Pacific dac: Lampizator's new top of the line dac

[Alrainbow]

What dac do you have now. Just asking

 

[Sfox7076]

An early Golden Gate.

 

[Alrainbow]

Then you have room for a gg2 it's an amazing leap
I have both and and late B7.
I'll be posting the pac as well.

 

[wisnon]

Shawn, think about a GG2 then. Its veeeeerrryyyy nice! A word to the wise.

 

[Golum]

Shawn, think about a GG2 then. Its veeeeerrryyyy nice! A word to the wise.

Norm what do you mean by "very nice"? It's freaking awesome

 

[wisnon]

My passion for understatement! LoL

 

[Sfox7076]

Norman, as you know, I always think outside the box on this stuff. I would love to try it, but the cost is too high for the improvement at this stage. I would have to sell some tubes to get a GG2. I have a stockpile of 50s-60s, 300Bs (Have a quad of matched 300Bs from the late 50s), but I don't have the motivation to get rid of those for the DAC... I use a tube in my GG that I am sure you have heard of my use through Fred. It's some good stuff.

 

[bonzo75]

Norman, as you know, I always think outside the box on this stuff. I would love to try it, but the cost is too high for the improvement at this stage. I would have to sell some tubes to get a GG2. I have a stockpile of 50s-60s, 300Bs (Have a quad of matched 300Bs from the late 50s), but I don't have the motivation to get rid of those for the DAC... I use a tube in my GG that I am sure you have heard of my use through Fred. It's some good stuff.

If you are happy with your GG and have learned to tune it don't switch to GG2

 

[wisnon]

Norman, as you know, I always think outside the box on this stuff. I would love to try it, but the cost is too high for the improvement at this stage. I would have to sell some tubes to get a GG2. I have a stockpile of 50s-60s, 300Bs (Have a quad of matched 300Bs from the late 50s), but I don't have the motivation to get rid of those for the DAC... I use a tube in my GG that I am sure you have heard of my use through Fred. It's some good stuff.

if you are happy, I am happy.

 

[Alrainbow]

So somehow some feel there is no inprovment in the gg2 ? Wow. You should come to my place and hear a gg2 and pac both brand new.
If not read my reviews when done.

 

[wil]

I'm interested to hear opinions/experiences of the Volume control on the Pacific compared to a separate pre amp?

I have the Pac w/ vol control paired with a Luxman 300q (300b SET) power amp. I haven't tried a pre amp yet and would prefer not to add another box if not a significant upgrade...

 

[Alrainbow]

Call me tonight. Ok. 3474942115
Al D

 

[Golum]

Hi Wil;

First of all Al has a tons of experience with Lampi DAC so hear his voice for sure. My opinion is that if you have the resources and could reach to some really good preamp I believe they can make a quite significant difference vs the VC in Lampi. This is on my personal experience with GG1 with VC as I was during certain period w/o my REF6...just my 2 cents on the topic...
Also needs to taken into account that VC in Pacific is improved vs. the one I had in GG1..

On top - if you can get a loaner preamp and hear it in your system would be the best way to do it...

Cheers;
G

 

[Alrainbow]

I agree with golum as well and he does have vast experience too. Part of the pre or not is cost but also less is more. Both are real but if one is in persuite of better sound it's for the most part true.
A while back i owned a msb dac it has all the bells and whistles. I used it's preamp after the dac part was below my Lampi dac.
It was both a passive and active after 0 dB
It converted SE to BAL too snd both outputs were active st the same time. It's even had grounding isolation built in as a selection in the menu.
One day an audio bud who is in my world a man of extreme knowledge in audio. He made speakers from top to bottom and knew what amps and preamp went with them. I can't say how much much I have learned from him But it's plenty.
So when he asked me to try a few things back then I felt ok but knew the Answers.
After all the dac with two EXT PSU ,s was about 40k five years ago. Well someone hear who owned my dac with all the goodies said he felt it was better with a pre.
So when I tried it I was in shock to how much things got worse when I used the active portion
I was using 30 feet of bal interconnects as my room is large. So when I made it all close it did improve.
So first off some pre amps can't drive long runs.
Next he offered me to buy a used mark levinson
No 26 pre as Again it was only 3k cheap by today's prices. Well the that pre made things leap big time.
Since then I re capped all of it Both psu and pre again a leap.

Now Lampi a Lampi dac has high output imp
Avg 1200 hundred ohms but it can be much higher Now since it's an OTL it's load can't be very large and even long runs more then 15 feet matters more.
So a pre amp makes things more simple and has less effects on amp we use.
The great sound is in part it's OTL output so it's not. Something we want to hurt.
But a preamp I feel is needed in almost all cases
A passive pre may help but an active pre yields the best results of used.
Loan one and for me a SS preamp is better as you have tubes and don't wa t to add more tube sounds and deal with them wearing out or needing new tubes to start with if used.
Get a pre that has a separate psu this matters and is even more inportant if it also has a phono pre amp too.

Now having a dac with a vol control is also good to Have. Now Before the nay sayers jump in consider this. All pre amps have a sweet spot just like our amps do.
So having a dac vol allows to trim input to the pre amp. This does a few things
One is it gives the best tone and dynamics
Two at low passages it gives more low end details as the noise floor is lower and the imp being matched to allow a more balanced sound.
Lastly it allows to not over drive the pre input and anyone who says it's not true is maybe used to shouts or has a low level input to it. Now this person will not get shouts but will more likely result in a higher noise floor and loss of low level details

 

[Alrainbow]

It's direct coupled only one dc blocking cap in the path.

 

[Golum]

Get a pre that has a separate psu this matters and is even more inportant if it also has a phono pre amp too.

Here Al I would say this is not universally applicable. Namely i had for several years in my system ModWrigh line stage LS36.5DM with monsterous separate PSU and the one box ARC REF6 just killed it (to my ears at least). More dynamic, punchy, transparent, both extensions better, etc. So I guess all is relative and system dependant and just to be clear ModWright is also seriously good preamp!

 

[Alrainbow]

Yes not always for sure , but for me yes always if a phono pre is inside too. It again hearing is the only way to know

 

[Legolas]

Yes, an output with no OPT can struggle to drive longer interconnects. And the pre or power amp needs to have a high input impedance to avoid FR shifts. So I am not surprised the DAC sounds better with an external pre-amp.

 

[Alrainbow]

I use two dacs in my main rig and headphones
I do this for testing and use headphones for the same reason.
I tried the pre input into my pac dac to see how much of this sound is the digital and analog Section and to see if the tiny dac would benifit from a line stage
My pre is ML no26 all re capped
The tiny dac is pretty good on its own but became a monster using the pac input. I rolled tubes to help it's over all sound scape. It was a fun experiment.
Now having said this the pac as a whole crushed it
But it's not that I could not play the tiny dac
It's interesting to me how close or far using

 

[wil]

Al, thanks for the detailed thoughts. I'm going to try the LTA MicroZOTL 3. I've heard it in my system as an amp (driving 107db sensitive horns) and love it's understated gestalt. It will be in front of the Luxman mq300 (300b set) power amp.

I thought a ss pre might be a good fit with the tubed dac and tubed amp, but the MZ3 will serve as a good back up amp as well -- and because of its otl design, is considerably on the less tubey end of the spectrum.

I'm curious about trying your idea to use the Lampi vol control to trim the pre amp in search of a nice balance. If you have any more ideas on this, I'd appreciate it-- such as, what might be a good ratio of dac vol control to pre amp as a starting point.