January 2025

LessLoss Giant Steps Equipment Feet Review
Enjoying the purity and immediacy of the music.
Review By Rick Becker

   When I caught wind of the new Giant Steps footers from LessLoss audio I contacted Louis Motek immediately. Having written the first review of both his BlackGround Power Base and BlackGround for Speakers, I have very high regard for his work and the review samples of both reside in my system. The Giant Steps footers are even better, he claimed. I would like nine, I said, to try them on three successive components in the rig to experience how the effect intensifies and to try them under the corners of my loudspeakers.

There was just one problem. It was the Fall audio show season and I was committed to covering the Toronto Audiofest 2024 in October and the Capital Audiofest 2024 in November. Back-to-back. I finished the Toronto report on a Wednesday and on Thursday I drove down to Rockville, MD. I knew I would not have time to write a review until the January issue so I offered to send him a "first impressions" email which he could post to his loyal followers – and they are loyal! Hopefully, that would help jump-start his early adopter sales promotion which offered some extreme savings to folks willing to commit to ordering sight-unseen and "not-yet-reviewed."

A set of nine Giant Steps arrived on October 23rd, three days after I returned from Toronto and two days before my local high school reunion. I popped three of them under my LampizatOr DAC and the next day sent him the following email:

Dear Louis,

Your new creations always come with such high expectations. When I first installed the Giant Steps under my DAC and listened to my very familiar compilation CD, I was only mildly impressed. But at your suggestion, I let it "burn-in." What kind of footer needs to "burn in"? I returned three hours later and the music was greatly improved. And now, twenty hours later, I am ready to declare Giant Steps are the State of the Art footer.

Something is happening here that goes far beyond mechanical vibration control. Something more powerful than the technology in your Blackground and BlackGround for Speakers. The resolution is extremely high and very engaging with more transparency and much more accurate timbre. The improvements run seamlessly across the audible spectrum but are most apparent in the bass and treble – regions that are difficult and expensive to reproduce accurately. Blacker background, more layered soundscape, greater dynamics? Yes, yes, and yes! But the tonal colors from the life-like timbre are the most mesmerizing at this early stage.

Having just returned from Toronto Audiofest 2024, I can say my rig now competes with the very best I heard at the show – rigs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. While mine is well chosen, it is far less expensive. Unfortunately, I am immersed in the Toronto show report at the moment. This will be followed by the Capital Audiofest show report in November and December. I will keep working with the extensive protocol made possible by the multiple sets you have loaned me during this time. Hopefully, the review will be completed for the January issue.

It looks like it will be a very happy New Year for you. From this brief initial exposure, it is clear the Giant Steps are destined to become the Bitcoin of High-End Audio.

Best of luck,

Rick Becker

I've written tens of thousands of words and published many hundreds of photos since that letter and I'm still not finished with the Capital Audiofest report. I've been alternating listening sessions with (and without) the Giant Steps, making notes, while continuing to work on the CAF report. I've set that report aside briefly to fulfill my commitment to Louis and to bring you mostly even better news about the Giant Steps.

Getting Started
First, Louis had advised me to keep the unused Giant Steps out of the room as far as possible. Like the BlackGround Power Base and BlackGround for Speakers, they can affect the system even if they are not directly connected to it. Their effect is generated over an area so the farther away, the better. My office is about 20m from the rack holding my equipment. That's the best I could do aside from burying them in the backyard where the squirrels might find them.

Second, I left the BlackGround 10X Power Base and the 10X BlackGround for Speakers in the system. The results achieved by the Giant Steps were above and beyond the improvements gained with the BlackGrounds. This leaves unanswered the question of how good the Giant Steps might be if there are no BlackGrounds in the system. I suspect the three products are synergistic. The BlackGround for Speakers increased the benefits of the original BlackGround Power Base by an equal amount. Adding the Giant Steps to the system with both BlackGrounds installed provided an even greater improvement than the addition of either of the BlackGrounds.

Now that I've let the cat out of the bag, I invite those of you who have not rushed off to order a dozen to learn a little bit about the Giant Steps and the protocol I used in my evaluation.

What Are These Things?
Louis is pretty secretive about the technology involved in the two types of BlackGrounds. They are different from each other. The BlackGround Power Base connects to the complete AC circuit. The BlackGround for Speakers connects only to the ground leg of the circuit, and to the speaker signals themselves. Likewise, the Giant Steps are even more different – they connect to the chassis, but not to any circuitry. But he is a little more forthcoming about the Giant Steps.

In an email he talked about "…the dual nature of the equipment feet, operating both in the physical acoustic vibrational domain as well as in the magnetic domain (which is what you'll still have notions of when these are in the vicinity, but not touching the gear)."

He continued:

But Giant Steps is far different. It receives the magnetic swings actually more quickly than the physical swings, and dampens them in real-time physically, so the acoustical resulting swings have no chance of catching up since sound travels far slower than electromagnetic waves. But this holds true not only for transformer inefficiencies. Speaker signals do the same thing inside speakers and amps, but across the whole audio spectrum of frequencies. Giant Steps under amplifiers and loudspeakers really do the 'impossible.' It has to be experienced to be believed. This is by far the most advanced product we have ever made, and that says a lot given our other very effective developments, which you can attest to."

If I understand Louis correctly, the Giant Steps operate on magnetic fields and provide electromagnetic braking or cancellation to the electromagnetic waves caused by the voltage and current traveling through components, as well as the braking of physical vibrations. This is particularly interesting in light of the increasing acceptance of footers for speakers designed to absorb the physical motion of speaker cabinets rather than spikes that firmly anchor speakers to the floor. The speaker industry seems willing to accept some changes.

Putting Them To Work
As you can see in the photo, there are two distinct sides to the Giant Steps. One is a solid surface made of resin and ink-infused Kraft paper. The other side has a solid outer ring of that same material with a cavity filled with a hardened clear epoxy resin surrounding a spiral of some mystery material. Louis says Iron is the ferromagnetic material and only the Diamagnetic material is proprietary. There is no acoustically significant up or downside to the Giant Steps, but there are important physical limitations. You do not want to have anything protrude into the gel-filled cavity – like the spike of a speaker or a protruding screw head on the bottom of a component.

Since the shelves of racks are typically flat, I always placed the spiral side downwards onto the rack. There are almost always protrusions on the bottoms of components and it is difficult to position footers while lifting a side of a component. It is not exactly an Olympic sport, but the placement of footers, especially under heavy components when stacked in a rack in tight quarters, can be challenging. Also, you want the flat side of the Giant Step flat against the chassis, not resting ajar on a screw head. I also took care not to block any ventilation holes on the bottom of components, not so much worrying about blocking air flow, but for providing maximum surface contact between the component and the footer.

I found the thickness of the Giant Step to be problematic in placing the footers. Ideally, you want the built-in footers to be raised off the shelf so the weight of the component is carried by the Giant Steps. Most OEM footers are taller than the Giant Steps. I used three different solutions for three different components, each requiring a different height. For my DAC I used a small square of material with a piece of stiff foam sandwiched between two layers of thin plastic. It was some kind of packing material from somewhere. Fortunately, I had the gut instinct not to throw it out. My basement is full of such things, much to the dismay of my wife. The additional 5mm lifted the feet of my DAC just enough to slide a piece of paper under the OEM feet to check the clearance.

For my vintage Sony ES CD player which has been modified for use only as a CD transport, I used a single Soundeck DF Damping Footer – the small round size is identical to the diameter of the Giant Steps. They consist of two layers of aluminum with a thin layer of viscoelastic polymer sandwiched between them. They are a great basic footer for use under speaker spikes at a very reasonable cost, but they only deal with the physical vibrations. They are about 3mm thick.

My Backert Labs preamp has taller specialized footers designed to absorb physical vibrations. For this, I used a set of Boston Audio Design graphite footers designed to hold a tungsten ball bearing on top. This was a cost-effective footer that is no longer in production. They are 2" in diameter and 1" thick. The ball bearing was not used in this application.

Louis recommended stacking two Giant Steps, one on top of the other, secured with double-sided sticky tape with a hard thin film between the sticky sides – not the kind with soft foam between the sticky sides, commonly used for taping things to a wall.

How It All Evolved: Step One
As I wrote in my email to Louis which you read at the top of this review, I installed the first set of Giant Steps under my LampizatOr DAC. They replaced the Stack Auva EQ footers which are 165 GBP (~$210) for a set of four, considerably less expensive than the Giant Steps and very effective at quelling physical vibrations. But I instantly noticed the improved resolution with the Giant Steps. They are in a higher league. During the first listening to my compilation CD, immediately after installing them, I noted cymbals were highly resolved with no apparent smear. James Taylor's voice was more analog or natural – there was no grain. I could hear micro variations in Buddy Guy's guitar notes. The bass was tighter. The Chinese drum cut had outstanding timbre. Music was emerging from a much quieter soundstage. And this was just the low-hanging fruit.

When I returned a few hours later, Buddy Guy's and James Taylor's voices were more recessed. Timbre was improved and there was greater resolution. The bass was very impressive. Instruments were not masking each other. The orchestras were more resolved and layered front to back. The soundstage was very clear and the instruments were precisely located. All this in just the first day, yet there was a clear sense that the music was getting better over time – even faster than with the BlackGrounds.

After two weeks of improvement and getting accustomed to the new sound I was reveling in the excellent resolution and timbre which gave me a very "you are there" experience, but I was more distant from the soundstage, feeling like I was 30 rows back.

Step Two
At this point, I decided to install a second set of Giant Steps. In reviewing Synergistic Research fuses I had debated about whether installing them in the CD transport would be worthwhile and cost effective. The answer was "yes" with the fuses, so I did the same with the Giant Steps. With an identical volume setting the initial impression was that the classical music seemed louder and more dynamic – like I had moved forward to the 15th row of seats. I switched to my compilation CD and the variety of music there seemed louder, too, and the bass seemed stronger.

Returning four hours later the music seemed still louder and more dynamic. There was more inner detail and the air in the recorded venue seemed crystal clear. There was more layering with orchestral works and the soundstage came further forward in the front corners. The music was becoming more real and I felt like I had moved up to the 10^th row in the theater. I could hear the hall sound clearly as the reflections gave recordings a more accurate sense of space and size. The music scaled perfectly, too, as the volume was changed. Turning the volume up felt like walking down the aisle toward the stage with the performers or the orchestra becoming appropriately larger. Once again, it improved over the next two days.

Step Three
A week later I listened to Joni Mitchell's Blue from start to finish, my toe-tapping the whole time. I then installed the third set of Giant Steps under my Backert Labs preamp and replayed Blue. It seemed a bit more focused but at this point, there wasn't much room for improvement. The acoustic guitar strings appeared to have a faster attack on their notes. It was not as impressive as the installation of the first two sets but I knew I had to give it some time.

Coming back twelve hours later (with the tube amps and tube DAC warmed up) I replayed Blue. The guitar notes had an even faster attack and were more transparent. The extended vowels in Joni's singing revealed even more quiver and microdynamics. I had greater cognition of words in the lyrics that had escaped me at 2 a.m. I came as close to believing Joni was in the room as my experience at Capital Audiofest when it felt like Ricki Lee Jones was in the room, singing through the Acora flagship speakers in a much more expensive rig. The sense of space was different because while my room is large, at CAF the room was huge, but tears welled up in my eyes just as they had back then. Adding the third set of Giant Steps brought me to the edge of being there – and not just with one CD. Almost every CD I played felt like it had been dramatically remastered from the original tapes.

The Giant Steps gave me a window into the lyrics, musicality, and nuance of the music. They also enabled a personal connection to the singers and musicians who were kept at a distance from me by the inferior equipment I grew up with. The Giant Steps enabled my other fine gear to return me to those earlier days and show me what I had missed. There is pain and sadness in recognizing that loss but also joy in knowing I was listening to these recordings with better quality than anyone back in the day, except those in a studio who could listen to the master tapes.

Removing The Giant Steps
After three days of listening to experience the full effect of the Giant Steps, I listened to Blue once again and then removed them from beneath the transport, DAC, and preamp without replacing them with any other aftermarket footers. I then replayed the last song I had just heard which was still fresh in my mind. Within the first five notes I could notice the difference. The soundstage had become grayer and the sense of air and the spectacular transparency had vanished. These were the greatest immediate losses. Resolution was diminished a bit and the soundstage was more homogenized. The aural space and spacing between instruments and singers was more vague. The attack of guitar notes was not as sharp. Inner detail and micro-dynamics were cut off at the knees. The music was not as precise or as "real."

Twenty-four hours after removing the Giant Steps their effect had largely worn off and Blue sounded coarse, granular, and almost unlistenable. Transparency and dynamics were "ok" but the music was not smooth. The cognitive resolution of lyrics was still pretty decent, though I had become more familiar with the "mystery words" at this point. The soundstage was more vague, much less pinpointed. Unless you've experienced the pleasure with the Giant Steps (or a far more costly system), you might think this level of sound quality was still fine. But you will be humming Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence" once you discover how much sound quality your equipment is truly capable of producing.

Giant Steps Under Loudspeaker Spikes
A day later the music was still relatively coarse and I forged ahead by putting the Giant Steps under the spikes of my Acora speakers that had been anchored into the wood flooring beneath the wall-to-wall carpet. Since my review samples were from the pre-production run they did not yet have the 2.5mm dimple machined into the solid surface. With the Acora Acoustics QRC-2 loudspeakers (reviewed here) weighing a very hefty 161 pounds each, tilting them back and positioning a Giant Step under each spike was a difficult task. Without a dimple to anchor the spike, there was a tendency for the spike to slide across the Giant Step and a couple of them were scratched in the process. [It is a million times easier now with that dimple, featured on all Giant Steps. –Louis Motek]

Another issue with using them under speaker points arises when you have to move the speakers as I often do as a reviewer. They are not attached to speakers so they have to be removed one at a time and replaced with a footer that can then slide across a carpeted or wood floor. In the case of the Acora speakers I use a carpeted hand truck but the Giant Steps would still need to be carefully positioned under each spike when the speakers are repositioned. This is in sharp contrast with footers such as the Stack Audio Auva which thread into the speaker after removing the OEM spike. Likewise with the more common IsoAcoustics brand. This type of footer also makes it much easier to align the speakers. The thought also comes to mind that the Giant Steps technology might be more effective with speakers if it could be affixed to the drivers themselves such as with Bybee Technologies Quantum Clarifiers.

I also found that two of the eight Giant Steps stuck to the carpet and required a firm tug to free them. No carpet fibers stuck to the hardened resin on the Giant Steps and fortunately, the carpet was not damaged. Applying a piece of clear packing tape to the resin side and trimming the edges would protect your carpet if you are worried. A complete (and costly) re-design would be necessary to overcome these problems. But other footers only deal with physical vibrations, not electromagnetic pulses. If you rarely move your speakers this will be much less of a problem.

With the Giant Steps only under the speakers and not under any components (since I only had nine to work with) the initial impression was the music seemed somewhat smoother and the soundstage was more pinpointed, though not as precise as it had been with Giant Steps under the front end components. Joni Mitchell was slightly more recessed on the soundstage.

Four and a half hours later the music was smoothing out with better resolution and better spatial resolution. Plus, it was more engaging. I found myself leaning into the music, experiencing pleasure, rather than the music assaulting me. By midnight, 12 hours after installing them, the music was even more resolved and smoother, but I was still hoping there was further improvement lying ahead.

Even a couple of days later it was clear that having Giant Steps under only the speakers was less effective than having them under the front-end components. This is in keeping with the belief you can't put quality back into the system that is lost at the beginning of the chain. Just how good a system might sound with Giant Steps under everything from start to finish would require a lot more review samples or a hefty sum of Euros or dollars. My recommendation would be to start at the front end(s) of your system and work your way toward the speakers as far as your budget allows.

I wish I had more time to explore my analog sources with the Giant Steps and use them under my power conditioner as well. Louis assured me there are no permanent magnets in the Giant Steps so it is safe to use them with turntables. The review process is tedious given that it takes several days for the full benefit of the Giant Steps to develop and then another several days for it to fully dissipate. As with reviewing many types of equipment it often happens that the benefit of a new device becomes more apparent when it is removed, rather than when it is initially installed. It would also be interesting to use the Giant Steps in my system with the BlackGround Power Base and BlackGround for Speakers removed. Time has been very precious for me in November and December and there is always more that could be explored. Perhaps a follow-up review would be warranted.

Summary
Most audiophiles would probably not complain loudly about the sound quality of my system if they had heard it without the Giant Steps. While it is comprised of relatively modest components, it is tweaked from the breaker box to the speakers. But having tasted the purity and immediacy of the music with the Giant Steps, I missed them when they were removed. Could I live without them? Certainly, but given the available resources, I'll keep them, thank you, and likely order more.

Does anyone really need the Giant Steps? Some favorite lines from Bruce Springsteen's "Racing In The Streets" come to mind:

Now, some guys, they just give up living.
And start dying little by little, piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up,
Then go racin' in the street.

If you're reasonably happy with your system and content with just cruising through your retirement, you will probably enjoy life more by buying or streaming new music to entertain yourself. But if you are still driving forward in your life, "racing in the streets" to get the most out of your music, then you need to hear the Giant Steps before you prematurely decide you can't afford them (or spend an even larger sum on a new component.) The Giant Steps are expensive, relative to many footers, but if you compare the cost of a set against buying a new DAC, streamer, or preamp, and consider the improvement in sound quality they bring to everything else downstream in your system, you will appreciate their value. It scares me to think of how well an oligarch's outstanding system might perform with Giant Steps.

In my initial response to Louis Motek, I declared the Giant Steps to be the state-of-the-art footer and destined to become the Bitcoin of high-end audio. Let me put that into perspective. I've been exploring high-end audio for over thirty years, learning to listen, and gradually building a fine system. It has always felt like an uphill challenge with many false peaks along the way. Of course, the high-end itself has been an ever-growing, ever-improving field. The Giant Steps have taken me up what feels like the final ascent. I feel like I could declare "game over" and live out the rest of my life enjoying my LP collection. At the start, I never imagined I could reach this level of sound quality – and it seems like I've said that many times before. But it's not in my genes to retire and I'm well aware this could be another false peak. As with the acquisition of any great new component, the glorious new level of sound quality will eventually become the new normal. But for now, the view from the top is spectacular and the Giant Steps have indeed proven to be a giant step upward into the realm of the very wealthy.

Specifications
Type: Specialized high-end audio footer.
Dimensions: 50mm round and 16mm thick
Weight; 82 grams each
Price: $417 each 
Discounts: 5+ Units = 5% off and 12+ Units = 10% off per order

Company Information
LessLoss Audio
Paneriu 258b
Kaunas
Lithuania

Voice: +370 698 48706
E-mail: info@lessloss.com  
Website: LessLoss.com