LessLoss "Tunnelbridge" - First Impressions


Category: Cables

If you attended the RMAF in Denver this year, you had an opportunity to listen to the LessLoss room hosted by Louis Motek. I had previous met Louis while he was in Texas. I had purchased many of his LessLoss products, and he was anxious to stop by and listen. My system has been transformed with the Signature power cords, original Firewall, slaving a CEC TL51x transport to their DAC 2004 MkII and adding quite a few Blackbody units. I use Jeff Rowland Model 6 monoblock amps, Model 5 Wilson WATT/puppies, Nordost Odin interconnects and Valhalla speaker cables and most recently a number of Nordost Titanium Sort Kones. I found Louis at the RMAF as I was anxious to hear his system. He was premiering the Tunnelbridge Interconnect System in his setup. What I heard were things familiar in my system; a natural, realistic sound stage I so love. I wondered how the Tunnelbridge would compare to my Nordost Odin interconnects. To my surprise, Louis agreed to send me the Tunnelbridge for a brief trial. He cautioned me that this unit was a prototype and not yet broken in. I am not an electrical engineer nor a physics major so please go to the LessLoss website for a discussion on how this powered interconnect works. I replace the Odins with the Tunnelbridge and played music almost continuously for a week to allow my ears to adjust to the sound. I played a number of different pieces from a Mozart Sting Quartet, to piano, to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, to Sebelius' Symphony #3, to Beethoven's 9th Symphony, to Dick Hyman's From the Age of Swing, to Ella Fitzgerald, etc. As the week progressed, the sound seemed to mature into something hard to describe. The best way to put it is that everything sounded "right." The sound stage was three dimensional with no edges. I literally felt I was in the recording space. The Odin's sound stage was, to my amazement, not quite as well defined. The Odins also seemed to have a digital shimmer while the Tunnelbridge sound was more convincing. I actually felt the presence of the singer in the room which I had never experienced. At first I thought the Odins had more pronounced base but on further listening decided the Tunnelbridge's base was just more accurate. The Odins are great interconnects, but to my ear, I preferred listening to the Tunnelbridge. I was sad to send the Tunnelgridge back and am anxiously waiting for Louis to go into full production. I intend to replace my Odins with the Tunnelbridge Interconnect System and expect even greater things with the finished product. I will update this post once this happens.
alanwc