What is that effect? An unusually tacit sensation of overall calming—a German video reviewer calls it peace—which for me presents foremost as musical relaxation. That makes it a somewhat conditional quality or virtue. Whatever personal taste calls overdone chill factor will bleed out musical tension. Now virtual muscle tone goes too limpid at rest. Think of it as a musical form of Buckminster Fuller's famous tensegrity. It's when a structure's stability depends on innate tension or it collapses. Another quality of the Firewall/C-Marc effect is an overall darkening and textural softening. To many it suggests a more analog than digital gestalt. Particularly the higher frequencies show a removal of metallic grit. The low frequencies tend to become more intelligible and articulate which also affects the midband.

Finally there's a keen sense of more extended reverb; as though a damper pedal had lifted off decays to have them ring out more freely. That's another facet of greater relaxation and textural softness. Rather than feel front-loaded on transients, the presentation gets more weighted on its trailing ends. Stacking up LessLoss tech compounds this effect. Listeners keyed primarily into music's angular energetically charged aspects—the adrenaline junkies of our sector—could find it to eventually dilute their cherished on-edge intensity.

Their lot could favor the Nordic flavor of the Ansuz brand. It prioritizes speed, timing and dynamics. Setting our ideal LessLoss dose is key then. That's no different from anything else which really works. Whether it's salt, sugar or vinegar, correct dosage is always vital. It counters primitive thinking that if a particular thing is desirable, a lot more of it must be ever more so. Wherever different qualities intersect, changing one inevitably tugs on the entire weave. Observing all interactions which a change causes is important. We want to evolve our ongoing balance, not end up with lop-sided results that could soon wear out their welcome.

If that sounds like an ill-disguised warning, it's just in the sense of potency. Don't underestimate the LessLoss action on your playback's overall gestalt. I was thus most curious how simultaneously preceding a number of components with Firewall tech on the AC would trigger my sonic balance. I thought that I knew well what to expect. I just couldn't predict its actual dosage. For more on this product, go here. For how Boenicke Audio implement C-Marc tech in their conditioner, go here.

"The ring of shiny liquid you see around holes is glue. If we don't add the glue, the sound suffers and becomes more like everything else you get from people who manufacture efficiently which is to say, get the product out the door quickly to move it and generate sales, investment returns, shareholder satisfaction and such. We do things differently. If it is audibly advantageous, we do it. Here my ears are the final arbiter. Sometimes a little glue and extra care go a long way." Making this box too goes a long way. Just unbraiding the successive layers of C-Marc then removing the enamel on each hair of Litz before a whole conductor bundle is twisted then tinned to become a clean contact is time-consuming. Each Power Distributor needs 32 such cabled contacts. It's no streamlined wham-bam production.

With the UPS tracker email, "included is a 1m US-type C-Marc Entropic Process power cord I used to break in the Distributor; and three Bindbreakers. The Distributor really opens up and sings best when placed on those. Try the included cord between wall and Distributor or Distributor and DAC for example." The hexagonal footer [$310/ea.] is a pimples-meet-dimples affair claimed to work unidirectional. Micro vibrations enter on top but can't return through the bottom. A thin Ply base with concave hollows meets thicker Ply top festooned with 84 bolt heads mounted to a steel plate which a thick steel bolt couples to a smaller hexagonal Ply top nub. That's one contact patch for our gear. High-transmissibility 'fast' steel meets lossy 'slow' wood fibers which trap/dissipate input vibrations. Voilà, the Bindbreaker's MO in theory.