Introducing the LampizatOr Poseidon DAC
- Thread starter Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus
- Start date
I'm sorry, I do not have experience with Pillium, but I see no reason why it would not work very well. My colleagues Fred and Rob at Lampizator NA use the WestminsterLab SS gear with the Posidean and can share their experience with solid-state amplification in general. Feel free to contact them for their perspectives or PM me anytime. Best of luck.
I demoed the Poseidon with and without my preamp in place. It was unequivocally better with the preamp in the signal chain but that may well be because the preamp is as good as it is. I'm sure there is a (quality) point below which the Poseidon's preamp stage becomes better. For reference my preamp is the Concert Fidelity CF080 LSX. I have asked for my unit to have the output voltage pegged back to 2.5v as the CF can get over saturated.
I demoed the Poseidon last week against my Aqua Formula as I was curious to hear what improvement I’d get for an outlay of £20K. Well, I was honestly disappointed. It wasn’t bad as such but after tube rolling, don’t ask me what was tried, it was more forward than the Aqua with great tonal properties but going back to the Aqua was like settling into a comfy sofa.
The Aqua has bigger soundstage, sounds more organic and the music is free from the speakers whereas the Poseidon never really lets go. Could this be the difference between R2R and a chip solution ?
So, that scuppered my plans to buy a Poseidon, saved me a significant amount of cash I could potentially put towards a Taiko Olympus.
FWIW, the Poseidon was direct to the tube amps, the Aqua via Khozmo vc. If I had more time I would have tried the Poseidon through the Khozmo. And, that’s the second Lampi dac I’ve tried, an old GG was too noisy on the Duos.
The Aqua has bigger soundstage, sounds more organic and the music is free from the speakers whereas the Poseidon never really lets go. Could this be the difference between R2R and a chip solution ?
So, that scuppered my plans to buy a Poseidon, saved me a significant amount of cash I could potentially put towards a Taiko Olympus.
FWIW, the Poseidon was direct to the tube amps, the Aqua via Khozmo vc. If I had more time I would have tried the Poseidon through the Khozmo. And, that’s the second Lampi dac I’ve tried, an old GG was too noisy on the Duos.
Interesting and the exact opposite of what I’ve experienced with many dacs including three r2rs in my system. I have never had a better soundstage than right now, and my focal maestros feel like dead blocks of furniture. The soundstage is so wide and deep. I auditioned the Ideon absolute meta too. That’s an amazing dac too, however goes about the presentation differently.
Almost certainly (but not conclusively) what you're hearing was the result of not playing it through the preamp. That collapse of soundstage is precisely what I would have predicted would be any potential downside to removing a good preamp.
I know that Lampi make a big thing about the preamp stage in the Poseidon but I just don't agree that it's better than 95% of preamps out there. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that a pre will almost always improve things.
Did you not even try it with your pre in place?
Agree 110% Golum and b345t, something is off if that was the result. That said, the Aqua is a very nice DAC and you may have simply preferred it tonally. No mention of your amplifiers or whether they are single-ended or balanced? T
The Posidean has an excellent pre-amplifier on board, not to mention superp DAC which leads me to suspect something else is causing you to say it fell short of the Aqua. My own and other experience running the Posidean directly into the WestminsterLab Class A balanced monos is nothing short of excellent, so a separate pre should not be required. Thanks for reporting your findings though. Worthy of further investigation.
I have the Poseidon into the Westminster REIs into Von Schweikert VR9SE Mk2s with the Westminster Ultra XLR IC from preamp to amp. When I play minimally or no added reverb piano recordings, the piano sounds as if it were in front of me, live. In my smaller custom built room 20X15X10, if a recording has a wide stage, it is wall to wall sound. The Poseidon pre-amp is with the standard OEM tubes, excellent. I play LPs through an EAR 324 phono pre-amp into the Poseidon and again, phenomenal, only bettered if I had a higher resolution, lower noise cartridge & TT . The other important factor for me is the body and warmth of the sound using the Poseidon which replaces older EAR 912/864 pre-amps and an excellent custom subminiature tube pre amp with MM phono & Zesto Allesso SUT.
I experienced the Horizon with the same amps and speakers with the EAR 912. The room had a totally isolated 3 phase power source. Even with the inferior pre-amp, the sound had overwhelming changes in dynamic contrast and resolution. There are so many variables in an audio system that it is difficult to ascertain how high end equipment combinations will work together from the power, cabling, room and various pieces of equipment.
P.S. When playing excellent 1950s mono recordings, the soundstage can have tremendous depth and width, often superior to early stereo recordings.
It was forgetful of me not to try the Poseidon through my Khozmo VC but thought direct to my SE amps would be the optimal choice.
I have no doubt the Poseidon with a top notch set of tubes and suitably matched to my amps would be an Aqua beater but atm I will put my limited funds elsewhere.
I have no doubt the Poseidon with a top notch set of tubes and suitably matched to my amps would be an Aqua beater but atm I will put my limited funds elsewhere.
Really nice synergy with the Innuos statement next-gen with upgraded umbilicals from Sean Jacobs. I was quite surprised and impressed with the size and quality of the flight case, excellent.
Can I ask, where are people getting adapter plates from if they are using alternatives to either 6n1p or 6j5?
Useful knowledge for input tubes on the Poseidon. Langrex have a substantial number of these Russian Voskhod ECC88 tubes, matched and balanced. Just installed a pair (I'm running single ended so only using 2x2 in the input and output stages), and there are notable improvements to bass weight, imaging and sound stage:
Langrex Voskhod ECC88
Langrex Voskhod ECC88
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The Poseidon uses tubes from the ECC88 "family". ECC83s are not pin compatible with ECC88s. I suppose you could always use adapters, but in this case the gain of the ECC83 tubes is much higher and there is a strong possibility they will be overdriving the next stage up.
My mistake (which I've now corrected in edit); I did mean ECC88 and the link is to ECC88 tubes.
So, would a Mullard 6DJ8 or Amperex Bugle Boy 6DJ8 (same as 6922 and ECC88) sound as good or just different? I have a dozen of the latter.
I am proud owner of Poseidon DAC. Previously, had GG2. Unfortunately, I was on the road for 5+ weeks just after getting the DAC (got back in town on Monday) and no longer remember how the GG2 sounded so do not have any thing to compare the Poseidon. Definitely, going to go through the thread for tube recommendations.
I first heard the Poseidon prototype at my house in the OP and loved the sound. Let the tube rolling begin. Need to find tubes similar to 01a that I was running in GG2.
I like to thank @Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus, @LampiNA (Fred) and @DSG Rob (Rob) for helping with the move from GG2 to Poseidon.
I first heard the Poseidon prototype at my house in the OP and loved the sound. Let the tube rolling begin. Need to find tubes similar to 01a that I was running in GG2.
I like to thank @Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus, @LampiNA (Fred) and @DSG Rob (Rob) for helping with the move from GG2 to Poseidon.
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