yesterday my wife and i had the pleasure of a visit from Lukasz and his girlfriend Rachel. this was an all too brief stop during their ski trip, and Lukasz brought along an Atlantic TRP dac for me to try in my system for a week, he will be back to collect it next weekend. these type visits are one of the real highlights of our hobby. we quickly installed the TRP on it's shelf, installed the tubes, plugged it in and started listening. we used the Gobel Lachorde USB cable into the SGM Extreme server. Emile (from SGM) had installed the Lampi drivers that morning.
until he arrived i had no idea which dac he would end up bringing; the last time i had seen Lukasz was at Axpona last April, he had mentioned a possible ski trip to my neighborhood, and i was commenting that i really liked how the Pacific was sounding......so i had (wrongly) figured that would be the one he would bring. he said that he needed to bring a dac he could reasonably fit in his luggage. enough of that stuff.
the TRP was/is delightful sounding!
i did read the first few pages of this thread to get a feel for the vibe of this product, and it seems Lukasz as would be expected, did bring some nice tubes. right now the recti is the KR 5u4g, and the driver tubes are the NOS GEC KT66's. and this has the latest 'Pacific' type digital engine capable of 512 dsd.
i don't think it's relevant to compare the under $10k TRP to my $120k MSB. to me my comments should be about enjoying the TRP, and how it plays in a cost no object environment with a USB cable 60% of the list price of the dac, and a server 3x the value of the dac. can it deliver in this type system? and how do i think it relates to the (now gone 2 years) GG1.5 i owned?
short answer is yes it delivers, and it gets into the ballpark of the GG1.5 if not the quite the front row seating. maybe a week from now that could change.
yesterday Lukasz sat in my near-field sweet spot for most of the three hours we listened. he had the volume control and the Roon remote, and he mostly played his music, some of which i knew, and others i did not (always the best part of these events). this morning i am going back through the history and listening to these cuts again myself (now in the sweet spot) on both dacs.
more later.......Lukasz and Rachel were a joy to hang with, my wife listened the whole time, and went to dinner with us later......which was really nice.