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Posted by Paul S on
12-06-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d I just stumbled across this, did not read the roll-out report yet, and I am not shopping for digital options, but maybe someone else would be excited about this product from the Lampizator:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue76/lampizator_dac.htm
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-11-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d I do not know what Game Changer is in context of the guy who
wrote it. He is compiling for audio shopper the "short list of products to
consider for the next audio component you buy", in the best traditions of industry-estimable
but boring and predictable HP. I fell that anything he said has nothing to do
with Lampizator DAC, I glanced over the writing and I still have no idea what Lampizator
DAC is. I know that the writer is an idiot who use Alan Parsons's albums to educate
himself what to buy. There are plenty of them in audio…
The reality is that there are tones of DACs out there, literally
each week a new company or a new model pop up. I have a difficult time to understand
what they do not to mention to listen them. I did not change my CD DAC for 15 years
and I am not looking. It is not that I said that there are no good of better
DACs out there but I do think the makers and sellers do not find a way to market
what they do, at least to the people like me: their reasoning lack neither intellectual
nor expressive perspective and I personally find the news about new DACs available
to be very boring.
It is also is very important that the industry and all of
these stupid audio writers failed to related the DACs to each other objectively-sonically,
topologically and from many other perspectives.
Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Posted by Paul S on
12-11-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d Truth be told, I realize that "the world is passing me by" while I am still "stuck" in the ancient 16/44/CD thing, and I was sort of hoping to get a rise from more up-to-date people regarding the "DSD capabilities". Naturally, I have not yet read the "review"/rollout blurb I referred to, above...
Paul S
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Posted by xandcg on
12-17-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d  Romy the Cat wrote: | | ... I glanced over the writing and I still have no idea what Lampizator
DAC is... |
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Hi,
I don't know if you was being sarcastic on that quote but Lampizator does the DSD conversion in a R2R way, using a power tube instead of a DAC chip.
Cheers!
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Posted by rowuk on
12-18-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d
http://www.lampizator.eu/NEWDAC/Lampizator/Welcome_to_LampizatOr.html
He has 7 different "generations" or "levels" of his DAC depending on what one can afford to pay. If you go through the various models, his direction becomes more clear. I heard a Level 4 DAC and was impressed by the lack of things that made me think that I was listening to digital anything and the fun it was just to listen to CD after CD, recording after recording.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-18-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d | xandcg wrote: | | I don't know if you was being
sarcastic on that quote but Lampizator does the DSD conversion in a R2R way,
using a power tube instead of a DAC chip. |
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I am not sarcastic and the "review" above does not
extend any of my knowledge about the Lampizator DAC. I never used or heard
anything by Lampizator, he might do interesting things, thought it is chip-based
R2R, not discrete, we would not able to afford it otherwise. My only concern about
the all of those DACs is tube output stage. It does server nice the common
audiophile frustrations but I never felt too good about line-level tube devises.
I never was able to build and never saw/hear any tube-based transparent simple buffer.
So, my assumption that tube output stage on DACs would be desirable.
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Posted by Paul S on
12-18-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d For better or for worse, I also tend to think of the "tube buffer" as a gimmick. I wonder if one of our readers has an idea, what are the benefits of the tubes used in this case? Why not a discrete version of the op amp, or just a decent modern op amp?
Paul S
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Posted by rowuk on
12-18-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d I think that any line level tube stage can be every much of an expressive tool as any other device in the chain. I am also not sure that the biggest difference between digital and analog is the sampling process.
How "transparent" is a cutting lathe or phono cartridge on a tone arm? What about what a head gap on a tape head does to phase and linearity? What about the pilot tone filters in AM radio?
If the installation is content loaded, the tube output stage could be the spice required with certain drives. If you send Fikus an e'mail, he will answer.
When I heard the level 4 we listened to all 9 Beethoven symphonies in one sitting - most with Christopher Hogwood. No fatigue, we just couldn't get enough. That of course is not a test for transparency, but original, historic instruments really get on your nerves when there are "digital" purity issues.
Back to the review, there is so much info at the Lampizator site, that it is inexcusable for a dealer to not offer anything. It just means that they don't even give a mercenary shit.
| Paul S wrote: | For better or for worse, I also tend to think of the "tube buffer" as a gimmick. I wonder if one of our readers has an idea, what are the benefits of the tubes used in this case? Why not a discrete version of the op amp, or just a decent modern op amp?
Paul S |
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-18-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d | rowuk wrote: | | Maybe transparent is not what
we are after? |
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This is a valid point. Generally if we are taking about “author”
products then it is very hard to predict anything by looking at the ingredients
but rather we need to look at the whole picture. This is the whole point of author
tailed products that they have a signature of the creator. Not a lot of product
have in audio and it possible that those Lampizator products do.
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Posted by xandcg on
12-19-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d Here, the site says no silicon at all at conversion! I don't have one here to comprove but I don't know anyone who owns one claim it is false.
http://www.lampizator.eu/newdac/lampizator/DSD_DAC.html
Cheers!
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Posted by steverino on
12-22-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d I am no expert on digital although I certainly read a lot on DSD and DVD-A back in the day. However, once you use the standard D/A chip as lampizator acknowledges, you are at the point of a tweaker for the rest. It is like a speaker manufacturer who grabs the industry wide standard speaker elements. They have to talk about everything else because they are now locked into a generic approach. I'm not dissing anyone for doing that particularly as digital is beyond the capability of a small company to design and manufacture. The industry though has created a significant problem by downgrading the build quality and to my ears sonics of these new chips. Romy is stuck nervously watching his old CD player hoping it doesn't break down. Certainly the build quality is going down in general for digital. Unfortunately the old chips while built better do have some constraints that are best removed but no one wants to spend the money to make a well designed and well made contemporary chip. Thus trying to select the best of the current output is like trying to find the best pressing of a typical 70s era CBS classical record.
Having broken down and bought a midline Esoteric model a while ago, the difference in sonics seems more due to the transport than the DAC. I heard an Esoteric DAC but while nice enough did not wow me. However the CD player as a whole is better. It does at least reduce digital unpleasantness to the point where I am not bothered by it and can listen to the music more easily. So it is likely the transport which made the difference. I have no idea why a music server which bypasses the transport stage and simply reads a data file (outputted to an external DAC) should sound significantly worse but they do to my ears. Anyway I have become less interested in DACs and more interested in transports vs reading a music file.
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Posted by xandcg on
12-22-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d | steverino wrote: | I am no expert on digital although I certainly read a lot on DSD and DVD-A back in the day. However, once you use the standard D/A chip as lampizator acknowledges, you are at the point of a tweaker for the rest. It is like a speaker manufacturer who grabs the industry wide standard speaker elements. They have to talk about everything else because they are now locked into a generic approach. I'm not dissing anyone for doing that particularly as digital is beyond the capability of a small company to design and manufacture. The industry though has created a significant problem by downgrading the build quality and to my ears sonics of these new chips. Romy is stuck nervously watching his old CD player hoping it doesn't break down. Certainly the build quality is going down in general for digital. Unfortunately the old chips while built better do have some constraints that are best removed but no one wants to spend the money to make a well designed and well made contemporary chip. Thus trying to select the best of the current output is like trying to find the best pressing of a typical 70s era CBS classical record.
Having broken down and bought a midline Esoteric model a while ago, the difference in sonics seems more due to the transport than the DAC. I heard an Esoteric DAC but while nice enough did not wow me. However the CD player as a whole is better. It does at least reduce digital unpleasantness to the point where I am not bothered by it and can listen to the music more easily. So it is likely the transport which made the difference. I have no idea why a music server which bypasses the transport stage and simply reads a data file (outputted to an external DAC) should sound significantly worse but they do to my ears. Anyway I have become less interested in DACs and more interested in transports vs reading a music file.
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I read a interview with Peter Qvortrup (AN UK) a week or two ago (but that was older) were he talk about his theory of why a CD + Good Transport sound better than a audio file from a hard drive (with the same resolution at least). Unfortunately I can't find it now but he say something related with the file being partitioned in the HD but not in the CD.
Cheers!
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Posted by steverino on
12-22-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d I thought the file fragmentation issue was the reason for having buffering memory where the file or at least a significant portion gets pre-loaded into memory. Since that is widespread I don't see why the file fragmentation on the hard drive would create a problem. Anyway computers are exceptionally proficient at reading datafiles; it's sort of what makes them a computer. Reading an optical disc is trickier but even there CD players have all kinds of error correction algorithms. I don't know that anyone has shown bit error differences from competently made CD players. The major difference is jitter I believe. It's true that earlier versions of Windows did weird resampling of audio data but I think that is removed now. Anyway, such data can be fed directly through a soundcard out to a DAC with no computer processing. Reclocking is now increasingly practiced. If the difference between digital files and transports isn't jitter related I have no idea what is going on.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-23-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d
| xandcg wrote: | | I read a interview with Peter Qvortrup (AN UK) a week or two ago (but that was older) were he talk about his theory of why a CD + Good Transport sound better than a audio file from a hard drive (with the same resolution at least). Unfortunately I can't find it now but he say something related with the file being partitioned in the HD but not in the CD.
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Xandcg. I am pretty much insisting, looking at the conclusions, that whatever theory the Qvortrup had on this given subject is bogus. I do not know what make him to say it, the fact that he sells CD based components, general ignorance or juts little understanding of this specific subject.
Rgs, the caT.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-25-2014
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fiogf49gjkf0d What I find interesting about this Lampizator is that he
does not take sides over DSD vs PCM debate. Some folks do not touch the DSD and
stay strictly in PCM word. Some go all the way along with DSD, x- DSD or whatever
was sold for them annually. Generally the PCM camp future more intelligent
people as most of the DSD yahoos with their 5 recordings of a “girl with banjo”
are too revolting to take them seriously. It does not say however that properly
implemented PCM or properly implemented DSD would not be in a way similar. I do
think that somebody like Lampizator would be a good souse to ask this type of
the question.
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Posted by xandcg on
02-22-2015
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fiogf49gjkf0d There are a new Lampizator model based on Big Seven, The Golden Gate:
http://www.lampizator.eu/Lampizator/GOLDEN_GATE_DAC.html
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Posted by Amir on
04-01-2016
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fiogf49gjkf0d I searched the net for headphone DAC/amp and i found it.
i have no idea about the sound .
what "r2r discrete" mean?
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Posted by xandcg on
06-17-2017
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Amir,
R2R Discrete, means it uses the good "old" resistor ladder instead of a DAC chip. There is more info here. But you can find more around the internet.
Cheers.
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Posted by xandcg on
04-22-2021
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Hello,
A Singaporean company came out, apparently since a while, with some perhaps interesting discrete R-2R DACs. The top of the line is the Denafrips Terminator Plus which apparently cost <9000 USD.
There is also a CD Transport called Avatar using `NOS Philips CDM4/19` laser mechanism, but I have no opinion about it.
I don't know anything more about it but I saw some of the usual reviews around.
Cheers.
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