional liability of reviewing. You hear things which best what you already have. Then diehard Gordon Gecko intones his 'greed is good' mantra and you're back on the hamster wheel.

To wrap up, if our playback had an acoustic shape like a body, today's Furutech would be a younger leaner fitter version with quicker reflexes. At ~40% below the company's next NCF power distributor and ~75% under the top model, the GTO-D2 NCF is the most affordable entry into this approach if 4 outlets do you. That makes it the GoTO version where D2 could be shorthand for dynamics squared to hint at more microdynamic nuance and range. Whatever you might like to read into the alphanumerical soup, it's a piece of hifi kit which embodies simple-does-it thinking and thus also holds hands with its kissing cousin, less is more.

Bring the gun, leave the cannoli?

If we can extricate from that image all gratuitous movie violence, it indeed suits the occasion. To rewrite another script, play it again, Sam?

Yes, please.