Lampizator announcement: launch of our all new TOTL HORIZON DAC

[Gregadd]

Or in layman's term I don't care what's in the sausage, or how it's made, it just tastes so good.

 

[marty]

No, I have sadly not heard the Horizon!

Well, I have and while I agree with many of your observations, I would take exception to some of them, particularly when it comes to dynamic range. There is no doubt that while the Horizon is superb sounding , comparing it's dynamics to analog is a disservice to both modalities. They are different indeed. Some of these differences (which for the most part are relatively minor) may be due to the details of the tubes used, or the specifics of the analog rig used to which the Horizon is being compared. More importantly, to suggest that dynamic range is markedly superior in analog is really moot since neither have the dynamic range of live music. You then later say "so much of digital is volume dependent". However, this is also very true in the analog domain as well. Don't you notice there is often 1 ideal playback volume for "realistic" reproduction no matter what music you play in any mode? (This is mostly due to perception; i.e. the Fletcher Munson curve as a function of gain ).

I would also share that my own experience is that while I still find analog has a few more tricks up its sleeve, the comparison has evolved as my analog service changed when I went from a pivoted arm (Reed 3P) to a tangential tracker (Reed 5T) on my Dohmann. The 5T is a device that produces unequivocally less distortion than a fine pivoted arm such as the 3P. Hence the comparative differences vs. my Horizon are now more noticeable.

 

[godofwealth]

FWIW, I have never heard a DCS ring DAC that sounded like music. If resolution is your priority, I'm much more of a Meitner guy, but honestly, who cares? The Lampi approach (embodied by my former GG2 and now my Horizon) has made me a digital believer. No other DAC manufacturer has gotten many of us to the promised land.

This is nonsense. As Lukasz has stated :

"The 7 tubes work in a new way, never seen before in any DAC. The pentodes provide power supply regulation, active anode loading and cathode buffering - all at the same time - thanks to their 3 grids. The dual triodes provide voltage amplification and current conversion in the DAC process."

"We use very modern chips that no one else has right now, and they are programmable, so we write firmware which controlls the block diagram of the chip, filtering, sampling rates, dsd, conversion current, and all that."

In other words, if using a pentode and triode to make a novel "virtual" octal tube is not bespoke design, then I don't know what is.

I wasn’t referring to the tube circuitry in the Horizon, but as everyone knows, tubes have been around for almost 100 years. I studied tube circuits as an EE major 45 years ago (Christ, has it been that long!), before getting my doctoral degree in CS. Even have my MIT authored undergrad textbooks on circuit design and electronics on my bookshelves, and my undergrad thesis! There’s millions of tube circuit variants that have been explored. Let’s say our huge library on our engineering campus had thousands of handbooks and journal articles on tube circuitry. Floors full of this stuff! It’s a vast literature. I have no way of knowing what’s innovative in terms of tube circuitry inside the Horizon, except to say that combining a pentode and triode as you describe doesn’t sound very innovative to me. ARC has been doing designs like this for decades. Now if Lampi designed an entirely new type of tube that had never been produced before, that in my book would be more innovative. Otherwise, it’s like a chef saying he combined two sauces in some way, and even if it did produce a tasty ingredient, if the two sauces are well known, no one is going to exclaim OMG. I’m not wanting to take anything away from the success of the Horizon here. Just saying there are degrees of innovation. With my hard nosed scientist hat on, this is not innovation. If you designed a DAC that used quantum computing in some way, now that would be truly innovative. Or even if you took some of the latest cool math on compressive sensing, and used that to design an entirely new kind of DAC, that might be cool. But your need scads of costly PhD level research scientists to do stuff like this. I can’t see Lampi having the funds for this type of basic research.

Regarding DSP, well, like I said, Lampi is very secretive. It’s hard to know what’s under the hood. Unless they come out with some technical literature that says what it is, your guess is as good as mine. E.g., dCS was explicit in defining its innovation in ring DAC design using dynamic element matching that came from its work as a defense contractor. Chord uses Rob Watts million tap M-Scaling filter. I understand Lampi wants to hide its secret sauce, but unless I know more, I can’t speak to this except to say again, the science of DAC design is very very old. Nyquist theorem and Shannon’s information theory that underlies digital PCM technology is 70 years old. High end DACs have been made for almost 40 years now. This is not rocket science.

We know the math and physics and the engineering principles behind DAC design. In fact, for $250, Topping’s D30 is a state of the art DAC in terms its measurements (see ASR review). Now I’m not saying Topping’s budget DAC is subjectively as good sounding as a dCS DAC or a Chord Dave or a Lampi. There are nuances and flavoring that good DAC designers add to their recipe. Lampi’s secret sauce is using tubes to flavor the sound. If you like the sound of tubes (I do!), you’ll like Lampi’s offerings. If you don’t like the sound of tubes, you are far more likely to try a Chord or a dCS design. If you are someone who believes measurements are all that matters, there’s no reason to spend more than $250 on a DAC. Just get the Topping D30! I know many high end designers who think DACs are a completely solved problem (e.g., Harbeth’s Alan Shaw). Quad’s Peter Walker used to vehemently argue that well designed amplifiers all should sound identical unless they are overloading in some way. I don’t fully buy this, but engineers who believe in Ohms law, like Peter Walker or speaker designers like Alan Shaw are puzzled why people spend any money on what Shaw calls “ancillaries”. To Walker and Shaw, speakers are the hard problem in audio reproduction. DACs? That’s a solved problem, engineering wise.

Now I wouldn’t be on this forum if I didn’t like the sound of Lampi’s DACs, and I like my Pacific very much indeed. But if one of my former EE engineering buddies came over, I’d have a hard time explaining why in 2023 (almost here!), I’m using tube equipment! My former classmates would call me unscientific and probably worse! Personally I think second harmonic distortion is why I like the sound of tubes. It gives it a smoothing effect. So not all distortion is bad. There are good types of distortion. That’s my rationalization. Science has nothing to do with it.

 

[Gregadd]

The Big Bing Theory (the show) tells me their is no reason to go beyond the Masters level in engineering. I don't have any engineering degree at all.
From a layman's point of view, when you friends come over and want to know why you are still into tubes do what audiophiles do. Play some music.

 

[jbrrp1]

Personally I think second harmonic distortion is why I like the sound of tubes. It gives it a smoothing effect. So not all distortion is bad. There are good types of distortion. That’s my rationalization. Science has nothing to do with it.

While I have absolutely heard a lot of tube gear that is too smoothing for my tastes, I don't think that that is a given. I think that comes from the output transformers, more than anything. It's my belief that the second order harmonic distortion adds a certain element of harmonic romance that the microphones can't help but "bleach out" of the music they record. Can't prove it, of course, but the net effect is more realistic sound reproduction to my ears, and that's probably why tubes have been in my system at the source points always.

 

[Gregadd]

Tubes do a lot more than 2nd order harmonic distortion. I' m fine with that notion, if that puts assess in the seats. That is to say they come for the 2ndorder harmonic distortion they stay for the musicality.

 

[bonzo75]

Guys can we please avoid another generic tube pros and cons discussion, it has been done so many times it is off topic

 

[Tuckia]

But we hadn’t gotten to the tin-eared engineer comments yet. That‘s always my favorite part. Now my popcorn is going cold

 

[Gregadd]

Guys can we please avoid another generic tube pros and cons discussion, it has been done so many times it is off topic

I don't think so.

 

[John T]

I think its pretty cool the pedigree @godofwealth has, very impressive. However if you do this shit long enough, (technical term) throw the technical jargon out. Its a very simple equation: If it sounds good, I'm all in! If you want to buy it, buy it, if not, don't buy it! This obsession is difficult enough without complicating further. Why would anyone be influenced by what others say, if you love what you are hearing? Life is short, do as you please...

 

[SCAudiophile]

Huh? It’s 76°F here, sunny, low humidity and clear blue sky. A little too warm for me, actually (I prefer 65°F to 72°F), so I’m wearing short sleeve shirt, short pants and flip-flops.

Count your blessings Ron

Driving ban lifted in Buffalo as blizzard deaths hit 38

Buffalo region worst affected in US with at least 38 deaths after blizzard dumped 50 inches of snow on city

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

As I am a Lampi owner since 2014 or 15, and have compared Big 7 with Trinity at Elberoth (who owned both then and one of my first trips that opened my eyes to the benefit of trips, and price vs truth), and subsequently the Big 7 and GG with Estoteric K01 and 01x, Aries Cerat second model from top, MSB Select II, Vivaldi Dac, and then with Jazzead who moved to GG after we did a compare of Aqua Formula, Trinity, Stahltek and Neodio Origine at his place (he now has Pacific), I really am not seeking any answers in the dac area.

My trips are mainly to find out what I think I do not understand from my preference point of view, and therefore I do not do any trips for digital anymore. Therefore I am normally quiet on the Lampi threads. Unlike some new users here of Horizon and Pac, I was convinced of Lukasz's genius with all those compares, and in retrospect it was evident with the Big 7, and I have had my say on forums earlier.

So, my trips these days are to answer my questions on analog, and SET amps, and horn drivers. Which is a vast field. Yet, on these trips, sometimes I run into a Lampi user, start listening to the Lampi, and all the Lampi love comes gushing back in. Like over the weekend.

I have seldom been as excited about a piece of gear as I was with Lampi on the weekend at audioquattr's, with both Pacific and the Horizon. I had gone there to understand the difference between my favorite analog combination, the Vyger Red Sparrow, and one of my favorite cartridges, the vdh master signature and grand cru. He had the Thomas Mayer and the top Thrax phonos as well, so all in all as good as it gets with analog and excellent recordings.

Yet, when we played the Pacific with KR and RK 242 through the Taiko extreme and through the Aurender w20, both of us could not stop listening. We moved to Horizon, and did some tube rolls, and ended up on what I think is Marty's mullard preference. The Lampi completely sucks you into the music, and you find yourself moving across any track on the ipad picking any performance. And this is Tidal and roon, not the hard drive.

Audioquattr has tried both MSB and total dac and takes them off the shelf within the hour.

Despite having high quality analog
Pics of his analog here https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/zero-distortion-vyger.35529/post-841804
Videos with analog here https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/zero-distortion-cessaro-mono-or-stereo.35996/

Audioquattr spends most of his time listening to the Lampi.

No wonder astrotoy who owned 15000 original Deccas and EMIs and owns tapes, listens easily through the Lampi. Or when I visit gregdee, the UK distributor who also is the distro for J. Sikora, I can easily switch to the Lampi. Or when Ron and I visited Jim in LA with the Tannoy Westminster, we listened on the Acoustical Signature with the DS cartirdge (model below the master) then switched easily to the Baltic.


View attachment 101786
View attachment 101787



Below are videos with Pacific 242

Kedar, you must come one day to my new house, hear the listening room with biiig horns and triodes plus Horizon

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

I'm very well aware of how MSB is doing their chassis and while in pre Horizon period I could only excessively salivate on those facts and pictures, as the difference was obvious, in Horizon period I just don't have this same feeling, as production and CNCing of aluminum slabs is the same - once you see and hold H in person things get very obvious regarding the chassis quality leap vs other units in line up and overall quality of the unit. And I'm not talking about the design of the unit per se as this is something we don't discuss.
Still, tons of aluminum and countless hours of CNCing don't by default translate into sound quality and no MSB S2 nor Esoteric ear pinching sterilized DACs would finish in my room - and I heard almost all from their lineups.
But I agree with you, and I'm almost certain, that Yoda will eventually come up with something even better (sooner then later).

As its almost midnight here I wish You all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Be healthy and happy above all and enjoy the good tunes along the way!

Outboard ps is something I will never do. I test everything and measure everything and came to a conclusion, that psu is best when it is as close as possible to the consumers of the energy. I use supply lines as short as 2 inches and the idea of moving it away 4 feet, adding a cable and 2csockets is just horrifying. There is no noise when everything is properly designed, grounded and shielded. But the dynamics is much better. I learned much of that when designing the bespoke phono vp4, where signals are 10 000 times smaller. Yet the supply just next to the circuit were much better solution without any "noise problem".

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

Tubes do a lot more than 2nd order harmonic distortion. I' m fine with that notion, if that puts assess in the seats. That is to say they come for the 2ndorder harmonic distortion they stay for the musicality.

Horizon doesn't have any 2nd or 3rd harmonics, it is totally pure and passes only the music thats why it sounds so good even compared to the Pacific (some 2nd hd).

 

[Golum]

Outboard ps is something I will never do. I test everything and measure everything and came to a conclusion, that psu is best when it is as close as possible to the consumers of the energy. I use supply lines as short as 2 inches and the idea of moving it away 4 feet, adding a cable and 2csockets is just horrifying. There is no noise when everything is properly designed, grounded and shielded. But the dynamics is much better. I learned much of that when designing the bespoke phono vp4, where signals are 10 000 times smaller. Yet the supply just next to the circuit were much better solution without any "noise problem".

Yup - i was trying to find exactly those words as you wrote them somewhere already. Thanks

 

[Gregadd]

Horizon doesn't have any 2nd or 3rd harmonics; it is totally pure and passes only the music that's why it sounds so good even compared to the Pacific (some 2nd hd).

II don't care enough about the 2d harmonic issue to mount an argument. These people make the same diametrically oppose arguments. Tube lovers love distortion. they turn around a study that says the less distortion the more people love. Both can't be true.
There is nothing wrong with us. There is something wrong with your component.

 

[Steve Williams]

Kedar, you must come one day to my new house, hear the listening room with biiig horns and triodes plus Horizon

I’m in as well for that one Lukasz. That would be a great trip. But promise me no ice swimming

 

[godofwealth]

Horizon doesn't have any 2nd or 3rd harmonics, it is totally pure and passes only the music thats why it sounds so good even compared to the Pacific (some 2nd hd).

Hmmm…I like 2nd harmonic distortion! I paid for it! Just kidding…

I often feel like a Jekyll and Hyde personality, where my decades of scientific and hard-nosed engineering training controls my left brain, but my “just enjoy something if it sounds good“ right brain stops me from being too obsessed with measurements. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to some lovely Vivaldi chamber pieces on a DSD recording from Channel Classics through my Lampi Pacific using KR 242 tubes to an ARC Ref tube preamp through to a Cary 300B SET monoblock to my 200 pound Klipsch La Scala horns. The sound is just gorgeous. My right brain says just enjoy it. My left brain says why in the world am I using a DAC with DHT triodes, a tube preamp, and 5 watt SET monoblocks with dollops of 2nd harmonic distortion to play digital music In 2022?

Every once in a while, my left brain wins. So, I pull out my solid state Chord Blu Mk2 M-scaler with matching Dave DAC or a Lyngdorf TDA 2170 pulse-width modulated digital amplifier that uses no DAC at all, but directly converts the digital bits into analog using pulses of varying widths into a resistor-capacitor network. And I listen. My left brain says, see this is how you playback digital music transparently with a pulse-width modulated amplifier that keeps the signal in digital form till the last stage where conversion to analog happens with no low level DAC at all, and the volume control is not in the signal path at all, as it controls the power supply voltage. My left brain says, see isn’t this so technically cool, this is 21st century audio. But my right brain says, sure, but it sounds like crap compared to using the tubed Lamp Pacific with the ARC tube preamp and the Cary SET.

Anyone know how to shut off your left “logical” brain without brain surgery?

Here’s the Vivaldi album, in case you like Vivaldi.

 

[Tuckia]

Hmmm…I like 2nd harmonic distortion! I paid for it! Just kidding…

I often feel like a Jekyll and Hyde personality, where my decades of scientific and hard-nosed engineering training controls my left brain, but my “just enjoy something if it sounds good“ right brain stops me from being too obsessed with measurements. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to some lovely Vivaldi chamber pieces on a DSD recording from Channel Classics through my Lampi Pacific using KR 242 tubes to an ARC Ref tube preamp through to a Cary 300B SET monoblock to my 200 pound Klipsch La Scala horns. The sound is just gorgeous. My right brain says just enjoy it. My left brain says why in the world am I using a DAC with DHT triodes, a tube preamp, and 5 watt SET monoblocks with dollops of 2nd harmonic distortion to play digital music In 2022?

Every once in a while, my left brain wins. So, I pull out my solid state Chord Blu Mk2 M-scaler with matching Dave DAC or a Lyngdorf TDA 2170 pulse-width modulated digital amplifier that uses no DAC at all, but directly converts the digital bits into analog using pulses of varying widths into a resistor-capacitor network. And I listen. My left brain says, see this is how you playback digital music transparently with a pulse-width modulated amplifier that keeps the signal in digital form till the last stage where conversion to analog happens with no low level DAC at all, and the volume control is not in the signal path at all, as it controls the power supply voltage. My left brain says, see isn’t this so technically cool, this is 21st century audio. But my right brain says, sure, but it sounds like crap compared to using the tubed Lamp Pacific with the ARC tube preamp and the Cary SET.

Anyone know how to shut off your left “logical” brain without brain surgery?

Here’s the Vivaldi album, in case you like Vivaldi.

View attachment 102120

This audio hobby is a concession that my dominant left-side engineering brain makes to my passive-aggressive, crabby pants, whiny, right-side brain. So far it has saved us from divorce

 

[jbrrp1]

Anyone know how to shut off your left “logical” brain without brain surgery?

Hmmm..... Weed is my favorite method, but sometimes booze, too. Beauty is, it's only temporary, and it does enhance the glory of that right-brain surrender to music. Helps shut off the engineer in me.