Daedalus Audio DiD and LessLoss Bindbreaker Footers

Daedalus Audio DiD


This is my first encounter with a Daedalus Audio product. Daedalus is the father of Icarus in Greek mythology and a skillful craftsman and artist. The story of the wings fashioned by him to enable the escape of both Icarus and himself is most well-known - in particular, the tragic end of Icarus who did not heed his father's advice not to fly too high lest the wax holding the feathers together melt.

Coming back to the present time, Daedalus Audio is most well-known for it's hand-crafted speakers, featuring hand-crafted cabinets and high efficiency designs without the use of horns.

The DiD (Daedalus isolation Devices) are footers that use dissimilar materials to dissipate resonance coupled with bearings to isolate the component from vibration. The DiD is made from highly polished Aluminium, solid Cherry and Brass with steel bearings.

Additional felts pads are supplied to further tune the sound. A smaller pad fits in between the bearings and the wood top, while a larger pad can be used under the base of the DiD. I did not use either of the supplied pads since I needed the return the DiD after evaluation.

The DiD is very nicely made and all parts fitted together with very close tolerances. This is certainly made with pride and it shows !

Sonics wise, the DiD falls somewhere in between a bearing type footer (e.g. the models from Finite Elemente and Stillpoints) and wooden cones, combining precision with warmth and smoothness. It cleaned up the soundstage, improving placement and separation of instruments. It also added a very natural decay to notes. The warmth and smoothness imparted is quite subtle and you never get the feeling that information is being obscured or smoothed over. If you like your music sweet, overtly warm and with a lot of bloom, the DiD will not satisfy. Neither will it tick the boxes if you like your music with a razor sharp edge and pacing with military precision. Instead, the DiD strikes a careful balance between both. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it ? This is an easy one - Highly Recommended.

LessLoss Bindbreaker

Here is an accessory that sounds more like a magic spell. LessLoss should be a familiar name to many of you, with their reputation made on their power cables and conditioners. 

The Bindbreaker is made out of three parts. The small wood hexagon on top is connected to the large midsection via a hard metal bolt, and has a small amount of free play built in. The idea is to transmit vibrations rapidly to the steel plate underneath, and the matrix of attached bolts. The bolts in turn transmit the vibrations to the bottom wood hexagon which damp the vibrations. 

I noticed that in practical use, not all the steel bolt heads would make contact with the bottom wood hexagon. I would guess that the wood would flex slightly under heavy weight, but certainly not under my rather lightweight Totaldac DAC.

Sonically, the Bindbreaker is cooler in tone compared to the DiD. It cleans up the soundstage and improves imaging, but it has a more analytical presentation with drier albeit tighter bass lines. While the Bindbreaker never sounded sharp or sterile, it had less bloom, with tightly focussed images. The sense of air and decay was also less. 

While I preferred the DiD in my setup, the Bindbreaker turned in decent performance and is worthy of further investigation - it really is a matter of taste.

Both the DiD and Bindbreaker can be purchased from Horizon Acoustics. Thanks to KM Poon of Horizon Acoustics for his review samples !


Daedalus Audio DiD

Price : USD 160 each

Lessloss Bindbreaker Footers

Price : USD 160 each

Horizon Acoustics
144 Upper Bukit Timah Road

#03-15 Beauty World Centre
Singapore 588177

Telephone : 91259149

Website : http://www.horizonacoustics.com

LessLoss Firewall Current Conditioning Unit

Introduction

Mains conditioning is often an essential tool in achieving good results from quality equipment, unless you happened to be blessed with good mains power. You have transformer based solutions, such as isolation or balanced power transformers. You also have capacitor based filtering, which tackle a certain frequency range based on the tuning of the circuit. There are also other approaches such as choke filtering and power regeneration. 

Description

The LessLoss Firewall Module uses the company's proprietary skin filtering technology first seen in their power cords. The wire surface is treated to allow the mains frequency to travel through efficiently (50 Hz or 60 Hz as the case maybe), while attenuating high frequency noise. Since no capacitors are used in the process, there is no limiting of current.

The LessLoss Firewall Module (hereinafter referred to as "Firewall") is available in two versions, a module with C13 and C14 connectors, and a module with screw terminals. The former would allow quick hookup between any component and  your existing AC cable, while the latter would be more suited for direct installation inside a component, mains distributor or any other application limited by your imagination. 

C13 / C14 version

Deploying the Firewall definitely made a difference to the sound, although its effectiveness seems to be quite dependent on the component being used. In my office head-fi setup, using a single piece on my Marantz CD 6003 cd player worked best in firming up bass lines, reducing harshness on high frequencies, and improving the preciseness of imaging and staging. However, the system became overly dull and smooth when adding a second unit to my Schitt Lyr headamp. Similarly underwhelming results were obtained when I tried stacking two modules together.

 

I had mixed results on various locations, such as my Gryphon Diablo integrated amplifier and my Zodiac Antelope Platinum DAC. I hit the jackpot when I moved the LessLoss module to my Audio-Gd NFB 10.2 DAC / headamp, with very similar improvements as noted on my Marantz CD 6003.

 

While the Firewall did not work as a fit-and-forget solution, the results under ideal conditions were intriguing enough to warrant further investigation. I promptly bought two units of the DIY version for further experimentation. 

To be continued ...