From what I have seen its pretty poorly made and constructed. Having said that if you have to look on the Whats Best Forum you can see how many on there use his DACs. While you're there you can also see how many have bought the £32K Taiko server! That should make a few eyes water on this forum...
Is there any point in a valve DAC
- Thread starter rockingdoc
- Start date
From what I have seen its pretty poorly made and constructed. Having said that if you have to look on the Whats Best Forum you can see how many on there use his DACs. While you're there you can also see how many have bought the £32K Taiko server! That should make a few eyes water on this forum...
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
Sounds like you might have got something wrong with the modifications.
Lampizator thinks the Sony CDP-227ESD is a great player!
His 227 modification experiment goes back to 2007 and he further modified things 16 months later. Still a great CD player is just that and Lampizator thought this "budget" 227 player was good in stock form, but after Lampizator modifications, right up there in his CD player league of experiments.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Great! I have 2 NAD 3020 for sale, will put in classifieds at outrageous prices
Ah well the problem there is that the Ongaku is really bad rather than the 3020 very good
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
Bit of a cheap shot there Graham, I think the sound quality is what counts most. As a specialist audio manufacturer yourself, I'm surprised at you posting like this against another.
messengerman
pfm Member
No, I don't think it does either. Even as you tell yourself this is probably nonsense if it happens to be something you' would like to be true or is consistent with other notions lodged in your head then it creeps into your bones quite regardless of your more rational self. I'm professionally immune ( I like to fancy) to all forms of commercial advertising but often surprise myself at how biddable I remain when it comes to geeky internet forums. It's the personal touch I think. I no longer get involved in anything that costs more than £100 but if the kit is old, a bit unfashionable and most commonly to be found in skips or Freecycle I'm all too ready to believe any good things anyone tells me about it
canonman
pfm Member
A fair bit cheaper thoughAh well the problem there is that the Ongaku is really bad rather than the 3020 very good
DimitryZ
pfm Member
Looks like an ugly hack. It's surprising people actually pay money for this.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
It's a modification experiment from 2007 of an existing manufacturers product. It has space constraints (if you even bothered to read the white paper).
Here is the present entry level Lampizator Amber 4 DAC layout:
DimitryZ
pfm Member
New products look interesting - at $4K-44K price range - but I am unclear how they actually work.It's a modification experiment from 2007 of an existing manufacturers product. It has space constraints (if you even bothered to read the white paper).
Here is the present entry level Lampizator Amber 4 DAC layout:
Roog
pfm Member
Nope, it absolutely works as intended, its just that the Lapizator mod does not follow well established digital theory and practice. Just because someone who has a vested interest in their proposed modifications says its great doesn't mean it is. The out come was quite predicable, but as I had, (and still have) a Sony 227 I wanted to try it to see what it sounded like, then I couldn't resist viewing the output. :0(
The Audio Note DACs have quite a steep passive filter which rolls off the top end. Quite a few folk have asked me to remove this over the years. I havn't played with one for a while tho. The old ones used to have poor bass as they were SPDIF only. More recent ones are better but I don't know what if any re-clocking they do.I currently build DACs with tube output stages based on the ESS9038 pro and BB 1794 and AQD1862 chips, both the latter being run in NOS totally filterless mode, and all re-clocking the data with SOTA clocks. The DACs use the same output stage and power supplies and you'd be surprised how similar they sound. For comparison I have an Oppo Sonica DAC using the same ESS9038pro chip but an opamp output stage. This sounds inferior to my offerings but has a fairly crude clock as well as an opamp output stage along with electrolytic output coupling capacitors! I recently bought a dCS Bartok as a further comparator (at five times the price of my top model). Of course it wins the stakes for convenience and lifestyle product but SQ wise I prefer my own top line model for Red Book. I'm still making up my mind for hi res. On poorer recordings, think 80s digital offerings, my top line NOS DAC definitely performs better. The Bartok makes these sound lean, with the vocals receding into the mix, while my offerings give a much more satisfying wide and balanced sound stage. Anyway, I'll do a full write up of those comparisons at some point. One difficulty for any review is comparing like with like. The Bartok's best input is Ethernet, while my dem model could but doesn't have that facility. So comparing its best input-USB-to the Bartoks brings a streamer into the equation, in my case an Innuos Zen mini plus Phoenix re-clocker. Then you've got lots of filter settings and upsampling options....... All this of course IMO.
But this has been a very entertaining thread
But this has been a very entertaining thread
Roog
pfm Member
It is an ugly hack, I would just like to say that mine has the Lampizator mod stuff mounted on a separate pcb, I can't be doing with that kind of rough point to point wiring.
Roog
pfm Member
I'm not sure if they did, I thought that it was just to encourage a bit of DIY'ers fun!
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
In the period following Lampizators 2007 experiments with the 227, he has established a worldwide audio business building and selling his designs for DACs, Amplifiers, Phono Stages etc. What have you setup in terms of an audio business that we can buy?
Roog
pfm Member
I had a chat with PQ of Audio Note at the Bristol HiFi show a few years back, he talked about his experiments with DACs and advocated the use of 14bit conversion, he thought it sounded better. Who am I to argue with PQ? So I tried that too with an old Philips CD 150, removed the oversampling and set the chip set to work in 14 bit mode.
Yes I know its an exercise in the ridiculous but I wanted to hear how Philips actually intended CD players to sound, that is before Sony talked them around to the well established 16bit format. That mod is a little more difficult to reverse, poor Philips CD player.
Yes I know its an exercise in the ridiculous but I wanted to hear how Philips actually intended CD players to sound, that is before Sony talked them around to the well established 16bit format. That mod is a little more difficult to reverse, poor Philips CD player.
Roog
pfm Member
Note sure why you feel the need to defend him, I have already said I do not know what he's up to now, (and for the record I don't make DACs etc) but that does not mean that I cannot understand or try out, implemented with much higher skill and quality than his point to point methods that he was proposing back in 2007 and as I have already said it did not represent well established digital practice, let alone H&S.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
Your slagging off a product that he successfully modified but you failed to replicate the experiment yourself. You state your skills are much higher than Lampizator.....I find that a bit boastful, especially considering you were actually copying Lampizator.
I have an older Lampizator DAC and Transport. I bought them used at reasonable cost (actually very cheap compared to new RRP) to see what all the fuss was about. I enjoy the sound. To me, they are very musical. Sure, I would love to try better Lampizator models, or even those from SW1X or Abbasaudio, but I'm happy to stick with what I have.
RichardAusten
pfm Member
I agree with this to a point but forums generally add a balance - no matter how much one person raves about some product and no matter how eloquent their writing, there will always be another poster who comes along and dumps on it. Individual bias exists whether people want to admit it or not. As an audio reviewer, I generally try my best to tell the reader up front what my bias is. I am not a fan of reviewers who rave about a $6,000 loudspeaker and then tell me in person that they prefer a $4,000 speaker and would in fact buy said $4,000, speaker. No mention of that was made in the review. Or other reviewers who rave about a speaker but don't mention they found it to be a little bright - the one thing that would annoy most listeners (Magnepan 1.6). Then 5 years later they review the new model (1.7) and mention then that it fixed the brightness issue.
Reviewers can only report their own personal experiences which can largely not be shared by others in the same way. I'll use my Audio Note OTO Phono SE integrated amplifier as an example. When I write about this amplifier today (19 years old without fail) I can write about the sound but it is still only in the context of my speakers and in my room. At 10 watts per channel, it will mightily struggle with some speakers. Hi-Fi Choice noted that it is an "idiosyncratic" product and while it won their blind level matched sessions - it is too underpowered for the majority of the consumer market (4.2 watts per channel undistorted). So that is a fair analysis - if you're buying these sorts of amps you are not buying them based on a review or audio forums - you really have to listen - a Bryston will drive everything but a 4.2 watt amp most definitely will not.
I don't have problems with fanboys - there are maggie fans where nothing else will do. They have a passion for that sound signature. I generally like to listen to the brands that create great emotional attachments for their consumers - I may not like it but that's not the point - the point is that it makes them happy. And when I am out in Hong Kong the land that carries practically every major audio product I often try and drop in and listen to them just in case the light dawns on me about them. I had a guy on a forum who blasted my speakers all the time - they suck, overrated, overpriced, boomy, and on it went for a couple of years. Then he went to a California show and the dealer made a special corner panel for the speakers designed for corners. The hotels usually suck so he built his own corners. This fellow then came back and said it was the best sound he has ever heard at any show ever - and he went to many every year for decades. There are rooms that I had down dead last at one show that I had them ranked 1-2 at the next. Since then, I have been far more open to more gear that I previously disliked.
Moreover, none of this stuff is particularly important in the life and death of the world. First-world problems. I have a $400 Marantz receiver - I can listen all day on that thing. It's not a train wreck. Music is more important than the gear. You don't have to spend a ton of money. The people who spend the ton of money have the money to spend - they and I feel it is better - but it's not necessary to enjoy music. These are "want" items not "need" items. If someone buys a $3,000 interconnect cable, my kneejerk reaction is that he is getting conned. On the other hand, if he can spend $3,000 on an IC then he probably doesn't have the same problems the rest of the world has. People spend $12,000 on a watch that doesn't tell the time better than a $60 Timex (in fact it probably tells worse time) and it may have a Diamond but Diamond pricing is arbitrary BS. Or women and their LV handbags - Jeez.
Apologies if my comment came across that way. It was meant to highlight this aspect of equipment which should most definitely be considered when spending sizeable sums on audio products. IMO, if you make a product everything should be addressed, the design, the construction, the performance, consumer safety and CE. Over the past 40 years that I have been involved in audio, I have seen and witnessed poor build quality in equipment which has given this industry a bad name, especially to small companies who specialise in offering performance that the bigger companies can't match for the price. No one mentions it, not even the reviewers, probably as most wouldn't know what was good design and good construction, and most audiophiles have no clue either, especially today. Ultimately, it is up to the buying individual to make the choice, but they should be aware of what they are buying. There is no excuse for poor build quality.
Note: before I started manufacturing, I used to service and repair all of the top high end HiFi for several shops and distributors. I was totally horrified when working on some of this equipment how poor some of it was. This was one of the factors in why I started my own manufacturing brand. I remember opening up a 300B amplifier made here in the UK and I was aghast when I took the bottom panel off, as the outside of the chassis was sprayed black, but on opening it up the inside was full of rust. They had painted the outside of the case but not the inside. It would have only cost pennies to run the spray gun around the inside of the chassis. Also, to fill up a few holes in the back panel, 2 pence pieces were glued to the inside of the chassis and filled and sprayed on the outside. Thankfully the company that made this didn't last very long. Occasionally I was pleasantly surprised when something good arrived and it was aways a pleasure and a privilege to work on such equipment.