The Firewall for Loudspeakers won't tinker with your tonal balance or truncate your sound in any particular way to be universal enough to recommend to anyone. They flesh out moisture, inject heft and reveal color previously buried under a layer of excess noise. That's why the overall sonic shift might strike untrained ears as more polite, mild and sensual when in reality it's not. Bass stripped of noise usually gets tauter so the opposite of its bloomier earlier life. Blacker canvas behind instruments might imply darker images but more pronounced, weightier and longer lingering highs say otherwise. So envision more solid thus less thin, glassy or edgy vocals. The entire musical scenery gets bigger and better focused. All edginess causing fatigue vanishes. In short, mature appreciation of noise rejection is a process, albeit one that should be very short and intense in this case. My third speaker was the Spendor Classic 1/2. Its sonic profile is quite the opposite of Rethm's Maarga to predict lesser gains. That proved out but these transparent barrels still elevated performance by several notches. Once connected to a synergistically energetic amp then to the Firewalls, the Classic 1/2 behaved no fuzzier than usual. Its tonal palette gained complexity and sophistication as the primary upshot followed by becoming more agile, composed and tight. These changes were enough to mark the Firewall as a compliant upgrade worth pursuing. The amps used during the Spendor assignment nicely cut through the speakers' fat and the LessLoss contributions added more bite, tightness, openness and superior balance. I imagine that within a syrupy mellow system the Classic 1/2 wouldn't appreciate the Firewalls to the same extent. Fixing deeply mismatched rigs isn't on their remit.

My exercises with the Ø Audio Icon and Boenicke W5 added no surprises. As capable of brutal guttural massages and expressive horn talk as the former was, it enjoyed the Firewalls no less than Maarga had. Instead of getting more raw and explicit, the Norwegians became more refined and full on vocals and stringed instruments. Think substantial horsepower boost, the same ride comfort but a noticeably plusher interior. Surrounded by nearby walls in a nearfield setup, my W5s at home are already handicapped. The Firewall for Loudspeakers decreased their wobble, injected moisture, brought images closer, made them more fluid yet gutsy then added slam. In effect I could go higher with SPL without any fatigue. To land similar upgrades elsewhere, I'd most likely have to change my trusty NuForce STA-200 amp for something larger, beefier and far costlier than today's gang of four. Considering what these wicked noise killers did time and again, I don't have to understand how they go about their business. I imagine that most naysayers would stop caring after giving these at least one brief try. That's all it takes to get the memorandum.

Although many audio accessories are fairly innocent expenses, the most effective such products which I know are found at the opposite end of affordable. Their significant performance gains can easily demand coin substantial enough to cover an entire setup's total cost with change to spare. The LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers doesn't cost as much but its potency surely performs in the top-shelf group. It's predictable that thick mental barriers need surmounting to even consider the LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers, much less spend money on it. However, thus far nothing like it was ever available. These filters are the result of two decades of refinement to one initial idea. It involved crazy developments and substantial investments, wasn't possible until recently and isn't based on off-the-shelf parts bought for pennies from a corporate supplier. This stuff is mechanically robust, enjoyably easy to use with all passive speakers, no exceptions, and provides substantial sonic upgrades. You could easily spend more and get less.

I usually suggest to only investigate costly accessories once all fundamental bases are covered. Today's product simply stands so tall as to consider it far sooner. It was free from any downsides and potent enough to exceed its supplementary 'tweak' role. If I now had to rebuild my entire setup from the ground up, any passive loudspeaker I can think of would get the Firewall treatment immediately. In your priority list it might not but in mine it ranked high enough to become mandatory!